Redefining Power: Moira Forbes on Legacy, Leadership, and the Meaning of Influence on She Leads

Power was seen almost as a dirty word. Who sometimes I feel impostor syndrome. Of course, that's why the tech executive saying, you know, and now she's a billionaire. I don't want, I feel uncomfortable being on this list she

I at the time was devastated, devastated, sort of looking at all these magazines we published and knowing that wasn't going to be anymore, knowing that women loved it.

A lot of women at the time didn't want to be recognized for being powerful because they were a woman.

In terms of success, there's a word that I think very differently about, and that is...

Welcome to She Leads. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be sitting down with you.

I think some of the things that were most influential in my life was the fact that I grew up in a family business. Growing up, I was always very entrepreneurial. My favorite Christmas present from Santa Claus one year was a cash register because I wanted to open up a store in my parents' house, where there's not a huge market in your own home for customers. I did my own newspapers, and I always loved the idea of being able to build something. And that was coupled with a family business where we were very much put to work in the sense that very often we were with clients and customers and entertaining, and really understood that these were the people that were the foundation of our business. And so we would go and entertain, we would, you know, six or seven years old, sit down at dinner tables with extraordinary people in the world. But the entire goal was to welcome people into our family, to host them, but also to have such appreciation and gratitude for the ability to spend time and their contributions and to what they did at Forbes. So I was always very, very busy and active, and that hasn't changed either.

I would say it's only in retrospect that you sometimes realize the extraordinary community of people I was so privileged to meet. But at those ages, you have no idea who they are. It could be President Ronald Reagan, it could be Gorbachev, Mick Jagger. These were just people, and you knew that they were important because other people followed behind them. And I think what I always remembered most were who were the ones that were kind, who were the ones that really embraced the people around them, that didn't have attitude and ego. And that was always the greatest lesson to me. It wasn't until I got older that I then realized the fame and the power that they had, but it was the ones that didn't show up like they were the most powerful person in the room that really meant the most.

One of the things I was so fortunate is that I never grew up in a house where the sense of the magnitude of the brand was something we fully captured, but also business was business. We knew that Forbes was a brand and that was a business, and that we were a family. And so in some ways, all the attention and spotlight that was paid to that felt something that was removed from us as a family. And I was also very lucky because my parents wanted to make sure that they did everything they could, and this was their values, to really ensure that we had a strong work ethic, that we were always working, that if we wanted something, we had to get a job for it. So these fundamental life skills are important for anybody, but people sometimes seem surprised when you grow up in a family with a last name that people know that those are things that are important for anybody. And so I would say ignorance was a little bit of bliss in terms of not seeing that as a weight of a family name and a responsibility. It was a privilege, it was a business, and it was something that also, I'm one of five girls, but my parents were very, very clear that you have to follow your passions, you have to do what you want to do. So there was no expectation for any of us to go into the business because if we didn't want to, and if it wasn't our passion, then it would be a huge disservice not only to ourselves, not to our family, but to the business. And so for me, it was just something I had always loved and wanted to follow, but it never felt like an expectation.

I never a moment, but it was just I naturally gravitated toward business and entrepreneurship and the idea that you could build something out of nothing and the idea that you could tell the stories of amazing people. That was just sort of innately in me. And so I always knew I wanted to be a part of the business. It was never guaranteed that we could go into the business also. We had to be ready and be able to make contributions. The other thing is I started in the business as a receptionist, an assistant. I literally helped collect the mail, photocopy, all of those things in our London office. And the reason being is that my father very much said you need to learn every part of the business, you need to understand it from the ground up, you need to work in all these different dimensions of the company. And just because your last name is Forbes doesn't mean that you get a big job title in an office with windows. And so I never expected that, but now I'm all the more grateful that there was never a presumption that I would have a role in the company that would defy my age or experience.

