Our guest this week is the extraordinary Tori Murden McClure, an athlete, adventurer, chaplain, lawyer, and university president. Tori made history in 1999 as the first woman and the first American to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Her impressive achievements don't stop there; she was also the first woman and American to ski to the geographic South Pole and the first woman to climb the Lewis Nunatak in the Antarctic. As if that weren’t enough, she also knew Muhammad Ali personally, adding yet another fascinating layer to her incredible story.
Tori's journey reflects her commitment to resilience and compassion, shaped by her experiences at Smith College and Harvard Divinity School, where she learned about the importance of empathy across cultures and religions. Her work with marginalized populations, including running a shelter for homeless women, led her to pursue a law degree to advocate for change. But perhaps more notable are her personal challenges, including growing up with a brother who has developmental disabilities. It's these which have fueled her passion for social justice and healing.
A pivotal influence in her life was Muhammad Ali, whose compassion inspired Tori to overcome her own struggles. He encouraged her to finish what she started, leading to her successful second attempt at rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. But there were other lesser known figures from a boy at school who stood up for her brother to a teacher who taught her persistence who've also played a huge role in the values she holds closely even today.
Join us as we explore Tori's incredible story, her insights on compassion, and her mission to inspire others to rise above their challenges. This is a conversation filled with wisdom and inspiration that you won't want to miss.
Fiona
I am massively excited to speak to Tori Murden McClure, and the Murden does have significance, which I'll come back to. But Tori, your life achievements are quite incredible. You were the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic. Now you need to correct me, if I get any of this wrong, you were the first woman to ski solo across the South Pole.
Tori Murden McClure
Yeah, it was not solo. On that trip, there was another woman and other Americans. So we were the first women and first Americans to travel to Atlanta pole.
Fiona
Which is just incredible. And there have been many other things, including your academic career. Well, I mean academic career, you're president of Spaulding University, where I believe you did a master's as well, but you also have, you're a distinguished alumni honors from the Harvard Divinity School and, a law degree from University of Louisville as well. How? How have you done all this?
Tori Murden McClure
Living a long life matters. Yeah, I, I did my undergraduate degree at Smith College. And at Smith they, you know, it's a wonderful all women's college, and they teach you that women can do anything, as long as they're willing to do their homework. And then from there, I went to divinity school at Harvard, and I thought I was going to go into the ordained ministry, but Harvard was the worst place to go. We on the planet, if that was what your ambition was. The joke at the time was the Harvard cancels the Divinity, and the Divinity cancels the Harvard, and you end up in an existential void. But what was good about it is it sort of taught you a grounding in all of the world's religions and their overlaps and commonalities. And you know where humans made this thing up and where humans made that thing up. And so it played a role in Spaulding becoming a compassionate University. Because what joins each of sort of the philosophical and religious traditions are variations of the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or in the charter for the compassionate, dethrone yourself from the center of your world and place another there. And each of the world's religions basically calls you to be compassionate to others, and that's the one common thread that appears in virtually each of the major world religions. And how I got onto that, I don't know, but there you are, Divinity School, and then I went to law school in between, I ran a shelter for homeless women, and recognized that we were we had legal policies that were making women homeless that needed to be changed. So went to law school, and then, thanks, came to came to work at Spaulding, and wanted to write a book about rowing my boat across the ocean. And so I did a Master's in Fine Arts and writing to get a kick in the seat of the pants to finish my book. And then a few years later, some wonderful artistic folks came to my office and said, Hey, we would like to get the rights to your book to write a musical. And I was like, no, like, if you can spend two and a half months alone in a rowboat, you're an introvert. I didn't want anything to do with the musical. No. Thank you very much. Goodbye. But they were so earnest and so genuine. Dawn Landis, one of the writers, pulled a guitar out, sang two songs that were really smart and really on target. And I thought, “What the heck it's a musical about a woman alone in a rowboat. It's going nowhere. I need not worry. I will never see these people again.” I said, yes, they went back to New York, they sent me a box of cookies. So my husband tells everyone who will listen, I sold the rights to my book for a box of cookies, but then they did it, and it's charming and it's wonderful, and it's a beautiful show that was supposed to premiere in the summer of 2020 but got cancelled because of Covid. They ended up recording it on Audible with the cast that they had already chosen. And so it was, I think it's the first musical to premiere on the audible format, and it's called row.
Fiona
Oh, that's amazing, absolutely amazing, and far better than anyone who listens to either of my books on audible. Well, the second one, I didn't even narrate myself, because I hated the experience. So much the first time.
Tori Murden McClure
Well, my book, My books are not audible, but the musical based on my book is on audible.
