Lisa and Sarah: The “Secret” to Her Success

Rachael: Welcome back to Formative, the podcast where today's leaders are interviewed by the leaders of tomorrow. Today, our guest is Lisa Paul, Senior Vice President at Spyscape. Lisa works with current and former members of intelligence agencies to create experiences and content that bring the fascinating world of spies to life.

In our conversation, Lisa talks about following her curiosity through careers in writing, film, live events, and now spy entertainment. She also shares how strong communication skills can help us get through and learn from our mistakes, and why humility can be a quiet superpower.

Hello and welcome. My name is Rachael Gazdick, and I'm your host and CEO of New York Edge. On every episode of Formative, a student from our after-school program joins me as co-host. Today, we've got Sarah from IS 381K. 

Sarah, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?

Sarah: Um, hi, my name is Sarah, and I like playing chess, and I'm here to interview Lisa Paul.

Rachael: Wonderful. Now let's go talk to Lisa.

(START OF INTERVIEW)

Sarah: Can you tell us about what you do, and can you explain it so, like, 13-year-olds can understand?

Lisa: First of all, Sarah, it's lovely to meet you. It's really nice to get to have this time talking to you. In terms of describing what I do, sometimes it's hard to find a way to crystallize what I do for any age person, because I wear a lot of hats right now in my current role.

I'm an executive at a really special entertainment company and we have a few different lines of business that I get involved in. So I do different things depending on what the project is that we're working on. From a general high-level perspective, we are an entertainment company that focuses specifically on the world of secrets, and we kind of look through that lens to explore human psychology and performance.

And some people like to consider us a spy entertainment company because we work a lot with real-world spies, like people from the FBI, the CIA, um, MI6, which is the British intelligence organization that's kind of similar to the CIA. And so we sometimes work with those people who are in the real-world spy business.

We have a big podcast network where some of those spies come on as guests, like we're talking now, and they talk about their real-world experiences as professional spies. And we also own a couple of really cool interactive spy museums in New York City and in London.

Sarah: That sounds very, like, interesting and informative. So your title is the Senior VP of Spyscape, right?

Lisa: Correct.

Sarah: Was this job your dream job as a child?

Lisa: No, I wouldn't say this was my dream job, but what I can tell you is, uh, I've been asked throughout my life what my dream job is at different stages, and I've kind of been a person that has said always that I don't really have an answer to that because many things interest me.

And so I'm a little grateful that I have this job right now. My work kind of spans different areas, different types of projects, and I'm grateful for that because when I was young, I loved writing. I thought, "Well, maybe I'll be a writer," and I did become a writer for a while. Um, but I loved film, and I thought, "Oh, maybe I wanna work in production."

And I did that for a while as well. I worked on feature films. But I was also a figure skater. There were also other things I did that I thought, you know, "Wow, this is, this is interesting. Maybe I could be okay at this." So I don't think there was a single dream job for me. 

And no, the one I have now, I guess I wouldn't say was the dream job or a dream job. But I'm fortunate in that I get to have diverse experiences in the role that I have right now.

Sarah: Okay. I think anybody would be lucky enough to have your type of job. I think I would be really happy if I had your type of job.

Lisa: What is your dream job, Sarah?

Sarah: Well, I wanna be a lawyer, but I'm also pretty good at writing poems that people say are pretty good.

Lisa: Wow, and you could do both of those things, absolutely. And, frankly, whether or not you choose when you're finished with law school to become a lawyer- It's entirely up to you, but you can do so many other things in life as well with a law degree. It's something that is just an incredibly valuable springboard for lots of different other, uh, different careers.

Sarah: Um, so throughout the timeline of how you, how long you were working, have you ever made a mistake, and can you tell me how you fixed it?

Lisa: Oh, gosh, everybody makes mistakes. There's so many. You know, I don't know if I have one that I would remember really clearly or be able to talk about, but what I can tell you is almost all mistakes, at least in my experience, are rooted in miscommunication.

And what I've found is whether the mistake is big or small, there might be an initial moment of panic, but it always just takes me one or two beats to then realize communication is also what's gonna get me out of this. In fact, there's probably few to no mistakes I've made where that is not the case. So I guess I would just say understand and accept that you made a mistake.

There is tremendous value for you and your workmates if you own up to it. You get to the solution faster if right away you say, "Oh, gosh, that was me. That was on me. My bad. I'm so sorry," instead of trying to make it, you know, seem like maybe it was you, maybe it wasn't you, what have you. Own up to it right away.

