It’s March and, drawing from our Nasty Woman planner, our focus is on immigration and civil rights. You can’t talk about immigration in America without talking about what it really means to be an American today, so we’re thrilled to sit down with Rebecca Lehrer and Amy S. Choi of The Mash-Up Americans. They share their thoughts with Shrill Society about how to define “mashiness,” female collaboration, and who’s really driving culture in this country.

Shrill Society: First off, what is a Mash-Up American?

Amy S. Choi: We had come up with a couple of specific demographic qualifiers, which we’ll start off with―somebody who is an immigrant or a child of immigrants, so really bridging the two cultures there; somebody who is married or partnered up with someone who is from a different cultural background, religious background, racial background, ethnic background; and I believe the third one was...

Rebecca Lehrer: We always call it culturally curious and that was like city people engaged with the communities around them. But really I think the first two are our primary―what a Mash-Up is. The Mash-Up community includes the culturally curious, but we’re not representing their stories in what we do. So it’s really about, “Are you navigating a culture different than the one your parents are from? Or is your culture at home different than the majority culture? Or are you married to somebody or in a relationship with somebody who is from a different culture than you?” And again, we define culture quite broadly. Culture can be race, religion. There’s also class―wealth as a culture―so there’s lots of things.

You have a podcast, a curated newsletter, and an editorial website where you publish original content. How do you go about translating that idea―I’ve heard Rebecca call it “mashiness”―into your work?

RL: It primarily comes from personal experience in some ways, right? Realizing we didn’t see and we don’t see our stories in media, in the news, in the world. So much about ethnicity and culture in the U.S. is white-dominated or very binary―black and white―and not necessarily exploring all of the messy grey in between that. That’s what we’ve been figuring out from personal experience, when we’re like, “This is something of interest to us. This is something we believe shows our lives. These are the questions that we have about the way the world functions. Or the way we might name our kids or that we might think about rituals when we get married”―all of those things. So it’s about realizing that our point of view has value. Then in some ways with our original content it’s translating that into, “This has value and here’s somebody who might be really good at telling that story because they have a specific experience around that.”

AC: I think that’s right. When Rebecca is saying “mashiness,” she means that quality of being able to hold two truths at one time―to be able to understand how to translate, how to navigate the world with the ability to see more than one path. Understanding the richness and textural backgrounds that everybody is coming from gives us an innate understanding of perspectives that I think, coming from a single or white-dominant culture, you have to learn how to see that way rather than understanding it intrinsically. I think this is what we’re trying to bring to the forefront, whether that is in amplifying stories from the community on the website, curating news through that lens, or interviewing luminaries on our podcast. I think the fourth thing is we bring Mash-Ups to the world through our creative studio, which is really us advising, creating content for, and helping other media brands and other companies internalize this point of view and this lens so they also start to reap the benefits of telling more authentic, richer stories.

Your idea for the Mash-Up Americans started taking shape several years before the 2016 election and your first podcast episode in 2015 actually looked at the mashiness of then presidential candidate Donald Trump amidst his anti-immigration platform. How has the Trump presidency and shifts in Americans’ conversations about race and identity changed your approach to the Mash-Up Americans?

RL: I think that’s the best question. Look, when we heard the world post-racial, we were like, “What?!? That’s not a word. That has no meaning. Stop saying that.” Even during the 2008 election. Still, we were just so thrilled then to have a Mash-Up president―someone whose experiences we knew, navigating multiple cultures, being first generation, being diasporic, being deeply rooted and looking forward, which are all things we think about. This person can wrap their head around our stories―him personally and his family. This is the previous president, obviously. With Obama, one of the things we started realizing in 2013 was Amy and I, in our personal lives, we were going through big important life moments that were like, Amy was having kids, I had gotten married, and we married people different than us. What do we name our kids? What really matters? What rituals matter. So that was really the focus―how can we be a resource? We started early on through our newsletter curating the news through this lens, but in some ways it was much more celebratory. We had this feeling like, “Oh my god. This is a passing moment.” We realized there was space in the market because we’re looking for this and we’re not alone because all of our friends and community are also navigating this and there aren’t really resources to find, even things like having a mashy wedding. I think we really thought, “OMG, we’re gonna be behind. We’re catching up and then the whole world is going to catch up because Barack Obama’s the president. This is clearly the future of America.” Then Donald Trump entered the picture.

AC: Booooooo! We boo every time we say his name.

RL: So he enters the picture in a real way in 2015. We actually thought with that first episode that we would put out that episode and it would be done, that he would already be out of the race. It’s still a story of navigating what it means to be an American―the shifting, the messiness, and the ugliness all mixed up. Then it became clear he would win and it was a serious threat to us, our community, and our livelihood. There was an urgency there that was much more than our personal stories. But even when we tell our personal stories, it is saying, “Hey, we’re here and you can’t erase us despite what you are trying to do. You can’t dehumanize us because our lives matter, our children’s lives matter, our weddings matter, our deaths matter. You cannot dehumanize us because we are here and we’ll tell our stories and we’ll use all the extraordinary resources of technology and our voices to have ourselves heard.” So I think the shift was suddenly we are not just a resource, we are a home, and we are also a cause. What we are doing is for history and for ourselves in the present.

The word that comes up for me is lifeline.

AC: Exactly. And I think as the years have gone by, we have become better at our jobs―which I think everyone hopes to be―but we have also become clearer in our purpose that we are serving our community in a really laser-focused way because we realized what a lifeline we were. We realize how much of a need there is for Mash-Ups to see themselves reflected by women―women of color, children of immigrants―that are completely proud of our stories, gifted at what we do, and owning that. Those actions themselves are validating for our listeners.