Fiona
But to go back, I mean, that's fascinating, and there's just so much that I could talk about with you, and I'm particularly excited about supporting women and the part you've gone through that has sort of opened your eyes and highlighted opportunities for women and also disadvantages for women. And what you've done to try and counter that, if we go back to the religion piece as well, I think one thing that I noticed was you were involved in the setup of the Muhammad Ali center? And before we'd spoken, I was interested, because Muhammad Ali was Muslim. I believe you're Christian by faith background, and so I was, I was curious about that, and it makes more sense to me now you've explained the education at Harvard Divinity School, where you had this immerse, immersive experience, by the sounds of things into all world religion. And something that I've always been massively passionate about is I'm a psychologist, and I believe in empathy, and I believe in pro sociality. And my stepmoms a Christian who also has beliefs in Buddhism and she would say to me, if Fiona, you take the scientific route, I take the spiritual route, but we come to the same place. But the thing that I've always said about religion is all religions, and this is from a naive perspective. I've said they speak to the same thing, which is that as humans, we are naturally empathic, and that's what we should be celebrating and highlighting as a species. I'm not even going to go down what's going on in the world at the moment, because I just think you will agree with me that's absolutely horrendous. And it's not, it's not the focus of what we're talking about today. It's very easy, once you start talking about that, to not talk about anything else
Tori Murden McClure
Yeah, but, you know, I think if I don't want to date, date your your message, because they're always unrest and challenges and man, man's inhumanity to man, or humanity's inhumanity to humanity. But the, you know, I'm often asked the question, Why? Why? Why did you roll boat across the ocean? And I bristle against the question, because you don't ask somebody why you did something if you agree with what it was they were doing, like, Doctor, why do you want to cure cancer? It would just not come up. But there's a certain absurdity to some of the things I have done, like rolling a boat, but it's really grounded in the notion of, you know, the best of who I am comes from having grown up with a brother with developmentally just developmental disabilities. The worst of who I am comes from growing up with a brother who has developmental disabilities, and that sense of not being able to make the world fair or just or tolerant or empathetic or compassionate, and whether it was my brother or folks who don't have housing or different marginalized populations with whom I've worked, I always feel a little helpless, like I should be bigger and smarter and stronger and faster to be able to take care of whatever it was I'm trying to improve on. And then I get very angry and upset and distressed, and I have to leave civilization for a while to get over it and to sort of rebuild my sense of self-esteem. And then I come back and I'm ready to charge on and try again. And it's my own sort of cure for burnout. This is kind of leaving civilization and climbing a mountain or skiing across a cotton head or rowing across an ocean. And it wasn't until I was in the middle of my second ultimately successful journey, because my first attempt to row across the ocean ended with me getting pummelled by a hurricane. But in that second trip, I was like, Wait a minute. I can row to the moon. I will still just be a human being. And that sense of being limited and that our lives are limited, and what makes life bearable is love and friendship. So I I've often said when I talk to teenagers, I rode across the ocean because I was stupid. Most women do not need to row 3000 miles to figure out that love and friendship are good things. I was a slow learner.
Fiona
Wow, that's so interesting. It's so interesting where that drive to do it comes from. And I think, like you say, people won't ask, why do you go about curing cancer? But I do think because it is not something that many people would even consider doing so many things that are adventurous. I like, I love, you know, I was looking for people to travel around the world with, it's not a comparison you've done, and people kept getting busy or getting boyfriends or whatever. And I said, I'll do it on my own. So, I went around the world on my own, and that was hard. And I've done a lot of other exploratory things that some people look at again, not on the scale that you have, and they're like, why would you do that? But I think rowing across the Atlantic solo is one that I look at, and I think, Wow. I really think wow. Because even as someone who's adventurous and someone who likes their own space as well and their own time, to think it's to me, it's mind blowing, and maybe that is just my fear of the size of the waves that you would encounter, or the fact that you might be in the middle of nowhere and your boat gets capsized and you can't right it again, or all those myriad things that could go wrong.
Tori Murden McClure
But was there that fear because you'd been humbled in a hurricane, which is, is one of my worst fears in that, when I sort of think through that kind of scenario, and yet, he went and did it again, yeah,and, and in, in my book, and in the in the show, in the play about my book, that this sort of challenging moment is like I rode 3000 miles on my first attempt, I lost communications very early, so for 78 days with no contact with anyone on land. And so there's this very introspective, cerebral kind of experience. And then I then I almost get killed in this hurricane. I wait a few days, I set up my distress beacon. I was picked up by a container ship named The Independent Spirit. You can't make that up.
Fiona
Oh, wow.
