“Honestly, on days that I’m not working, I wish I was working,” says Mika Brzezinski. That dedication and work ethic speaks to the fact that she’s the longtime co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, a New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of the women’s empowerment platform Know Your Value.
When asked about the current political climate, Brzezinski says, “Right now is the time to get aware and to inform people as much as possible.” She does that by working even harder. “I put on my mom hat and, you know, I feel protective and concerned and powerful. And what do I do about that? I get to work every day.”
Brzezinski’s candor, both about her own life challenges and those of the country, is part of the reason Morning Joe’s viewership continues to rise. More than 17 years since it debuted, the talk show continues to drive the day’s political conversations and boasts the longest-running anchor team in cable news programming: Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough (who’s also her husband), and Willie Geist.
Making It in McLean
The mom of two adult daughters, who now splits her time between Florida, New York, Washington, and Maine, once called McLean home. Her parents came to the U.S. from Poland to escape “the wrath of Hitler,” she’s written. Her late father, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was a Polish diplomat who served as national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. Her mother, Emilie Brzezinski, who died in 2022, was an award-winning sculptor.
Her father was named national security adviser in 1976, when Mika was 9 years old, and her family moved from New Jersey to McLean. She and her two brothers grew up on Spring Hill Road in an old farmhouse on 5 acres that she says was “kind of dilapidated, almost abandoned.” Brzezinski was enrolled in Spring Hill Elementary School and later at the prestigious Madeira School.
Brzezinski describes her unconventional childhood with palpable joy. “We had geese. We had a pony who was roaming around the property practically fenceless at one point because we built the fence. We built the stable — my mom, my brothers, and me. And we had chickens, and we built a chicken coop. And we had a garden. My mom did most of it. … [We] lived off the land in McLean, Virginia.” They also bought their clothes from a secondhand store in downtown McLean.
While neighbors may have initially viewed her parents as a curiosity, she says once they got to know them, everyone loved them. “We loved growing up on Spring Hill Road. My brothers and I had the most amazing years there. We flourished in Northern Virginia.” She recalls taking walks with her parents and brothers and their German shepherds — off-leash, to the horror of some residents — on public trails along the Potomac River.
“It still strikes me today when I see people ordering food on UberEats … I just think about how far most people are from the way my parents raised us, which is extremely self-sufficient,” Brzezinski says.
Her older brother, former U.S. ambassador to Sweden Mark Brzezinski, says “Mika had two competitive older brothers, and yet she insisted and persevered in standing out in the most remarkable ways.” He recalls with pride when his sister took up horseback riding, a sport that no one else in their family had any background in. “Part of being a leader is working when you don’t know for sure whether it’s going to work out, and working on stuff that you don’t really understand in order to master it. And Mika did that at a really young age in her early teens with horseback riding. And she did it with all the bells and whistles, meaning she would be up at 6 a.m. cleaning the stalls out, cleaning up the horses’ poop, feeding the horses, cleaning out their hooves, brushing them, and so forth and so on, and then going to school and doing horseback riding training after school. Part of being a leader is persevering and going after goals, and she did that with horseback riding.”
In McLean, Brzezinski also discovered her passion for journalism. She observed as news crews came to their home to interview her father, and he’d bring her along to his interviews on Meet the Press or Nightline. And, as a junior at Madeira, she got the opportunity to work in Fairfax County cable access TV and co-produce a TV show, The Mika and Melissa Show.
Successes and Setbacks
Brzezinski has written several bestselling books, including Know Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth. In her writing, she shares with honesty and humor her career highs and lows.
When she was abruptly fired from her job as a CBS News correspondent in 2006, Brzezinski told Marie Claire that it felt like a divorce. At age 41, she accepted a freelance position at MSNBC at a fraction of the salary she was accustomed to. It eventually led to a staff position at Morning Joe, and she discovered that she was being paid a staggering 14 times less than Scarborough. With the cost of her wardrobe and personal styling, she was actually losing money by working at the network. When she finally started advocating for herself effectively, she learned that she wouldn’t get anywhere if she didn’t first believe in the value of her contributions.
When she launched Know Your Value in 2015, her vision was “to help all women recognize, and be recognized for, their personal and professional value by developing and inspiring their individual growth.” The annual intergenerational 30/50 Summit, a partnership with Forbes, takes place around International Women’s Days every March. It honors leaders from both the “30 Under 30” and “50 Over 50” lists, the latter of which Know Your Value and Forbes launched in 2021 to highlight women who are living their best lives at a time when society starts to ignore them.
“I’m finding that in the 50 Over 50 space, women have recognized their value and are staying in it or pivoting or reinventing, and are completely untethered to issues like babies or divorces. All that stuff is done and we’re available and at our best,” Brzezinski, 57, says.
Hitting menopause furthered her commitment to helping women thrive at every stage of their lives. When symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pains, and brain fog landed her in the emergency room last year, she shared her story with the world.
Lifting Others Up
Brzezinski prefers the concept of sponsorship over mentorship. “I’m about showing women their value and taking them by the hand and really walking them through stuff.” She’s even been known to finance the projects of women she believes in, understanding that “if you pay it forward and lift up a woman, she’ll pay it forward to three other women.”
Ali Vitali, host of MSNBC’s Way Too Early, says Brzezinski truly makes a habit of sharing advice and lifting others up. “She’ll help you show up as the best version of yourself — and she gives excellent tips on how to wake up early, why you should dunk your face in ice water first thing in the morning, what top looks best on TV for the days when you just don’t have the energy to fully dress up. I love — and use — those tips. But Mika will also say your name in the rooms where it counts. That’s what makes her different. I know she’s done it for me. And then once the door is open, she’ll cheer you all the way through it.”
Her brother Mark says his sister’s emotional intelligence is one of her truly essential attributes, up there with her work ethic and her honesty. “Mika is, to me, the walking definition of EQ (emotional quotient). She has a very acute understanding and radar of what other people are thinking, how other people are feeling, what they’re striving for, what they’re suffering from, and is able to connect with that.”
When she’s not working (which isn’t often), Brzezinski says she loves visiting her daughters, who are in their 20s, “probably a little too much,” she jokes. She also enjoys running and going on walks.
And soon, there’ll be a lovely new spot in McLean for her to take a stroll down memory lane: She and her family have worked out a deal with Fairfax County to transform her childhood home into a dog park, Brzezinski Park, and turn her mother’s studio into a place for artists in residence. “When we lived there, the forsythias were 20 feet tall, so I can’t even imagine what they are now. Everything my mother touched grew 10 times bigger than normally.”
As for rest, Brzezinski still gets up at 4 a.m. “I could probably use a little more sleep, but otherwise I’m OK,” she says. After all, there’s work to be done.
Feature image courtesy MSNBC
This story originally ran in our April Issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