Just get quickly to the point that you are going to now communicate with your team and find the proper resolution. 

Communication is both what's gonna get you into trouble and out of trouble.

Sarah: Throughout your job, have you faced any challenges getting to this point? 

Lisa: Oh, my gosh, so many challenges. Uh, every day is filled with challenges.

I think that's probably normal for most people. Um, you know what might be the biggest challenge, Sarah, is- I didn't have any firsthand experience in the world of secret intelligence and investigative law enforcement, and all of these areas where I now represent a pretty large roster of former FBI, CIA professionals, MI6, what have you.

And we not only help other companies get introduced to those people to use them for speaking engagements or consulting, but sometimes in a court proceeding, those people are needed to be expert witnesses on a stand during a court case. And I don't have a legal background, and I don't have a background in secret intelligence.

And so these last five and a half years, you know, I've had to kind of become an expert in lots of areas where I just hadn't spent a lot of time or focus, and I'm happy to do it. But that's probably been one of the biggest challenges, is having to very quickly become an expert in subject matter that I may not have spent much time at all ever getting to know anything about.

Sarah: Yeah, that seemed pretty challenging. I don't know if I could ever do it, but that makes it impressive. Um, what's one thing that you find extremely interesting about being a spy?

Lisa: The thing that has, uh, been the most fascinating to me is they are just like us. You know? They're depicted in movies and film as being these, like, super capable, strong, maybe almost super powerful…

You know, you look at, like, Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, or Jason Bourne, or these characters that if they came in a room, you would just be like, "Thank God he's here. He's gonna save the day," you know? "He's amazing." And the majority of our spies are– and I don't mean this as a criticism of them in any way or an insult– they're average people, and they're average people because they have to be. They need to blend. They need to blend so that nobody picks them out of a crowd. You know, some of them are just really intellectual, brilliant, strategic thinkers, these great minds, or just really incredible tactical thinkers. But the majority of them, if you had them in a crowd, you would never see anything particularly, especially physically, extraordinary about most of them.

Most of them look like, you know, they work at an insurance company or in the healthcare field, or they're very, very common or typical-looking individuals and behaving individuals usually because they need to be. They need to disappear. They need to be ghosts. They need to be unidentifiable.

Rachael: I never really thought about that. So you've spent so much time around these people. Do you ever think or fantasize about, "Maybe I could be a spy one day"?

Lisa: Um, I wouldn't say I fantasized about it, but I have had conversations with people at a couple of the agencies about it. They do need people of different ages and different backgrounds and different skill sets and different experience types and who speak different languages, and their needs are always forever evolving.

So I haven't really entertained it with any, uh, realistically myself, and I certainly don't fantasize about it. I will say it's a hard life, and it seems like it's a lonely life for a, not everybody, but for, for a lot of people. Many of them can't talk even with their spouse about what they do, and sometimes that can go on for years and years, sometimes the whole of a marriage.

Um, we have a couple, a married couple, who's on our roster. They're both former CIA. She had a covert identity for two decades, and only three years ago was permitted by the agency to come out and reveal her actual identity. And her husband, though he obviously knew who she truly was, he knew very little about what she was doing in the world.

She's a three-time former CIA station chief, and he too was a covert operative and had a secret identity and could tell her almost nothing. And these people had been married for almost two decades, and, you know, that's a rarity where they did know a bit about what level they were at within the agency and where geographically or at least which part of the world they were in.

But oftentimes, when they're married to a civilian, and so oft- actually, probably the majority of the time, they're single, they stay single, or the marriage breaks down because they just can't share very much. So I have heard numerous stories about how it's, it can be a bit of a lonely existence too.

You know, there's pros and cons like any other job, but it's very gratifying for many of them. Almost all are just so proud of the years that they put in, even if it had a cost.

Sarah: So as this conversation led on, you have these small little snippets of information as your life as a child, but can we get, like, a little bit more of your life as a child that can lead up to this moment?

Lisa: Sure. So I grew up in Southern California, um, and my father was in entertainment. Some of the other people in my family were as well.

And we were a very musical household. We were raised to appreciate most every musical genre. Um, so a lot of creative energy in my house. That said, as much as I had kind of a creative side, if you ask people to describe me today, they probably would tell you I'm a bit rigid and quite a planner. So I kind of have this odd hybrid personality maybe of being part creative, but also, you know, part very straightforward.

