Steve Cody, the co-founder of the public relations firm Peppercom, has a unique answer to anyone who asks him the number one cocktail question. His answer starts with his passions but leaves the door open by informing the questioner he is in the public relations field.

For example, Steve’s opening answer would be something like, “My passions are stand-up comedy and mountain climbing. I’m training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in December. I also work in public relations.”

If the questioner continues to inquire about the public relations field, Steve tells them “I work for a mid-sized public relations firm in New York.” If they ask which firm, he says “Peppercom.” If they ask what he does there, Steve delivers the punch line, “I own it.”

Steve’s point is to not let the job define who you are. When I asked him our standard question to conclude the interview, he told me at 22 years old he was too conformist. He worried about what people thought of him.

“Don’t wait to stretch yourself,” Steve would tell his twenty-two year old self. “Now I’m doing stand up comedy and improv. I’m mountain climbing. And this is all in the last year. The more you stretch yourself, the more you challenge yourself, the better person you are going to be and the more respect you’ll get from others. That’s the number one thing I would do.”

Noah set up an interview with a family friend who was a 94-year old Latin American history professor at the University of Texas. It was one of the best, most eccentric interviews of our project.

The framed black and white photos hanging from his office wall, some faded past the point of recognition, told the life stories of John W. F. Dulles. A photo of him shaking hands in a tuxedo brought back memories of his days in the Latin American mining business. He began as a muck stick laborer before utilizing his Harvard business education (class of ’37) to work his way up to Executive Vice President. The lovely woman on the wall was his wife of sixty-eight years.

Stacked high on his desk were notebooks of yellow lined paper; each sheet had words thoughtfully scrawled out in perfectly legible handwriting, double spaced for his assistant Ana to type. The first copy of Professor Dulles twelfth published book, Resisting Brazil’s Military Regime: An account of the battles of Sobral Pinto, arrived the day of the interview. Professor Dulles claimed it would be his last book because research is no longer possible due to computer illiteracy and the loss of mobility for his annual trip to Brazil.

The mobility in his right leg is still strong enough to make the seventy-five minute commute from San Antonio to Austin three times a week. He drives himself while listening to either an audio-book on cassette or a Houston Astro baseball game on the radio. He checks into a motel before settling into his office, which is located in a student dorm. He then leads a ninety-minute lecture to a captive audience of twenty students. At the time of the interview, Professor Dulles was beginning his 45th year of teaching at the collegiate level.

Professor Dulles had large, understanding eyes behind dark, thick glasses. He looked a lot like Larry King, only twenty years older with more disheveled gray hair. He actively asked questions when holes weren’t filled in a story, and held an inquisitive gaze with the person speaking to draw more information out them.

At a loss for questions and in complete awe of a man who lived a full life, Noah asked the cliché question we all would like to know the answer to: “What’s the secret to life?”

Without hesitation, Professor Dulles answered in a rhythmic voice, “Have a great interest in what one is doing and be active.” A long pause came and went as the culmination of ninety-four years of wisdom sunk in. “That helps ones attitude and prolongs one’s life. I wouldn’t want to sit around and watch television.”

Steve and Brian run the website Alive in Baghdad, a foundation dedicated to getting video cameras in the hands of Iraqis, and allowing those Iraqis to tell Iraq’s story. It is a novel idea in a world that presumes to intelligently cover news from thousands of miles away, often in front of a condescending, scenic backdrop.

What began with a trip to Baghdad, during which Brian endeavored to help bring the Iraqi public’s message to the US, has now developed into a global phenomenon, spurring Alive In projects in Mexico and beyond. Now, hundreds of thousands of people watch the videos shot by Iraqis on the ground in Iraq, but the cost has been both financially, and personally great; people close to the site have died, and financially, the site will not much longer survive.

Steve recognizes the obvious Catch-22 in charging for news, and for that the site will always be free. But donations are required and currently, the duo struggles to inspires its viewers to donate to the site. Brian says, obviously somewhat annoyed with apathy, “Just admit what it is you want to support,” be it a website,
political party, or other cause. We will not charge, Steve says, “because the information deserves to be seen, and it will be seen.”

With just the support of just a fraction of its viewers, the website will thrive, and one gets the sense that Steve and Brian will do whatever it takes.

In a rare personal plea from this writer: give them money! They truly deserve it. www.aliveinbaghdad.org.

It was time for Anita Malik to do a gut check. After another meeting with her newspaper employer in which her ideas were shook off a shoulder, Anita sat at her desk and looked at her gifts.

She had three college degrees, including the masters in journalism she had gone back to get at USC, along with finance and information technology degrees she had received at Arizona State. She had a desire to write about the stuff that she wanted to write about, but her thoughtful ideas were being neglected at meetings like the one that transpired a few moments ago.

Anita looked at her heritage. As an Indian-American woman, Anita had grown up in a gap between the Eastern Asian culture and American understanding. She began to think about that gap, and how she could bridge it.

Soon thereafter, the idea for East West Magazine was born. Anita decided that she would create an Asian-American magazine that tackles controversial issues while also discussing the newest beauty trends…but all in her own style.

She created a website to see if there was a market for her idea. While still working at her newspaper employer, she wrote content that addressed her needs and others like her. She began to watch as her site began to gain popularity. After getting a substantial amount of visitors to her site, she decided that it was time to transition her words to print.

Today East West Magazine thrives in a time where print media struggles. Anita continues to get recognition for her passion in publishing, recently named to Folio’s 40 list.

What I took away:

If you look at your gifts and gaps in the marketplace, you can find your niche and create something profitable and useful to people previously suffering from that gap.

“Pursue the Passion”
by Bryan Van Scoyk

Inside of a personal cubicle, the incessant sounds of clicking keyboards and calculators fill up the small space. A young accountant looks upwards towards the wall a few feet away. The hands of the mounted clock taunt him with their slow, monotonous movement. Everything is slow here. Everything is monotonous. Brett Farmiloe, the young accountant, steps away from his desk and walks slowly to the coffee machine across the huge room. The twenty two year old passes many people. Some of them are older than him and some of them are about his age. As he sizes up his co-workers, he knows that he will not be relegated to the life that they now share. He thinks back to last year when, as a college senior, his opportunities were supposed to be limitless. He slowly pours his coffee and gazes out the window as he daydreams about what better things are out there for him.

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As we walked up to Scooter’s on a calm Tuesday evening in the Chicago neighborhood off Paulina, we met with Mary Jane Grinstead, who casually rode up on her bike. Mary Jane is from a small town in Missouri. Over the moderate hustle and bustle of the crowd entering and exiting Scooter’s for their highly acclaimed frozen custard, Mary Jane explained to us why someone would leave a highly paid executive career in technology to write.

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I first saw Ford speak in September of ‘04, at a speech/workshop that I attended while a student at the University of Arizona. The workshop consisted of an enthusiastic Ford teaching writing basics to a majority crowd of journalism students, as well as talking about the New York Times. Somewhere during the speech he mentioned that if any of us were out in New York and wanted to stop by that we should show up around 5 PM. He explained that this is when they have their coffee break after deciding what will go in the paper the next day. I made a mental note and stored it somewhere in my memory bank.

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Keith is another one those people who was more than willing to talk to us about what they’ve learned in the pursuit of their current positions. We came to the New York Times to talk to Ford Burkhart. Ford took us on a tour and noted that Keith was also a UofA graduate as we stopped by his desk. So, naturally we started talking about his days in Tucson and how yes, it is still very hot, and yes, Eegee’s frozen drinks are still the best way to cool off.

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