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As CNN celebrates its 20th anniversary, CNN vice president Gail Evans
looks back on two decades with television's first all-news network.

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n her new best-selling book,
Play Like A Man, Win Like A
Woman, Gail Evans describes
shopping at Neiman Marcus
and being tempted by skirts and jack-
ets in "lovely, vibrant colors." But
looking in the dressing room mirror,
she realizes, "that's not who I am. I'm
the gray pantsuit woman — at least at
this point in my life."
Coming from the highest-ranking
woman executive at CNN, who has
spent 20 years climbing the ladder in a*
corporate culture top-heavy with men,
one could interpret this confession as
her way of saying it's best to play it
safe. But spend some time with Evans,
and you'll find instead the crux of her
personal and professional ethos: "Know
thyself. Go after what you really want."
Indeed, Evans, 58, is all about tak-
ing risks and embracing change.
After graduating with a major in
political science from Bennington
College in Vermont, she began her
career in 1963 on Capitol Hill as a
congressional aide working for three
members of Congress, stuffing
envelopes and writing press releases
and speeches.
Two years later, as the cauldron of
race relations was boiling over in
America, she was helping forge civil
rights policy in the Office of Special
Counsel during President Lyndon
Johnson's administration. Her work
included the creation of the president's
Committee on Equal Employment
Opportunity.
But her career as a politico took a
major detour when she fell in love
with a journalist, Bob Evans, who was
a national correspondent for CBS.
After they married in 1966, she hit
the road with him, and together they
covered some of the most heated civil
rights events of the day.
During those years, they met and
befriended Atlanta-based journalists
Don Farmer and Chris Curle (who also

Jill Jordan Seider is an Atlanta-based
freelance writer.

virtues of a "sequential
career," which many
women have but feel
guilty about. She doesn't
view the period during
the 1970s when she was
raising her three chil-
dren as losing ground
on the mommy track.
Instead, she sees it as a
time of developing
other skills and
strengths, which she
used to her advantage
when she returned to
journalism full time.
Besides driving car-
pools of kids to soccer
and basketball games and
teaching Sunday school
classes at Atlanta's Temple
Sinai, Evans was a busy
community activist. She
volunteered for the
Atlanta Clean City
Commission, chaired the
Georgia Endowment for
i? ft 4
the Humanities, and gave
s
speeches on Middle East
and foreign policy for the
ir -if
Atlanta Jewish
Federation's women's
CNN Executive Vice President Gail Evans: ".fin a big doer. committee.
I guess that's a part of Judaism — don't talk about, do it."
In the living rooms of
politically active women
later married). In 1966, Farmer persuad-
around the city, she led discussions about
ed Gail Evans to take a job as a
state and national politics on Monday
researcher and producer at the Southeast
mornings as part of a Brandeis
bureau of ABC News in Atlanta.
University-sponsored education program.
Evans recalls these as heady times.
For three years she ran a public rela-
"We covered the march in Mississippi
tions firm out of her kitchen, represent-
after [black civil rights activist James]
ing mostly international nonprofit
Meredith was killed. We were all over
groups. She was forging all sorts of rela-
Alabama and Mississippi. So much was
tionships that she maintains to this day.
happening that everyone cared deeply
"Women are great at building rela-
about. . I was proud to have a part in it."
tionships and building each other up,"
But she was also content to walk
she says. Unfortunately, those qualities
away from journalism as soon as she
don't always translate into the work-
became pregnant with her first child.
place, Evans insists. In her experience,
"I never thought about not quitting women don't network as aggressively
my job," she says. "In those days,
as men do, seek out mentors or try as
that's just what women did. I was
hard to make their voices heard. She
happy to begin that part of my life."
says that's as true now as it was when
In her book, which is essentially a
she first entered the working world.
primer for working women who don't
Evans got a leg up at CNN in 1980
feel fulfilled, Evans talks about the
when her old friends Farmer and

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