Be Open to Learning from Everything

Have you ever wondered how people get to leadership roles, especially those who don’t look like anyone who has come before them? In this conversation on the Read with Jenna podcast with host Jenna Bush Hager, Ruth Simmons, former president of Prairie View A&M University, Brown University, and Smith College, discusses her memoir Up Home and how she navigated the segregated South growing up in the pre-Civil Rights era to ultimately rise to the top of the academic profession at three different institutions.

Simmons talks about the role of teachers and mentors in showing her how to believe in herself, the stress of being the “first” and how her students helped her, how her background became her strength, and the importance of remaining open to every opportunity for learning across one’s lifetime.