The Messy Parts Cindi Leive: Reinvention, Resilience, and Rewriting the Rules of Women’s Media
Cindi Leive has shaped the media world—from her tenure as Glamour's editor-in-chief to co-founding The Meteor. In this intimate conversation, she joins Maryam to talk about losing her mother young, surviving the “command and control” culture of Condé Nast, and building something new from the ground up. They explore the messy parts of starting over, raising kids in a digital age, the loneliness epidemic, feminism under fire, and why collaboration always wins. Cindi shares the lessons she’s learned (and is still learning) on how to stay hopeful, stay human, and rewrite the rules without losing your why.
Show Notes:
Guest: Cindi Leive – Journalist, Editor, Co-founder of The Meteor
Follow Cindi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cindi_leive/?hl=en
Topics Covered:
- Her lifelong passion for magazines (and what 17 Magazine meant as a kid)
- Growing up with a single mom scientist—and losing her at 19
- Compartmentalization, grief, and building self-sufficiency
- What Condé Nast taught her (and what she had to unlearn)
- Leaving Glamour at its peak for something riskier
- How The Meteor began in Gloria Steinem’s living room
- Feminist storytelling in a fraught media landscape
- Raising resilient kids in the age of AI and loneliness
- Lessons in entrepreneurship, imperfection, and asking for money
- Why joy and collaboration matter more than perfection
Mentioned:
The Meteor (feminist media collective)
Night of Solidarity, a Meteor special
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