Tori Murden McClure
And then I returned to Kentucky, not the place where most ocean rowers hang out. Went to work for Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali was the most compassionate human being I have ever met, and he didn't care what color you were. He had a real soft spot for people who were damaged or people who were broken. And at that point in my life, I was pretty damaged and a little bit broken. And he didn't actually say, Hey kids, you got to get out. But every fiber of his being said, Hey kid, you've got to get up. But he knew where I was, because he himself had been knocked down, and he himself had been sort of pummelled by the world, and in his example, I began to sort of get my feet back under me. And when he knew I was ready, he said, Tori, you don't want to go through life as the woman who almost rode across the ocean. And he was right. So I went back second time though. I went the easy way, a very different part of the instead of throwing the North Atlantic west to east, I rode the Mid Atlantic east to west, a much easier proposition, and I was ultimately successful. But the challenge in my book, and the challenge in the play is explaining why you would go back. I mean, I It wasn't about being the first. It was really about trying to finish something that I had started. And I think Muhammad was right. I didn't want to go through life as this the woman who almost did it. And I think so many, and I spend my career with young people, and I think too many adults don't do what they say they're going to do, and that that leads to disappointment and broken promises. And I didn't want to be that person.
Fiona
Well, I think it's amazing, and I think it's incredible that you had literally Muhammad Ali advising and supporting you in that, and it sounds so compassionate the way he went about doing that. And interestingly, I actually write about Muhammad Ali in my second book, so I'll send a copy of my second book so you can have a look. But I think you're absolutely right. Too many adults don't do what they say they're going to do. I absolutely get what you're saying there. And of course, you're with young people all the time, right?
Tori Murden McClure
An institution I serve as president is Spalding university, but our, one of our great expertise, is in mental health, and I was not raised Catholic. Spalding University is by traditional a Catholic institution. And so they the first non Catholic to leave Spalding but it was founded by an order of sisters. And after the American Civil War, they noticed that people were coming back damaged from battle, and they began Mental Health Nursing, and so we have a wonderful school of clinical psychology, we've got a school of social work, we've got clinical mental health counseling, we've got a real expertise in mental health, but we're a small, under resourced institution in Louisville, Kentucky, where there's been a lot of mayhem lately, and that Covid, people are suddenly going, oh, there's a mental health crisis in the United States. Well, surprise, there's been one for a while. We're just recognizing it, and we've got to go about it differently. And I myself have really suffered this summer. Doesn't matter why we all have ups and downs in our lives, but I have, I continue to be challenged in a way that I'm now 60. My mother has passed away. My father is not long behind her. He he's still living, but my brother is intellectually disabled because my mother beat him, and she beat us routinely, and I've never really come to terms with that, other than I was always terrified of my mother up until, up until the day she died and I went to say goodbye, and only in that sort of final day could I really, truly see past our history and see her as a human being, and sort of recognize her humanity and recognize her brokenness and that she had a serious mental health issue and never got assistance, and kind of passed on some of the pain to her children. But it was, it was Row, the musical, that actually forced me to come to terms with that element in my child, because I don't really, I don't write about that in the book, not so clearly, anyway. And as they were casting an actor to play my brother, Lamar, they chose a deaf actor, because my brother's not completely deaf, but pretty deaf, and they wanted to be really authentic about how they cast him as I watched John McGinty, okay, imagine a deaf actor in a musical. He was magnificent, but the way he verbalized was so similar to how my brother verbalized things. I realized he had language before the brain damage occurred. And I asked my father, my earliest memory is of the episode where my mother really did some serious harm to my brother. And I asked my father, is my is this memory real? Because you know very well, we have memories that might not really be true and and I couldn't begin to speak the words until I confirmed the story. And my father, his answer was very unsatisfying, because I went through this whole sort of tearful story, and is this what happened? And he just said, Yes. And I was like, Could you say more about that? But all people, and I don't know anyone who hasn't been through something, and there is nothing special about my own challenges and things about which I need to heal, or things from which I need to heal, I'm dodging the word trauma, because I think it's overused, certainly in academic circles right now, and I'd rather us focus on healing that sense of, can we heal from whatever it is? And I think the where I am in the world, all of the advantages I have gained through study and privilege and whatever else there might be that I keep coming around to this sort of childhood pain. And if I, as someone who is grounded and strong, can own that pain, will it open the door for others who have many similar experiences to find their path toward healing? And I, you know, keep, sort of, it keeps hitting me and like, Okay, I'm supposed to do something with this. Yeah,
Fiona
Wow, that is huge. And so you say you're supposed to do something with it. Now, you've done a huge amount in your life, I would say, not just from the accomplishments academically or through writing or through your outdoor adventure, which really plays down the significance of it, but you've done an awful lot in terms of giving back and helping other people. So how would you see this hitting you in the face now, I mean, what more is there? What do you feel that you're not doing that you could be doing?