Well, I think one of the most important moments really is what got me into transforming my work in the women's space. And in working at Forbes and looking at my family, I looked at the three generations before me: my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father. I was nothing like them, understandably they were nothing like each other. So I didn't necessarily see myself self-reflected in my family and the business. And looking at the business landscape, even though Forbes was so ahead of its time in our first issue of the magazine in 1917, before women could vote in this country, we had a department for women in business, which was really remarkable. So even if we were more progressive than other media companies, I didn't see enough stories of the types of women that I wanted to aspire to be like or to learn from. And that was really the impetus for me starting the work in the women's space. And so what I took away from that is when you feel like there's a problem that you want to solve or where there's something that you don't see and that you're wrestling with and you're constantly thinking about it, usually other people are as well. Usually it means there's some sort of opportunity there. And if it's something that you continue to keep yourself up at night about, if it's something occupies a lot of time in your head, it's also a sign that it means something to you and it means something personal in a way where you're willing to take the extra time and effort to see it through. And so that was a really important lesson for me. And it was not easy to start it. It was a very different time in the world in the States where people were looking at conversations around women in business. And I'm so proud and excited that that has evolved, but it was not the case at all when I started this work.

He, I think at that moment in time, with the world war, he saw that the labor force was starting to shift and evolve. And because of the war, women were taking positions in business that defied traditional roles. He also very much believed in talent and this idea that you have 50% of the population, there is great talent there. Now again, it was a very different time, but he saw opportunity. And what's really remarkable as you look back at those first issues of Forbes and some of the content, you would think that it could be written today. And why that was so important and fundamental lesson to me is when you have a North star in business, when you have a purpose, when you're doing something for the greater good, Forbes has always been about empowering people to succeed in business and in life. Those are timeless things and timeless principles. And when you can stay committed to those and when you ensure that you are always staying focused on those, that is the most important thing, not just to have a brand legacy but also to motivate and inspire people to build on a vision that we felt was so important.

At the core, I wanted to see profiles of great women and how they navigated their careers, how they navigated family, how they engaged in the workplace, not just because they were women necessarily, but because there's more commonalities and touch points. And as I was younger in my career, I didn't see a lot of women in senior positions in the workforce. And so there was much more of a need for that. But at the time also, very few people in the marketing world and the like understood the value of marketing and supporting women from an advertising perspective. And so you would go into conversations with marketers and they would, if they did advertise with you, they would advertise with you out of their corporate responsibility budget and not necessarily at a pure 'I'm trying to reach women as a target.' Very often I would get a smile when I told people the work that they did because they thought because I was a woman in a family business and I was a young woman that it was sort of the sweet thing that this was a little pet project I was working on. But when you also see the community that started to build, you saw the types of women that really were hungry and eager for this type of content, you knew that there was something there. And that it's okay if others might not be understanding it in that moment, it will come if you stay the course. And it did, in a meaningful way that I didn't expect it to happen in the types of ways that it happened. But I'm also so proud too that around the world, Forbes is producing so much content on powerful women. I never would have expected that. And so it's something that's deeply important to me and it's also something that's allowed me to carve my own path in a family business.

Well, I think it's first stripping back. Of course now there is a lot of conversation around DEI, but at the end of the day, I think there's a common goal to have great talent and access to opportunity and the ability to create a workforce that can thrive, that feels supported and the like. There's different mechanisms to doing that, there's different structures, there's different ways that companies and government approach it. That is what is being debated. In terms of the fundamentals around the need and the desire to have this, no one is arguing that you want to have extraordinary talent and then you want great talent to thrive. That is a fundamental. It's the how that people are really debating.

I would say in terms of success, there's a word that I think very differently about, and that is the word power. When I started Forbes Women and when we started our annual Power Women's list, power was seen almost as a dirty word. I'll never forget there was a really famous tech executive in Silicon Valley who was top 10 on our Power Women's list, and we're in Davos, World Economic Forum, and we had a banner of the women on the list in the top 10, and she said, 'I can't look at that. I'm really uncomfortable. People are emailing me and calling me to congratulate me, and finally my sister had to pull me away to say thank you. I just don't feel like I'm powerful.' Because powerful connoted this idea that it was didactic or it was top down. And now I think there's really an evolution that power is about influence, it's how you impact the world, it's how you can move people with you. So to me, that has been the most transformative thing around this idea of success, that there's this evolution that power is important to be able to create change, and power is a thing women need to embrace and empower others to do the same.

I think it's a combination of a number of different things. But I think women, and again you don't want to stereotype or monolith, but women tend to be more collaborative, team focused. Women often times don't want to take the credit that they deserve, they use the term 'we' versus 'I'. I just had a conversation with someone today where I said, 'Say I did this, not we, because take, you know, be proud.' And so I think power is something that means that you are wielding something in a way that is not collaborative, in a way that may be for your own personal gain, and that was just a perception I saw a lot of women have. And that's changed fundamentally. The other thing that's changed is a lot of women at the time didn't want to be recognized for being powerful because they were a woman. Like, 'I want to be seen just as everyone else.' And at the end of the day, they realize that it's actually a huge opportunity for other women to be inspired. If you can't see it, you can't be it. And when it also shifted that it really meant something to other people, that's also when the evolution happened.

