Episode 38: Regina Bain
Threading the Needle
Regina Bain was the first guest that I interviewed for Season One of At the Podium. She was the logical choice to step to the mic for that first episode. In my mind Regina was and remains the embodiment of the underlying ethos of the show: there is magic and richness to be found in taking a leap of faith into the unknown and saying “yes” to life’s unexpected turns. She had lived her life with that principle when she left Florida and moved to New Haven, CT to attend Yale University as an undergraduate and then graduate student. She stepped into a new career path early on from our Yale Drama School acting years when she answered a call for the Posse Foundation and became their national trainer. At Posse, she would spend 16 years of her career mentoring and guiding young high school students into universities across the country to pursue their academic dreams. Ultimately, she rose to the level of Associate Vice President of the organization. When we sat down during the height of the Pandemic in 2021, she had recently left Posse and joined the Louis Armstrong House Museum & Archives as their executive director. Again, reinventing herself.
I also wanted to start the show with Regina, because she comfortably holds complex thoughts, speaks in artistic metaphors and despite all the business successes she has earned through her life, she still views herself as an artist. A dancer to be exact. In short, she is my kind of multi-hyphenate.
As we start Season Two of At the Podium, Regina and I cover broad topics of the day: January 6, 2021, the beauty of black women and the essential role they play in todays and yesterday’s social fabric, and yes Will Smith and Chris Rock. We discuss her learnings during the two years of the Pandemic. The importance and necessity of family. When to raise our voices in support of our beliefs, and the willingness to bear the resulting consequences of speaking out. The fragility of life itself and yet the need to live fully. The embracing of melancholy that can be found in Florida’s gray skies before a thunderstorm. As Regina succinctly describes it, “So for me, I’m thinking about the choices that I am making, that I will make about where I use my voice. The modalities in which I use my voice, and the repercussions of that, and what I am willing to risk. And for me, I choose to engage.”
In life today, as Regina declares in her lush contralto voice, we are constantly threading the needle between this and that. Between beauty and aloneness. And between pronouncing who we are with courage as Louis Armstrong did while yet acknowledging the delicateness and inherent risks of that act of audacity.
