Alex Carter
speaker
110 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Alex Carter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I see negotiation as problem solving. I don't sell, I problem solve.
Earlier on in my career, I was for everybody else, the fearless junkyard dog negotiator who would just go out and get what you needed. And when it came to me, I would hesitate.
When you get to that place where you are so rock-solid confident in your worth that you're able to say, here's the investment to work with me, and if that doesn't work for you, I understand, and you believe it, people smell that on you. Negotiation does not start with the numbers.
It starts with using your words to teach people how to think about you and the value you bring long before you get to the numbers. These are the questions that research shows make people the most money.
Oh, Ilana, thank you for having me. I'm so excited for the conversation.
So interesting. I think people, Ilana, often assume that I came out of the womb asking for more, right? That I felt so confident from a very early age, always to get what I needed and to use my voice. And the truth is that actually, as a younger kid, I was quite shy, especially in school or outside the home.
I was really into reading, really into academics, but I often felt as though in larger groups, I wasn't speaking up as much. And then I remember the moment in eighth grade that they started introducing us to speech and debate.
And that's when I figured out that when I had something substantive to say, I felt very comfortable getting up, speaking on my feet, and saying it to an audience of any size. And that was a really interesting lesson for me, really knowing more about what I was interested in. substantively helped me find my feet and my confidence. It makes me think about your audience, right?
Of entrepreneurs and folks who, when you get on your topic or your mission, all of a sudden you're unstoppable and you have something to say. And later on, Ilana, I found that I started getting more comfortable using my negotiation skills for other people.
We can get into this, but earlier on in my career, really, I was for everybody else, the fearless junkyard dog negotiator who would just go out and get what you needed. And when it came to me, sometimes I would hesitate.
The answer is no, I pushed myself. And initially, I pushed myself because I thought it would be a challenge. So one thing that I have to say that I've always been good at is putting myself forward for a challenge. So whether that was in eighth grade, deciding I am going to enter this speech and debate contest. And Maybe it's going to be difficult, but this is going to be good for me.
Or in college when I arrived and I felt so shy about meeting people and I thought to myself, I'm going to run for student government and I'm going to knock on every door in the freshman class and ask people for their vote. And Ilana, I would knock on every door go into the bathroom, cry, wash my face, and then go to the next floor and knock on every door there.
And so it was a bit of maybe taking a leap and saying, this is something that I think I can do deep down, and it might be a challenge, but I'm going to push myself, bet on myself, and see what happens.
I do. You know, I had some difficult times as a child. My parents went through a really rough divorce. And I remember in particular, looking at my mom and how she was feeling. And at times in court, it felt like she was at a real disadvantage. And I was there in court as a child, sometimes watching it happen. And I remember telling myself, this is not going to be me.
I'm going to equip myself to make sure that I am empowered and I can always speak up for my own interests. You know, my mother put us first, her children, for many years. And I'm fortunate now to be in a time where I am the mother of a teenager, right? I am the wife of a I am very empowered in my career. And I go out and I show my daughter that you can do both.
Yes. So interestingly, I am the child of a lawyer and a teacher. So here I am now as a law professor. I looked back on that many years later and just laughed to myself like, boy, was that my biological destiny here, my genetic destiny. I absolutely love law teaching. It's wonderful. But
In my work at Columbia, because I have both a day job and I'm an entrepreneur, as you know, and in my work at Columbia, I'm a law professor, but I teach mediation. Mediation is the art and science of helping people to negotiate and resolve disputes outside of court. And so amazing that I became a lawyer in part because I said to myself, I will not be taken advantage of
And yet I found myself to the place where creativity, psychology, and healing meet the law and where people can take agency and find their voice to settle their disputes before it goes to a judge.
Oh, every day, Ilana. I learned mediation before I studied negotiation. The result of that is that by the time I was studying negotiation, I was oriented toward how can I use my words to bring people together? How can I think about what the person across from me needs? What's motivating them? What's keeping them up at night?
What are the words I hear them using over and over again that seem to have meaning to them? And how can I frame what I'm asking for in a way that hits those words for them? And so it was... 20 years almost as a mediator helping thousands of people in it with them, helping them to negotiate some of the biggest, thorniest, highest stakes disputes that I realized there's another way to do this.
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