I doubt myself all the time. I mean, I think it's this constant battle for just women. But I think when you are looking at things in your business and your personal life and your family, oftentimes you're questioning yourself. Your inner monologue and your inner narrative is sometimes the most critical and harsh. It can be harsh. I think over the years I've gotten much more confident in trusting my gut, when to use my voice, when I know that something is right, not necessarily being shy about speaking up. But do I doubt things? I think I would lie if I didn't. And do sometimes I feel impostor syndrome? Of course. But I think that's why it's so important to be in rooms with other women, because we do talk about that, you do lean into that. That's why the tech executive saying, you know, and now she's a billionaire, 'I don't want, I feel uncomfortable being on this list.' She felt like an impostor. So there's a universality to this that the more time you build community, can share those stories and be inspired, that really helps the evolution and really owning your sense of self in an authentic way.

I do it in small ways. There's no magic to it. It's like building a muscle. It's just small things over time and constantly looking at ways, am I pushing myself? And if something feels uncomfortable, if I get that feeling that something is overwhelming or you're a little bit, you just feel like it's a big moment, that means I should lean into it. So when I feel that, when I want to run away, that is the moment where I'm like, this is what I should be doing, this is when I should do the push. And the more you start to push yourself, those things don't seem as big. You got to try it, and once you start to do it more, it does get easier. But it is a muscle you have to grow over time. And I will always be a shy introvert, the irony of the work that I do, but that is just inherently who I am. But I've learned to build my confidence and learn to really push myself in a way that's been hard but in a way that I'm really proud of.

Motherhood I think has taught me first and foremost patience, and the ability to also really have perspective around all the different competing dynamics and voices and chaos that life can create. But it also is really liberating from a work perspective. And I say that because I was so focused on my career and that was my entire identity. And when I would go home at night, that is how I saw myself. And it was this wonderful gift to build out this really extraordinary part of my life that brought me such joy. I mean, at times not a lot of sleep and a lot of craziness, but it really developed a part of my life and joy and a sense of more purpose in my work to really understand that I wanted to do things to create a better world for my children and have them be proud of the work that I've done and have them involved in the work that I've done so that they can see that if they want to build things at whatever they want to do in their life and work hard, that there's opportunity to do that as well. And so it's been the biggest gift in my life that I didn't expect that I could have such meaning and find a different sense of myself that I didn't know could be a part of me by having kids.

Well, I think as you said, failure and success, they are two sides of the same coin. In terms of what I would say a failure, there's so many. When you try and look back, because if you're not trying and pushing yourself, it means that you're not taking the types of risks. So actually, I've started to not use the word failure in my vocabulary. I use it, but I'm really trying to be very conscious of that because failure is really just a word for often times that you tried something that just didn't work, and it didn't work out, and that is okay. And so I'm really proud of a lot of my failures because they are part of the evolution of my own personal growth. And one example of that is when we started our women's efforts, it started as a magazine, a print magazine, at a time when the print market was still relatively vibrant, but there wasn't a market for, there was a readership for a print edition of the magazine, huge readership demand, huge audience demand, there wasn't marketing demand at that moment in time. It was too early. And so eventually we folded the magazine. It turned out to be the best decision because it forced us to invest all of our time and energy in building out a digital community, really robust content online and the like. But that was something that didn't work, and it was something that I at the time was devastated, devastated, sort of looking at all these magazines we published and knowing that there wasn't going to be anymore, knowing that women loved it. And so that was really painful. But the flip side is it meant that we invested time and energy into a different medium that had more reach and more impact and more possibility. And so it stings at the time, it is so painful. We all know what that feeling is like. And if you don't know what that feeling is like, then you need to be doing something different in your life. You need to be creating those stretch moments because it's a cliche, you only learn by trying, and you don't learn in the peaks of your career, you learn in the valleys, in those times where things are dark and you're uncertain and you doubt yourself, and then you really sort of wonder what's next. And you may not be able to see it, you may not be able to know what's around the corner, but if you try and stay the course and just have hope that there is a next chapter, there's a next moment, it will come.

Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.