Women offer stories of inspiration

By Steve Gribben
Staff Writer

Four USC-affiliated women shared four separate success stories with one common thread--an independent struggle to be somebody, not something--in a forum last Thursday in Annenberg Auditorium.
Superior Court Judge Candace Cooper, television executive Barbara Corday, cancer research scientist Carlotta Glackin and Director of Women's Student Assembly Komisha Owosekun spoke at the "Successful Women, Successful Lives" forum before approximately 50 people.
Candace Cooper, the nation's first black female superior court judge, spoke first on the obstacles and achievements in her life as a woman and a minority.
Exactly thirty years ago, Cooper came to USC as a freshman with a bit of a bad taste in her mouth. She had received her entire elementary and high school education within five miles of the USC campus.
Cooper wanted to go to UCLA but couldn't, because her high school counselor overlooked a class requirement. She decided on USC by default.
Cooper said she came to USC naively optimistic.
"I realized I was in a world without anyone I could relate to," she said. "There were 125 African American students at USC, including those on athletic scholarship."
In fact, Cooper called her undergraduate career at USC a "very unpleasant time" in her life. She said that the school has changed over the years, and today she is happy to see that "it is much more open and diverse."
Cooper said she enjoyed USC Law School much more; she still had no one to relate to as a black women, but the dependence on others helped her situation.
During nominations for a particular position on Law Review, Cooper said she was told of another student who questioned if she had the "innate intelligence" to handle the position in question.
When Cooper graduated, she left for the major law firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, which she said "was yet another cultural wasteland for me."
"There were very few women, very few blacks, and very few Jews," she said.
She said she found it very hard to work 14-to-16-hour days, six or seven days a week, and then realized she didn't like the job.
"I didn't particularly like lawyering, because I prefer conflict with resolution," she said. Cooper said she has found the satisfaction of conflict resolution in her current position as a judge.
Barbara Corday, the chair of cinema-television production program, left home at age 16 to pursue a career in the entertainment field.
After Corday spent time as a Broadway show publicist and taught herself how to write, her career took off.
Corday co-created Cagney and Lacey and wrote for a number of other television programs before she was asked to be an executive for Columbia Pictures. She later became president of Columbia Pictures Television, and then went on to become vice president of prime time television at CBS television.
"I believe in butterflies," she said. "If you're too comfortable you won't do a good job."
Sharing Corday's early-life focus, cancer research scientist Carlotta Glackin has been working in the laboratory since age 11.
Growing up in a family that worked in the entertainment business, Glackin said it was hard just convincing her mother to buy her a chemistry set for Christmas.
As a pre-med major at UCLA, Glackin spent "four miserable years" in a class that was 80 percent male, with a faculty that was also almost entirely male.
In college, she formed a support group with other women in the sciences, and today she said those people are still her best friends.
"We still talk through e-mail and always try to help each other," she said.
Today, Glackin said she feels the workplace has changed for the better.
"I see it's getting better," she said. "Now there are lines at the ladies' room."
Komisha Owosekun, director of the Women's Student Assembly, concentrated mostly on her childhood and her first year at USC.
As a child, she was abused by her mother, who abused drugs. Owosekun attended several schools through her childhood, but she managed to become the first of her family ever to graduate from high school.
She said she has three strikes against her--she is black, female and gay--but still, she said, there is no reason for her not to succeed.
Elizabeth Davenport, the moderator of the forum and the director of the Office for Women's Issues, said the intention of this forum was to help individuals see role models to whom they can aspire.