Tori Murden McClure
You know, I think experiences like today, this podcast, I'm still experimenting with how to tell those pieces of my story in a way that is not self serving or seeking attention, but trying to leave space for all of us are damaged. All of us are limited. All of us have a. And things we need to put behind us, and sometimes those things we think are long gone and long past will reappear. And what is it we're supposed to learn? And for me today, I think I'm supposed to learn to figure out how to express it and how to do it in a way that's not self serving, but in a way that that, I guess it says we're all we're all called to try to lift each other up.
Fiona
I can't imagine you doing anything self serving, but I understand what you're saying. And I think if I then go to my world, where I've worked with a lot of female business leaders and male business leaders have also been of this mindset of, I don't feel it's right to tell my story, or because it looks like I'm drawing attention to myself, or I don't feel like, you know, I don't want to say, well, look at what I've done. And it's that fine line, which is very significant, where someone's saying something for a self serving purpose, and someone is saying it to actually serve others. And I think as a listener, it's very easy to tell the difference, and you probably would say the same. You'd say, I've listened to this person or that person, and I mean Muhammad Ali, for example, is someone that you've known first hand, and but from the person telling the story, there can be almost a fear of, I do not want to be that person. I do not want to be going, “Hey, look at me, and look what I went through.” And oh, it has all I can say is that I can't imagine you ever, ever coming across that way without a massive personality change. But you know, well,
Tori Murden McClure
Thank you for that, you know. And I, as you were speaking, I was trying to imagine how successful Muhammad Ali could be if Muhammad Ali had been born female. You know, he did have an ego as big as the Himalayan Mountains. I mean, he was like, I'm so pretty. And he was but the difference is, we've all met people with huge egos. With Muhammad Ali, you know, he did think he was the greatest thing on the planet. But, gosh, look at you. You're great because you're with me. I mean that he wasn't, I'm great. You are lowly. It was, I'm great. And I can, you know, I, I'm gonna listen to this too, building, um, with me and, and that subtle difference. And, you know, we, we've all met celebrities and and you guys, I studied Muhammad's life. One of the most fascinating things was as, he just flat made stuff up and and he created this myth. But unlike many celebrities, he grew to fit the myth. You know, he, you know, one of my favorite photo spreads is a young Muhammad Ali training in the swimming pool because he told Life magazine, he goes, I do all my training in the swimming pool. Muhammad couldn't swim, not really, you know, like a butterfly sink, like a rock. But so there's gorgeous pictures of Muhammad Ali training in the swimming pool, all in the shallow end and and they're pretty and then there's this other wonderful picture that I adore, of Muhammad Ali, you know, looking very muscular and fit, chopping wood. And behind him is this whole wood pile, clearly cut with a chainsaw.
Fiona
I love that. I love it. And again, to your point, it's that subtle difference and yet, or nuanced maybe difference, but massive. It's like, Well, maybe he was self serving for some time, but ultimately it was about not just him.
Tori Murden McClure
Yeah, and even, and even in his self serving. Well, you know, attention getting period. He, you know, boxers needed to get attention to make money. It was not a period where people just, I mean, there's a lot of self promotion that had to happen and, and he was a brilliant, brilliant person at that. But given his own devices, he'd hang out with the kids on the street corner and do magic tricks. So he always had that gentleness about him, and always had, I think one of the things that I most admired about him is he, particularly in his later years, he needed to be taken care of, and yet he still took care of others. And it's just a magical thing when you meet those people who can be vulnerable and can lift you up at the same time.
Fiona
And when you said the word vulnerable there, I was wondering whether you were going to see vulnerable to. What fame and notoriety gives you, which I think in and of itself, can blind you to, remaining humble, remaining giving all those sorts of things. It's very, very hard, but we're veering off you. But I mean, I love it. It's fantastic. So I'm even more fascinated now since starting this conversation of how you came about doing the things that you've done, because clearly your mother wasn't a positive, nurturing role model for you, it sounds like your dad was frank and down the line. I don't know that. We can't make that assumption from one word answer to one thing you've said. But where did your desire to go to, for example, Smith come from?
