Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are, believe them.” I would extend that to “when they tell you who they are.” Right off the bat, Silvia Rivera, Managing Director for Vocalo, told me her DiSC leadership styles when she stated, “Leadership is the ability to inspire and motivate a group of people to work towards a common cause with clear objectives.” As the words “inspire” and “influence” came up multiple times in our conversation, it’s safe to say that Silvia is probably a strong Influence. That’s not to say that she’s always known the best way to go about it as she spoke about having to learn how to package ideas for different audiences. Whereas speaking to her team comes naturally to her, getting buy-in from boards and other stakeholders was a learning process. One that she now gets gently teased about, “Coworkers claim that I’m always working on a PowerPoint presentation now.”
Silvia Rivera isn’t the sort of person who people picture when they think of leadership. A proud woman of color and child of immigrants, she not only leverages diversity, she brings diversity in herself. She’s aware of how her various identities affect the way she leads and the decision-making capacity she fills. It’s exhausting work which she sometimes wishes that she could set aside but then adds “Had my voice or presence not been in the room, a very important point might have been missed.” As a young woman, who came from organizations with leaders that didn’t look like the stereotypical, white male of a certain pedigree, in some situations, it led to imposter syndrome. But she was lucky to work at organizations with gender parity and inclusive backgrounds and saw examples of what diversity in leadership could look like.
Developing people is clearly a passion of hers. Before working at Chicago Public Media, Silvia worked at Radio Arte, an initiative that trained hundreds of young adults to create content for community impact. At Vocalo she has continued developing people, talking about creating opportunities, and pointing people in the directions that will benefit them. The very mission of Vocalo sounds like community development as a form of media. As their “About Us” page states “Vocalo Radio is Chicago’s Urban Alternative. We’re non-commercial. Independent. We care about more than celebrity gossip. We care about you. Our city. Our communities. We give voice to those that enrich our city culturally and socially. Our music mix features a variety of local and independent Hip-Hop, R&B, Dance & Indie Rock music. We also regularly feature Chicagoans doing awesome things for our city via: This Is What Chicago Sounds Like.”
She is definitely a change catalyst. Vocalo was a bold direction that Chicago Public Media took, to throw out everything traditional about radio, public or commercial, and be entirely user-created content intended for diverse listeners in Chicago. But it threw the baby out with the bathwater. Executives talk about the lack of clear objectives for the station. Or as Silvia put it in an article, the station was “the equivalent of cat videos.” She was brought in three years into the process to bring focus and reformat the station to authentically reach Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods. Several stakeholders were resistant, including staff. Silvia spoke about being collaborative to a point and then needing to take a more Dominance style and let people know what the change was going to be. She delicately mentioned that some changes had to be made in staffing.
She also acknowledges that change has been a constant. Every year she finds a new challenge that needs to be met. Luckily, she no longer carries the burden that not doing her job effectively would mean loss of employment for her staff.
Jim Collins’s Leadership Level Four practically sounds as if it was written for her. Within moments of our interview, she spoke of the importance of clear objectives and the need for transparency. From its cat video days, in January 2016 Vocalo received $450,000 from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting to “develop and refine a fresh format that can potentially be scaled to other public radio stations.” They’ve also found a home with the audience they were seeking. The demographic make-up of Vocalo’s listeners is 29% Hispanic, 14% African American, and 11% Asian. Their average age was 32. There is still room for growth as the original creator aimed for an audience that was 65% people of color. But it’s important to keep in mind that at its creation, Chicago Public Media had a POC audience of 9%.
Silvia’s diverse background and various identities may have created a situation where she can never become a Level Five Leader. She definitely has the professional will, such as co-founding initiatives like the Latino Public Radio Consortium, a group advocating for Latinos working in or listening to public media. She’s also held onto Vocalo’s original mission of user-created content but set in place programs to help make it successful, such as a series of storyteller workshops. “Now when we do these storytelling workshops, there’s some intentionality behind it, where we say we want to produce stories about people giving back or about some of the themes that we talk about on our shows.”
But it’s because of the importance that her specific voice brings to the halls of the institution of media, such as the Board of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, that she most likely will not be allowed to exhibit personal humility. She is an important role model for her young staff, young listeners, and for organizations like Career Girls where she was interviewed for several YouTube videos as part of their “dream that every girl around the world has access to diverse and accomplished women role models to learn from their experiences and discover their own path to empowerment.” She also presented at the 2013 Conference for Media Reform on the subject Killing Public Media to Save It: Innovation, Advocacy, and Accountability after being the keynote speaker at the 2008 conference. That’s not to say that she is above doing the grunt work. Despite being Managing Director with surely more important things to do, she lists herself on the Vocalo website as the person for the public to contact with questions.
It was difficult to get a sense of what her Goldsmith’s tics could be, especially considering that our hour conversation was cut off at minute 37. But that may have been illuminating in and of itself. Despite several questions intended to elicit specific examples and talk about her staff and former leaders that she’s worked with, she failed to mention anyone by name which to me signaled a failure of proper recognition and to express gratitude. Additionally, attempts to share questions with her in advance to help her prepare for the conversation appear to have fallen on deaf ears, showing a tendency not to listen. Or she’s an exceptionally busy person taking an hour out of her day for a stranger to do a project that in no way impacts her life except for having less time.
Some might say that she has an excessive need to be me. She’s unfailingly direct in her online presence including this choice bit from a fundraising campaign four years ago, “My name is Silvia and I’m a hater.
Hi, I’m Silvia, Managing Director of Vocalo.
I often find myself saying things like:
- I hate the way big media portrays our communities.
- I hate the way that commercial radio stations play the same songs over and over again.
- I hate that big media doesn’t engage our communities on issues that impact them on a day-to-day basis.
- I hate that big media doesn’t celebrate our cultural diversity.
- I’m a hater.
But let me tell you what I do love. Vocalo.
Vocalo is a special type of media. We’re the change we wish to see in our media landscape. We’re a service dedicated to engaging our communities with thoughtful discussions and diverse cultural expressions. We create our programming with you (and us) in mind.” That authenticity means the world to her staff, however. Upon leaving as the morning host to move on to television Molly Adams had this to say about her, “Without Silvia, I would never have been here for so long. She is my model of executive realness. Her patience, problem-solving, and perpetual championing of our cause is everything. An actual rock star. Thank you so so much for encouraging me to take this step.”
She’s clearly incredibly mission-driven. “Stories are powerful. When public radio is at its best, its stories can move you to become a better person, an active community member, and more thoughtful about the world around you.” People have taken notice. In 2007 Silvia won the Chicago Foundation for Women’s Founder Award for her work in radio while she was still at the smaller organization Radio Arte.
Her departing words will stick with me. “As you are going through your career and your life, the most fundamental value is to do the right thing. That can be a different thing in different situations. There won’t always be a one size fits all solution. You need to keep an open mind about what is the right thing in that situation. But always do what feels natural to you. It won’t steer you wrong.”
MarketingMichelle 