For Lisa Ling, Being a Minority Woman at Work Means Standing Up for Herself

Ling's career is soaring—she's hosting shows at CNN and HBOMax. Her success is a combination of coffee, perfectionism, and seeing the humanity in others.

For Lisa Ling, Being a Minority Woman at Work Means Standing Up for Herself

Lisa Ling shares her personal cellphone number with every person that she interviews. “I’m not great about setting boundaries,” she says with a laugh. Ling’s interview subjects tend to be people who are marginalized and might otherwise not be asked for their stories—sex workers, incarcerated people, former gang members, teenagers who are registered sex offenders.

It must make for a diverse contact list. But Ling wouldn’t have it any other way. “For these people to have shared their deepest hearts and lives with me,” she tells Glamour, “it would be unbecoming and really inconsiderate for me to just collect their stories and then leave.” She’s made a career trying to show “the humanity of these people who our culture has cast aside.” It’s not a 9-to-5. And she likes it that way.

Ling is only in her 40s, but she’s been a working journalist for decades—since she was a 16-year-old cast on a teen-led news show. She’s been a host on The View and a reporter for CNN, and had her own show on the Oprah Winfrey Network and on National Geographic. Now she’s working on Take Out, a new show with HBOMax, a documentary that will look at a slice of American culture through the kitchens of Asian restaurants. And on October 10, the eighth season of her show This Is Life With Lisa Ling will premiere on CNN.

Ling’s résumé reads like someone for whom professional life has just come easy. In fact, it’s been grueling hard work and the task of proving, again and again, that she’s tough enough and talented enough to do her job. “I certainly have felt, that because I’m a minority woman, I’ve been on the receiving end of some pretty demeaning behavior in some of my superiors,” she says. “Even when it wasn’t overt, when I think back on it, I think, Yeah, they probably wouldn’t have treated someone who was of a different background the same way.”

She’s dealt with it. “At a certain point I realized that I have to assert myself and make sure that my voice is taken seriously and that I’m not overlooked,” she says. “I think a lot of Asians are afraid they might be perceived as bragging. But there’s a pretty big difference between bragging and standing up for yourself.”

Ling has been standing up for people—with compassion, nonjudgment, and deep interest—for her whole career. For Glamour's latest edition of Doing the Work, she takes us through her perfectionist habits, her psychological relationship to coffee, and why it's hard for her to ask for help.

My first ever job

My first ever job was hosting in an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles in the summer, as a teenager. My mom was working a lot, and so it was decided that I should get a job working the same hours that she worked. That same year, when I was 16, I auditioned for a show called Scratch, and got that job. So that year I worked both as an Italian hostess and as the host of a local show that went national.

The best quality in a boss

I really appreciate when my boss gets me and doesn’t just treat me like I’m someone who is on the payroll, but really takes my suggestions, my opinions, and my thoughts seriously. I appreciate those who are compassionate and recognize that employees have a lot of things that are happening in our lives. But at the same time, I always like when a boss has high expectations of me—it definitely drives me and pushes me to work harder.

The worst qualities in a boss

The worst qualities, I would say, are condescension and being demeaning.

My morning routine

The one essential part of my routine is: I need to consume my coffee before I do anything else! I make a beeline for the coffee. It might be just psychological, ’cause at this point I don’t know if the caffeine really affects me at all. I need to smell it! I need to taste it! I need it go into my system before I feel alert enough to tackle the day.

If I have time, I do like to get a workout in and get my blood flowing. Every morning I like to listen to the news—I’ll ask Alexa to play NPR first thing in the morning. Often I’ll channel my local news station in Los Angeles—KPCC is great. Those are things that are part of my ritual.

What I wish I could tell my younger self

I think my younger self would be absolutely shocked that a network would hire me to tell forgotten Asian American stories. I grew up so conflicted about my identity. I never felt totally American—I grew up in a very nondiverse community where there were so few Asians. But I could never connect with being Chinese from China, because I didn’t know the first thing about being from China. So the fact that I’m working on these two shows about those experiences—my younger self would have never, ever thought it could be possible.

My favorite low-stakes treat after a good day

A joy for me is just getting a chance to curl up and read a book at night. Often when I’m home I wait for my kids to go to bed before I start a lot of work, because they are so all-consuming. So it’s a luxury and a treat when I get a chance to just read recreationally.

One thing I’m a perfectionist about

In my work, I don’t like rough cuts to go to the network that look like rough cuts. I like to deliver cuts that could air, so I push my teams to deliver that kind of quality all the time. I do consider myself a perfectionist.

I haven’t worked with an assistant in a long time, which is kind of driving me crazy and driving other people crazy. One of the reasons, I think, is that I am so usually on top of things. But now that I’m managing so many people’s schedules, it becomes a little bit more difficult—I’ve got two kids and a crazy travel schedule; I’m doing two shows in addition to working on so many other things! I do need some help, but sometimes it’s hard for me to ask for help.

A time I absolutely crushed it at work

I’m currently working on two shows that I’m so proud of. For me, as someone who grew up without a lot of money and without any connections to the world of media—to be able to make these shows that cause people to look inward, that is such a huge success. Every time someone approaches me and says, “I just watched this episode about and I had no idea—you really make me think,” there’s no award that compares to people responding in a way that allows them to become more enlightened, more human, really.

My workday essentials

These days my bags are filled with hand sanitizers and sanitizing wipes—those make me feel better! I always have a book with me, and I always have earbuds because I like to listen to calming music or podcasts at night. I’m reading The Leavers by Lisa Ko. Because I work in the nonscripted world, I really enjoy reading fiction. I’m really a lover of really beautiful prose and creative writing.

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“The Leavers” by Lisa Ko

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I do carry a lot of tension in my body, so I’m a sucker for a massage, but the pandemic has thrown a little bit of a wrench in that. I have invested in a little Hypvervolt massager, which is great because I’ve had to use it to take care of my own business in the last year! But I think those are the ways that I try to take care of myself. I try hard to do a little bit of a workout every day, even if it isn’t totally aerobic. I carry along with me when I travel an ab roller, and I put it together, and I make sure that I do that at least every other day—I have one in my home, I have one in my bag, they’re literally like $15 at Big Five. It comes apart and I can tuck away in my suitcase—it literally is with me at any shoot. I’m leaving tomorrow, and it’s already tucked away in my bag.