Tori Murden McClure
And yeah, and I was asked yesterday about one of the characters in who has sort of a cameo in the musical. And it was a is a gentleman named Eric fee, and the musical was about to be produced at the Williamstown Theater Festival, which happened in the summer of 2021 very prestigious regional theater in the United States. And there was a song about Eric fee, and a friend of mine here at Spaulding University said, Well, what's Eric fee's real name? And I was like, Eric fee, and she said, Does Eric fee know he's part of a musical? And I'm like, maybe not. Maybe I should tell him. But there's this passage in my book which tells a story about my brother and I, we moved a lot as we were growing up, and the backstory that's not in my book is my father was bisexual and always had romantic affairs outside the home, and I hope was happier away from home than he was in home, but, but he was a teacher, and people would learn about his background, and we would have to Move and so we were on it. We were in a new place, in a new town, and you know, always as the New Kids on the Block, you've got to go through a certain amount of teasing and hazing. And we I was playing basketball, which I liked to do, and on a new playground, trying to make new friends. And in the peripheral vision, I watch a boy pick up a rock and throw it at my brother, Lamar, and before he could pick up the second rock, I had tackled him. And if it were a cartoon, there would have been fists and feets and clouds of dust, and two people came and pulled us apart, Eric fee and a guy named Dale Ellis, and they pulled us apart, and they hauled the boy, sort of across the parking lot and kind of interrogated him, and then they took him to my brother Lamar, and made him apologize. I had never seen anything like it, and I was I was just dumbfounded. And then Eric called all the kids on the playground into a circle and said, No one shall tease or taunt Lamar because he can't take care of himself. And if anyone does, Eric was going to settle the score. And then somebody asked about me, and he said, I think she could take care of herself. But that moment of watching someone who was one of the best students in our cohort, one of the best athletes in our cohort, have the ability he would have been about 12 at the time, have the ability to create peace and justice out of thin air. And that made me want to be a scholar athlete, because that's what I saw in Eric. He was a scholar, he was an athlete, and he got to make the rules on the playground. And so I think so much of my life has been trying to reach a place where I got to make the rules on the playground.
Fiona
This was yesterday, someone asked you if you told Eric about him
Tori Murden McClure
And I told the story of I hadn't seen him since, you know, I was probably 14, and I invited him to come see the musical. And I was saying that in my head, Eric C would have been six foot six, with the body of a Greek god, you know, and in walks a 60 year old guy who was probably a little shorter than I am. It's still very good looking, but I'm married, and there's Eric and, but there was this sort of, you know, flutter of my heart of, I'm going to see Eric three and, yeah, it was, it was fun.
Fiona
That's incredible. And so he understands that impact he's had on you. Hopefully. I just think that's so powerful. There's a footballer in the UK who reconnects with the teacher he thought had passed away. So the teacher quick comes up behind him and it's caught on camera, and he turns around his face, he looks at this teacher with just love or just it is such an emotional clip.
Tori Murden McClure
Yeah, finishing my successful row. I'm rowing into the harbor in Guadeloupe. It, and another character my book, high school history teacher, Helen Longley, is on the vessel with all the press and the media and some friends of mine, and she's sort of standing in the background, and I'm looking up and smiling and waving, and I'm like, is that, you know? And I'm looking up and smiling and waving, and I'm like, is that? And then I realized it's, it's, it's Helen Longley, my high school history teacher, and it was this sense of WoW, because that's the woman who taught me to do my homework, you know, and and for wherever we learn those lessons, to do the work we remember, yeah,
Fiona
I think we do and I but I still think it's incredibly moving to hear, but it's also significant that they may not be our parents, or they may be a friend, a peer. So that's a boy who was in your year who made you stop and think this is how we do things, or a history teacher who it sounds like you didn't you hadn't seen for a long time. You didn't know she was going to be there, but she still had your back, and she clearly she had been behind you all the way. And there's that sense I think we get from those people. Those are the people that touch our lives and change our lives, particularly if you've had really, like whatever you want to say about your background, it is not easy. It wasn't,
Tori Murden McClure
I don't know anyone who really has it easy. No, and
Fiona
I would agree with you on that point, but I think there are degrees, and
Tori Murden McClure
I think it's and then some of us choose extra urm.
Fiona
Oh, yeah, it just add some, but it's interesting. I think sometimes people with the most, and I'm not going to use the word either, because you didn't want to the most difficult or challenging periods when they're growing up, can do the most significant things. And sometimes that comes out of not actually a settled contentment that you would see in someone who's had a happier upbringing.
Tori Murden McClure
Right? I love talking to young children, you know, like elementary school, and I say, raise your hands if something bad has ever happened to you, you know. And half the half the class puts up a hand, and I say for you, and then good and I talk about, look, there is nothing more tragic than someone who makes it to, I don't know, their mid 20s or early 30s, when the first bad thing happens to them and it destroys their lives because they haven't learned how to bounce, they haven't learned how to recover. They haven't learned any resilience or persistence. And so good for you for having bad things happen to you. And they all sit there, go,
Fiona
I don’t understand? I've got 10 year old, who's I've got 16 year old at the 10 year old, and we've moved to the States in July. So it just resonates this story you're saying about changing schools and being somewhere different. And my youngest is at elementary school, and she's never been in a class with boys before. She's always been around boys, very noisy. It's like, well, but we keep hearing these little stories. But I also think it's really good for her to be in the mix and getting on with it, yeah,
Tori Murden McClure
And boys are rewarded for being noisy, and girls are not.
