Emily Tisch Sussman hosts the successful all-woman podcast “Your Political Playlist” from her home and a recording studio in Sag Harbor. Guests have included everyone in the political world from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, to name a few. She also recently secured the role of Senior Advisor to Paid Leave US, a national campaign to win paid family and medical leave by 2022.
We spoke with Sussman about everything from the sexist ideology society can place on women from prominent families, to how she navigated the Presidential election, and how the mother of three young children balances it all.
You’ve just secured the role of senior advisor to Paid Leave US. Tell us a little about that:
I’m so excited for my new role with PL+US: Paid Leave for the United States as a Senior Advisor. This is a fight that is both important for the country and also very close to home for me as a mom of three young kids, with my third born three weeks before the Covid lockdowns in New York. With Covid we saw a record number of women leaving the workforce and as they are making the choice to come back, businesses that offer paid leave will be in a much stronger position than their competitors. Paid leave is such an important fight and I’m ready to get in the ring to get it passed at the federal level so we can help millions of moms and women across the country.
Tell us a little about the podcast and how it started, and the inspiration behind it:
I’ve worked as a democratic strategist for more than 15 years. And I’ve been on TV as a commentator for about nine years as a political strategist. Going into the 2020 presidential election, especially in the primary, I felt like everyone was kind of grappling with the question of, not only which candidate they wanted to support, but how to decide which candidate.
I felt like, well, if I could open up a process that I would use when I was preparing for a TV segment, and bring the experts that I would call — I just wanted to open that process up so that everybody has access to the same questions, the same experts that I would have access to.
So that’s essentially what I did. The first season of the show, I categorize it by issue areas. I had on a healthcare policy expert, I had on an environmental policy expert, and really went through the same question and answer process that I would do if I were preparing for TV. It just kind of evolved from there, making sure that I’m always having policy be very conversational and relatable to real people while still having a smart, elevated conversation.
I felt like there were so many women who were digging in deep and who I would consider to be the real experts in the field, but didn’t always necessarily have some of the credentials, and weren’t putting themselves out there. They weren’t promoting themselves. So if I was going to create a platform, I was going to create it for women. So a hundred percent of my experts on my show are women and the majority are women of color.
Can you tell us about some of the guests you’ve had on?
We’ve had amazing guests. We launched with Speaker Pelosi, which was a pretty great way to launch. I realized that we had forgotten a screwdriver to adjust the mic. So before she came in, she has all these little nut bowls — we ended up using the spoon from her nut bowls to adjust mic for the speaker. I was nervous and felt like, oh my God, I can’t believe I forgot a screwdriver for my very first interview with speaker Pelosi. She turned out to be a great guest.
I had on Stacey Abrams to talk about changes in voting rights. Secretary Hillary Clinton ended up making news that drove the news cycle the entire weekend before the Iowa caucus, which was so crazy because I was nine and a half months pregnant when I did that interview.
Recently I’ve had on, from the Biden administration, the secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo, Biden’s campaign manager, who’s now deputy chief of staff, Jen O’Malley Dillon, and a lot of experts who are lesser known, but wonderful experts. For healthcare we’ve had on Dr. Alice Chen, who was the head of Doctors for America. For democracy and voting rights, we have on Andrea Haley, the CEO of vote.org. When people hear them, they really get it.
I’m excited that we’re able to use the show to have on the people who are better known, but also to make sure that we can use the platform for those who are lesser known.
What was the experience like navigating the presidential election during Covid, and working from home with toddlers?
It’s certainly not what I thought it was going to be like. I had my third baby in three years, three weeks before the lockdown. So she was a newborn, then with two toddlers who were home, just while we were trying to figure out exactly what the approach would be for the presidential election. I mean, I had thought that maybe I would try to actually go work on the campaign, which then ended up becoming totally impossible.
I was so pregnant at the end of recording my last season, I actually had all the podcast equipment already cause I hadn’t wanted to kept getting on the subway when I was close to my delivery date. I would record during their naptime, I would align everyone’s nap schedule — that is when I would do my interviews. I have kids crawling all over me during a lot of interviews.
I’ve started hosting “Moms Run The World,” Instagram live series for Parent’s Magazine. Our first interview for that was Senator Tammy Duckworth, who’s the first sitting Senator to have a child while in office.
As a mother of three young children, talk a little about work-life balance:
Tammy Duckworth said, “There is no work-life balance.” Sometimes you prioritize the family and sometimes you prioritize work and when you do the other suffers. I think that as a lot of parents, particularly mothers, they’ve tried to move the pendulum back and forth between the two, the work ends up being viewed as kind of a pet project and not as a real endeavor. And I think that’s particularly for mothers that are coming from backgrounds of privilege, or coming from backgrounds of wealth, that the work ends up not being taken as seriously. And so I feel it has been a real driving factor in my life to work a thousand times harder than what was expected of me — be the first one in, be the last one out. Because I felt I did have to overcome that perception that because I come from a prominent family that I wouldn’t really be showing up to do the hard work. And so I always made sure to do that hard work.
Tell us a little about your connection to the East End and Sag Harbor:
We moved out here last year. It was a Covid move. It was a good, quick decision, and we love it. We were definitely very much integrated into supporting as many of the local businesses as we can and whatever we do in our daily life. Our kids are enrolled in preschool here. I buy far too many clothes at Joey Wölffer. I do Pilates at Norma Jean Pilates. My kids go to karate class. If they try really hard, their reward at the end is they get to split a monkey shake from Sagtown Coffee. Actually, when my kids like to play “store,” they play Sagtown Coffee. They yell out “65!” It’s hysterical.
Visit www.emilytischsussman.com.