And I helped my father a lot. I was on set a lot, TV and film sets. I was, uh, with him a lot in the booth when he was producing live concerts on stage when I was very young. Um, and I wrote for a newspaper, my column in Southern California, I was a teen when I was first given that column, and so my focus for that column was what was going on at that time with teens in Southern California, what issues were teens facing.

And I did that for a few years, uh, before getting into feature films. 

Rachael: Wow. It really sounds like you were a really precocious child. It doesn't sound like you were shy or timid at all to go after what you wanted.

Lisa: I was not shy, and I kind of wish I was. You know, I didn't want to be an actress.

I didn't aspire to be an actress, but there were times that, like my father's crew, they'd need somebody on camera, or they would need a voiceover performer, and so I was kind of expected to be able to, without much notice, just jump in and do things. And so I was kind of raised to just not perform. That's too strong a way of putting it, but the reason I say I wish I was shy is not too long ago, my mother mailed me a box of stuff from when I was a kid, and one of these things had a little cassette tape in it.

And me and a girlfriend, I think we were eight or nine years old, we were playing with our dolls, and we were recording, for some reason, the scenario of us playing with our dolls.

You know, what Ken and Barbie were doing. We were recording our little story that we were playing, acting out with these dolls. And I was just so domineering and overbearing and precocious, and this, the other girl I was playing with, she hardly got to speak. And when she did speak, my Barbie character was telling her, you know, "No, that's not what they, they would do," and telling her she's wrong.

And I had the hardest time listening to my eight or nine-year-old self be that big of a personality and take up that much oxygen in the room. And I don't... I'm not, this isn't a criticism of my parents. I don't blame them for wanting me to get comfortable 

with just expressing myself and being an extrovert and doing stuff on cue.

But I look back now, and I wish I'd been more of a listener. I wish I'd been more generous with people. Um, but I understand what my parents were trying to do. They wanted me to be a confident person when I grew up. They wanted to know that if they weren't here anymore at some point, that I would be okay and be capable of taking care of myself and handling myself in any situation, and they succeeded in that.

But there's something to be said for being quiet and letting the other person have the floor just as much as you've had it.

Sarah: That seems like good advice. So what advice would you give to kids about acquiring their dreams?

Lisa: Uh, be curious. You know, be open to learning all different kinds of things, even if they don't seem obviously related to your dream path.

Listen. Maybe be the last person to speak in the room sometimes. There's nothing wrong with that. Humility. Humility is, I found, the thing that is going to make you the most sneaky powerful you can be. You're gonna surprise people if you are the last person to speak in the room, and you don't come across as, you know, wanting to be the first to speak, and have the answer right away, and know everything, and not need to learn anything 'cause you already know it all, and surprise them.

And all the while, be sensitive to what is it that gives you the biggest charge. Give yourself time and the opportunity to really 

feel it out and say, "What is it that's gonna get me launching out of bed in the morning and really excited about doing whatever it is that I'm doing?" 

That's probably not gonna come...It comes early on for some people. For most people, that doesn't come early on. And so listen, observe, be curious, learn as much as you can, and just wait for those signals from the universe of, "Ooh, that just made me feel really intrigued or interested," and, you know, listen for that beat.

Rachael: Oh, I agree. I think that is really, really powerful advice.

At the end of our show, we always have one final question, and you kind of touched on it earlier. But if you could go back and speak to your 13-year-old self, what would you tell her?

Lisa: That's a great question. I think I would tell myself, kind of going back to the things I said earlier, to just dial down the eagerness a little bit.

I wanna be careful about saying that because, you know, it's important to be eager and ambitious and, and all of those things, but listen more and be aware more and soak things in more than you're putting out there. I think that's what I would've told myself at 13. I liked myself at 13. If I met her today, I would like her. I'd wanna hang out with her fine. But if I had the chance to go back, I think I would definitely wanna be on the receiving end more than on the, you know, outwardly expressive side of things that I was on all the time.

Rachael: Yeah. I get that. You know, this has been such a pleasure, and we have learned so much.

Lisa: It was a pleasure for me, too. Thank you both. It was really nice to meet you both.

(CREDITS)

Rachael: Thanks for listening to Formative, a production of New York Edge. I'm your host, Rachael Gazdick. Our production partner for this series is CitizenRacecar. This episode was produced by Hajar Eldaas, post-production by Alex Brower, original music by Garrett Tiedemann. 

Thanks to the whole team at New York Edge for making this series possible.

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