Fiona
Yeah, there's Oh, there's too many things like that. I read a piece of research yesterday that said that female CEOs are more likely to underpay their female direct reports the male CEOs. That's like, no, please, come on anyway. That's a whole other topic. So
Tori Murden McClure
I think we know, we love to identify our by our biases, and, you know, beat ourselves up for our, you know, short sightedness and and years ago, I, you know, took a battery of tests on, you know, on biases that aren't recognized. And I realized I'm sexist, and it was horrifying. You know, that sense of, you know, the earth conditions us to think that we are somehow less than and you take it in with the water and, and you really have to fight against it. And it's sort of totally an unconscious bias. And I'm and everybody has it. But what's this about? Supposed to have this and, and that sense of, I forgive in confidence in men more quickly than I forgive in confidence in women. I I do expect more from my female colleagues and it's good to know that.
Fiona
Well, it's massive to be able to recognize it as well. But I think about this a lot, because 99 work depends on which piece of. Research you look at, but let's go with the 99% of our conscious our activity, mental activity, is unconscious, so we're being fed all of this information that we aren't able to judge rationally, because our attention is elsewhere, and that information is coming to us through societal norms that have been in place for centuries, and whilst they've changed over those centuries, they haven't changed to the degree that actually most people would say they wanted them to change. And this is something I often see, and again, going down the wrong route. But with diversity, equity and inclusion is is there's a difference between people saying, we stand for this. And there's a lot of men, for example, say we believe in this, but then actually acting on it is a totally different thing. And that's not because they don't believe in it. It's not because they're lying, but it's because it's hard, because it's going against how we've been conditioned to operate and think,
Tori Murden McClure
yeah, and, and I have very close colleagues who has, I mean, far more challenging backgrounds than my own, you know, who aren't White in America. And, you know, we've in academia, we love to talk about allyship and all these other little buzzwords. But I had a dear friend say, you're either with me or you're the enemy. And then I'm like, there's some truth to that. And at that, though, at those moments when we're, we're, we're charged to sort of give up our own comfort or our own sense of certainty. Um, that's when, that's when the rubber meets the road and they know whether they can count on us.
Fiona
Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating, interesting on so many levels. I would love to talk to you about that too, but I want to talk to you about you a bit more. In terms of your academic background. You've not limited yourself to one areas. You've got law, you've got divinity. There's writing, I believe there's some psychology in there as well. How do you feel that comes together. And do you feel that that sits well in your own narrative, in your own head? Do you feel that's part of who you are? Is this complexity of pieces that come together?
Tori Murden McClure
Yeah, and I think one of the arms we do in higher education is we sort of force people into these little slivers of intellectual spaces and say, you will be this, and that this is honorable, but this is not and and it's ridiculous. And there is in certainly the United States, a shallow sophistication that prides itself on clean hands, and that sense of, if you use your hands to make a living, somehow this is less than and bad, which is, you know why physicians were were not respected until the current century, because they got, they got their hands dirty, and. They went into places that were unclean and sketchy. Um, we're quickly approaching a time where if you don't use your hands to make a living, you can be replaced by AI. And so I like being in an institution where we train nurses and teachers and social workers and folks who have both head, hand and heart, because they'll be able to make a living in the coming age. And you know, your radiologist might read your X ray in Mumbai, but the nurse with the morphine is going to be beside your bed.
Fiona
I love that, and I'm totally with you on that. And I get frustrated from my own background in psychology that there can be a tendency even within psychology, we keep academic separate from applied, and try and keep it to purist and know intellectual
Tori Murden McClure
Ones are good, and the ones who actually work with the masses, well, they're pedestrian. And Oh, absolutely, I was talking to a colleague today, and they're looking for a president of another institution that you wanted to ask if I was interested in I said, No, thank you. But they have two fantastic candidates, and one candidate only has a bachelor's degree, but is brilliant and dynamic and has raised $100 million already for this organization. And there's this other person with wonderful credentials, who's kind of quiet and mousy, but and they're split. I'm like, I saw a student not so long ago with a T shirt that says another day when I didn't use my algebra. But how? How often as President, do I have to dust off my academic credentials to do my job? It's about human beings interacting. And yeah, I need a provost, the head of the academic programs. They need to have some academic they better have a doctorate and earn doctorate. But a president, if you're smart, you leave the faculty alone like they could really, they can really urge you. So you leave them alone, do their own thing, and you let the provost manage that while you're doing everything else. So hire the person who can do the job, and forget about what letters they have behind their name.