We’re big on women working together and you have been collaborating for years. Can you talk about how you came to work together?

AC: We’re friends!

RL: Amy went to high school with Neil [Rebecca’s husband] up in Chicago. So when Neil and I met in 2008, soon thereafter I was at Amy’s 30th birthday. So we’ve been friends for a long time and there were a lot of big things that happened in that time. For you, Amy, there was the economic disruption that shifted a lot of your work in journalism.

AC: I mean part of it was the conversations we were having at those particular junctures. I think I was just recently married. I was getting laid off. Gabe [Amy’s husband] and I were trying to figure out what our next steps were and were considering having a family. Rebecca, you were planning your wedding and there were a lot of questions and challenges with figuring out what it meant to marry someone who wasn’t a Jew. Also, I was 30 and Rebecca was 27, and I think coming to that moment in our careers where we’re realizing that we’re advancing, that we’re honing our focus and truly figuring out what we want to do and how we can do it best. That idea of how do we marshall all of who we are, how do we stop living segmented lives in which we are a person at home and a person at work. All of those things came together with us talking about our mashiness in a really organic way and, as we looked around, all of our friends were having those same sorts of conversations.

RL: There were these moments of change. Amy worked in traditional journalism, in magazines for years, and in 2009 that was exploding, the economy was exploding, so Gabe and Amy took a year to travel around the world. Ultimately when we came together in 2013 I was coming back to LA, leaving my work in New York to be closer to family. There was this rupture in life, which opened up opportunity, where we were suddenly able to be our whole selves not just as Mash-Ups, but whole selves as women, wholes selves as journalists and thinkers, and people who like to bring people together, and makers of events and all these things. We always quote Mindy Kaling but like, “Why not me?”

I’d like to dig into the collaboration bit more because I didn’t know that your collaboration came so organically out of friendship. Beyond the fact that you run a successful business, what keeps you working together? Is there a thing that you have isolated in your relationship that you either cultivate with intention or that you’ve been able to observe that really makes your collaboration work?

AC: We’ve seen each other every six weeks or so for the past year. I think one thing that always worked for us and I think people are often surprised by is when we’re building our agenda, we clearly set aside time to nourish all the different parts of our relationship. We set aside time for us to go and get massages together or for us to have meals together. Or we set aside baby or family time. That’s all friend time. Then there’s business retreat time, which is where we’re cultivating our creative minds or our work minds but doing that exercise together that isn’t us just doing a business meeting. Then there’s the actual work session time which is like us talking about a budget or looking at a client thing or doing a pitch. It’s not that those don’t all bleed together or all feed off of each other but I think the responsibility and attention that we both feel to feeding all of those different parts seems really critical to the success of all three of them.

RL: I also think there is such a deep trust, which is cultivated from friendship but also of a deep understanding of each other’s lives and the complications of being human beings, being women, being moms, being in the bodies that we have that makes us flexible with each other. But we also have clear expectations about what gets done and trust each other in that. The thing that has been interesting to us is that so many people don’t understand. And it’s like, “Clearly you have not been in a real partnership.” Because they don’t understand the depth of what we share, how we share it, and how we support each other. I think that also as moms too or before when I was struggling to become a mom with fertility stuff, it’s important to know that I went to the doctor for two hours a day and I’m like wasted by it. Or when Amy’s going to pilates in the middle of the day, there’s a way in which we cut each other slack because we know it’s so critical in working with other people.

It’s a type of gentleness that you allow for each of you to be your full selves, which is an extraordinary gift to be able to give and receive from a partnership.

AC: We really try to bring that as well to our teams. In the past year, we had 14 or 16 women that we employed in different capacities. We want to honor their boundaries and we also want them to know they can be their whole selves with us in whatever way makes sense for them.

RL: As women and as managers, I do think it’s really important to us to manage that way. But what works for us as partners is that Amy and I have the same investment in this. I don’t just mean financially, I mean as people, as brains, and care, and we have the same work ethic, ambition, and way that we do things. I found this to be a struggle for myself since the first time I had an intern in my early 20s. It’s like, “Yeah, this is all so fun. We’re having a great time.” But I didn’t realize it was like, “Oh, you just think we’re having fun and you don’t realize that I can have fun and also do my work.” So there’s a line there that I think we’re always trying to tread as well about clarity with people who work with us, about expectations, and about what we need. We always want to create a really friendly environment and develop relationships with people but we’re figuring out always where those lines are.

Before we go, what’s next for you? Anything you’d like to share with our audience?

BL: Perfect timing because this month we launch our new season of the podcast and the first person we have is Dr. Leana Wen. She’s so dope and we have a great conversation. We’ll go every other week, we’ll have six episodes including one that’s a live show. Is it accidental that it’s all women? No. But it’s not like we’re doing it “women only,” we’re just doing people we care about their stories. This season again is all about “Mash-Ups to Know,” Mash-Ups who are changing the world. And there’s a way in which we’ve come to embrace in the last year or so, “Oh, Mash-Ups are the culture! It’s not marginal, we’re the cutting edge of culture. You’ll all be here, so we’ll see you later when you catch up.”

Can’t get enough? Read our previous interview with Jen Zeano of Jen Zeano Designs about her Latina Power shirt, working with formerly detained youth, and her campaign to save Netflix’s Latinx family sitcom.