Fiona
Yeah, I'm so passionate about that. And I, interestingly, I've worked with the university in the UK quite closely, and their vice chancellor, and he, which is the equivalent to your role, and he's very passionate about doing things in a different way and breaking down some of the academic silos. But there's also the point that actually, at the end of the day, he's a leader, and he's very similar in what he needs to do to the CEOs I work with in business, right? Because there does need to be a commerciality. There does need to be a focus on multiple different things and strategy, short term, long term, all those factors that come into play. And I'm also very, very passionate having assessed leaders over the years that I've assessed people who've been to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, MIT, but they're not necessarily as good as the person who left school when you could leave school at 16 in the UK, who is more commercially savvy, who engages and motivates people more effectively, who knows what they don't know. So I think, to your point, it's looking at the whole person and saying, what, what are we getting here, and what do we need, and the need for prestige?
Fiona
Yeah, yes, it's just silly. Yeah, I know. I agree with you. I totally agree with you, and I write about that in my second book. So what are you most proud of? That isn't a question I put to you before we met, so I have just thrown that out there. And it might not be something that you know the answer to, or want an answer or thought about.
Tori Murden McClure
I'm, I am very, you know, I'm kind of finishing my first 25 years at Spalding, if we count some time as a trustee and some time as a vice president, and I am in my 14th year as president. And it's a it's a hard job. It's a really hard job, because the institution does not have a lot of resources, but we serve a student body that really needs our help and and even if Spalding were to close tomorrow, I would still be proud of the work I did here in the students we serve. I don't want that to happen, but that sense of fighting the good fight with colleagues that are doing the same and looking out for each other. I hope all the good I've done in the world will be things that no one talks about. Will be the students that I touched not knowing it, and the people that I lifted up not paying attention to doing that. That's yeah. That's when I brought up. And this sounds absurd, but the other thing that came to mind when you asked that question, there's a song in the musical row called drowning, and it is the just encapsulation of, it's like a two minute and 32nd encapsulation of a serious mental health crisis, and it happens right in the at that sort of middle of the show. And the Tory character has been through the hurricane, and the audience isn't really sure if she's still in the storm on the ocean, or if she's been rescued. It's kind of there. And the Tory character sings this song about drowning, and it is, you know, sort of ball emotions and a downward spiral. And it's so powerfully done. The first time I heard that song, thank goodness I was alone and in my own basement at home, and, you know, crying, and I immediately called Dawn Landis, who wrote that piece of music, to say, are you okay? Because the power of that suggest into she had been she wasn't just imagining that space. And it's weird to think that. I'm proud of that, but that sense of having a story told about me that allows people to really feel all the feelings without embarrassment or shame and and to see. Be this character rise again. And at one point, it was a two act show, and it would have been a disaster, because, you know, there'd be drowning, and then there would be intermission, and no one would come back, because this is not going well. And Adley, it's a one act show. And so you see Tori go all the way to the bottom and then climb all the way back up. And at the end, you know, she marries Mac can lose happily ever after. And so far, that's all played out perfectly.
Fiona
Yeah, wow. Two things really interesting. There is the first, you saying the lives that you've touched that may not know you've touched them. And there's a huge amount of humility in that. There's also quite a feminine thing would you say? Because I think women, there are so many women throughout history who have done incredible things who we just don't hear about until maybe they're excavated later on.
Tori Murden McClure
Oh, look at what Hildegard did. Yeah, and, and there is very much, and I don't bristle about it at all. Since if I were a man, I would have gotten far more attention for the things I have accomplished, and I kind of like my life and any more fame, I wouldn't know what to do with and so I'm probably where I need to be, but I see men who have been far more willing to pound their chests and brag and and I do think it is I have learned that I have been taught not to do that. And women, when I am really stepped on and put down, it is always under the woman. And it is always kind of in that sense of thou shalt conform. You know, I have less to I have, I have less the boundaries I have colored outside the lines, and I am being scolded back to behave myself. And donation hurts when it happens, because we are slowing each other down.
Fiona
Yeah, I know. I mean, just even hearing that you saw it made me cringe. I just, I just shudder. It's horrible and it's scary, because I imagine a lot of that is unconscious as well, but it's I had.
Tori Murden McClure
I made that point to a friend not so long ago, and she goes, Yeah, any way you slice it, women are mothers, and we want our children to be safe. So we want our children to color inside the lines. We don't want our children to, you know, be non conformist, because we think that's going to cause them pain and and when I look at my own life, my non conformity rather than necessarily creating more freedom for other women, it's sort of asking them to do more, and that that is painful. So I don't, I think, I think there's a element of that that is serving society. There's an element of that that's holding us back.
Fiona
Fascinating. There's something else I talk about in my book, is how it is difficult when a female role models behaviors that are above and beyond what other females will necessarily consider within not even their comfort zone. And most women would look and say, Well, that just takes me straight into that injury zone. It it's not even uncomfortable. I'm not going there.
Tori Murden McClure
I put up more things in the same moment would have climbed. So the injury zone is real,
yeah, but, but, you know, your tolerance is different.
Fiona
I think owning that and speaking to that is massively important, because I do think it's incredibly empowering and energizing and inspiring for other women. What you've done, there can always be that other side of I could never do that. Therefore I am less. But by owning that and saying this isn't what all women necessarily will do that again, we talked about subtleties and nuances earlier. I think that subtlety shifts it quite dramatically and gives someone the empowerment, rather than the disempowerment from learning about your story, right?
Tori Murden McClure
And one of the things I really admire about the musical and the work done by Don Landis and Daniel Goldstein, I don't think I've told you their names, is that they've really pulled the universal themes out of an unusual story, but it is in some ways, the hero's journey, but told from. Female perspective, because the hero's journey is not a woman's story, and in fact, we usually get scolded for telling it, and it is a it is a classically male tale, and usually a white male tale, and usually a white male with some money tale. And when women take on that role, we get into trouble, unless we can say, God made me do it, or I did it to save my children, or some, some sort of traditional female past, and I was looking to write the hero's journey from a female perspective. I wrote my book. It's hero's journey, hero's journey, hero's journey. At the very end, it turns into a love story. And as the book was coming out, I'm like, oh my goodness, I sold out. I gave into peer pressure, and somehow I turned my hero's journey into a love story. And then I wouldn't watch the video of me getting out of the boat, literally into the arms of Mack McClure. It was a love story. It's just how it happened. I didn't sell out, but women are supposed to write love stories, and men are supposed to write stories about their achievements in the world. And if we, if, if we cross those boundaries, we are violating some damboom, and I wish we could change,
Fiona
But I actually think writing both of those things into the same story is incredibly powerful, because you have got the female perspective. You're not saying I am a female who does male things. You're saying I am a female. I have female needs. I want to be in love, yeah, but that doesn't mean that I can't go and row across the Atlantic.
Tori Murden McClure
Yeah. It's sort of, I love to talk about Aristotle versus versus Nietzsche. So Aristotle nothing in excess, the golden mean, you know. And Nietzsche is like, Uber, be good at one thing, and, and if you're too good at one thing, somebody to cut your head off. So you want to do both. You want to be mellow and even a lot of the time. And then when you really want to, they'll be Nietzsche for a while, or, or I love to talk about Pandora, you know. And one of the earliest women was Pandora in some cultures, and we love to tell the story of Pandora's box, but I like to correct it. It was not a box, it was a jar, and the jar was a euphemism for the female womb. She opened her womb, and the evils of the world flew out, except for hope, which remained inside, the hope of future generations. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Pandora did not open that box all by herself. And that image of, there's an image of the holy grail with a it's a cup with a sword on it. And that's the, you know, the cup is the image of the female, the sword is the image of the male. The Holy Grail is us being allowed to be whole and complete in ourselves. And too often, we, society tells us to bifurcate ourselves somehow, and I don't think that's healthy. No, I don't.
When I first became a university president, I told the head of marketing, if you ever mention a rowboat, I am going to fire you, because I thought I could just separate that part of my life and never talk about it again. And then over time. It's the story people wanted to hear about. It was the sport Tory story people wanted to ask about. And I sort of would bristle at the idea that you couldn't see me as an intellectual. You had to see me as this person who rode the boat. And finally, a colleague was like, “Look Tori, it's the doorway people expect you to walk through. Spend five minutes on the rowboat story and 55 minutes on something else. No one will notice, but if you don't tell the rowboat story, they're going to feel cheated.” I was like, oh, okay, it's interesting, really interesting, and interesting from the way you're weaving it or extracting it from your personal narrative, or you were trying to, yeah, so this is a woman with a model row boat just over.
Tori Murden McClure
I know I saw it. It's fabulous. I just, I just find it mind blowing. You went across the Atlantic and and the boots I used to ski to the South Pole.
Fiona
Or is that those? Wow, I'm a passionate skier and snowboarder, but haven't been to a poll, so I can't really tell I'm an explorer of any way so shape or form, but it has been incredible talking to you. There are lots of questions that I haven't had a chance to ask, and that's my fault, because I've got excited about the things that we've begun talking about, I hope that in some way, shape or form, you're a distant, distant cousin, and that's why we share the same surname. Maybe not, I don't know, but I have, I've looked and I haven't been able to trace the relation.
Fiona Oh, really.
Tori Murden McClure
Three generations, and I. Um, and I think somebody had to come to the United States because they stole a bridle and some boots.
Fiona
Yeah, there's something. I've heard a story similar to that, but basically, someone's got kicked out of the UK and moved to the US. So I am proud of you as a fellow female. I'm proud to say that you represent females, and even more so since I've spoken to you, because your values are really immensely inspiring, as well as you and what you've done. So thank you so much.