Black Excellence: Nicole Franklin

The Office of Student Success and Belonging, with Dr. Aisha El-Amin.        

Recording of Dr. Martin Luther King 00:09       

[Applause] Believe in yourself and believe that you’re somebody.       

Clips from 1995 movie “Panther” 00:17       

His intention is that we study and master a bunch of different things.      
Why are you here?        
Study and master a bunch of different things.      
I’m proud to introduce our new Minister of Information.      

Aisha El-Amin 00:26       

I’m Dr. Aisha El-Amin.       

Tariq El-Amin 00:29       

Welcome to “Black Excellence.”  

Nicole Franklin  0:35   

You do have to put yourself out there, but it’s less scary, and you’ll have more courage when you have a network, when you have a tribe.  

Aisha El-Amin  0:42 

In this episode of the “Black Excellence” podcast, we speak to Nicole Franklin, a proud UIC alum, distinguished journalist, award-winning producer and proud Chicagoan who trailblazed her way from LA to New York City in pursuit of her biggest storytelling aspirations. As she unpacks her journey, Nicole highlights the importance of building community and sharing powerful advice for those striving toward their own ambitious goals. Nicole begins today’s episode sharing her own story and the pivotal moments that led her to where she is today.  

Nicole Franklin  1:15 

I grew up in the Midwest, in St. Louis specifically, wanting to be a storyteller. So, in the ’70s, that meant, like, you know, what I saw on television wasn’t enough. And as a Black woman, Black girl, I wanted to see, you know, some really cooldramas and comedies that weren’t so much slapstick as organic to who we are as a community and a family unit. So, I always knew that I had different stories to tell.  

I also grew up in dance and music. My mom’s a musician. My dad’s a journalist, and I grew up in, you know, the theater world, and so we were allowed to play, and as well, as, you know, had to really be very on top of our studies. So, there was no path to get to television and film where I spent most of my career, but to just, you know, keep enjoying and working hard at all the cultural interests. I was involved in theater, dance and music, piano, specifically, and flute, but literally, the summer before my freshman year, my dad’s like, where are you going to school? And I was like, well, I’vealways liked Chicago. I think I’m gonna go up there to school. I’m gonna go to see what the state school is like. So, I took a bus trip up, applied, and then a couple of months later, I was a freshman at University of Illinois Chicago.  

Best decision I ever made, you know, the last-minute decision there to be a communications major. And I think the only one in my suite of, you know, dorm life, everybody else was engineer, pre-med, you know, really cool, brainy stuff. We were across also from the pharmacy school, which is one of the top pharmacy schools, you know, around, and that was just really nice to have friends who I could learn things from, you know. And when you’re in the movie making, type of ideal business, you know, you’re the cool one. So, they thought I knew something, but I just really had that passion to get involved, you know, in the industry, so I really wanted to get out of school quickly. We had, and I’m talking 1987 to 1990 because I was able to graduate in three years. We had, yeah, we had 10-week quarters back then you kill yourself for 10 weeks. Take a break, come back. Pile on the classes. And, you know, the communications program was underdeveloped. I would say I had one television class. That was it. And, you know, just did this enormous production in that class. 

But we’re in Chicago. We’re in the heart of the city. I love that my classmates weren’t just, you know, dorm people. They were commuters, you know, worked for a living and went to school. Some of the hardest-working people, of the loveliest people, were my classmates at UIC, still friends today, but it’s like, no, we’re going to work really hard and see what opportunities are out there. So basically, the question at UIC is: What do you want to do? And then everybody jumped in and just kind of gave you ideas and kind of gave you the confidence that you could do it. Because there was no not doing it, you know. And even if they didn’t understand my industry, I didn’t understand theirs, I had a tight-knit group of friends who would be there for me no matter what. 

And I got an internship my final semester of UIC in the middle of Illinois at the ABC affiliate, WAND in Decatur. Shout out to WAND television, and had to go live there in Decatur, Illinois, ended up staying on for about three more months as a hire to shoot and edit news. And that was, I felt, the quickest way into the industry is to do news, because you’re, you know, producing every day, something that goes on the air, and informative content that you would give people. And I liked informing people, so more nonfiction than fiction, but I knew it was going to lead me to Hollywood one day, right? And I went back to St. Louis just to, I think,… Oh, I first went back to St. Louis to be in a movie. So, Disney came through town through a movie, and that’s how I got back to St. Louis. So that was a month of work on a Disney project that happened to shoot on location. I had an agent in St. Louis, called and said, “Hey, you know, they want actresses to play 14-year-olds.” At this point, I was 21. And Mare Winningham was in it, one of the Brat Pack stars, and she played a teacher that went in this early years of the U.S. decided to teach Black students, Black girls, and the white community was going to shun her for that. So, all the Black girls were in their 20s. White girls were actually teenagers.  

Aisha El Amin  6:46   

What’s the name of this movie? Now, I have to know the name of this movie.  

Nicole Franklin  6:56   

Oh my god, it’s back, reach back in the archives for a film called “She Stood Alone.” So, yeah, it’s one of those, like Disney movie of the weeks, or something. So, I had a month of work with that, went to every station in town and said: Hey, I have six months’ experience working in a newsroom, and I could, you know, do everything, and I hadn’t had that much experience news writing, but one station hired me right away. They said: Wait, did you say you edit video? And I was like, yeah, so a news video editor, you have to get footage at the last minute and be confident that you can get it on within five minutes on the air, edited, completed as a story, visually telling a story above a reporter’s track — audio track, we call it — yeah, I said I could edit and I get it very fast.  

And so he hired me, and I stayed there about seven months, and I said, you know, I gotta hop on this now. I’m gonna do the Hollywood thing. And I just met all these people, and I had friends in LA. So went to LA for about five and a half years;did not care for it as a place to live long term. And I really had this burning desire while I was there to just get out there and tell stories. And I said, independent film is where it is. I want to be an independent filmmaker. That’s what I’m going to do. And television is where the money is. Independent film, no, it’s not. It’s… I knew that I had to, you know, keep, you know, the money coming in. Somehow get a roof over my head, keep the food coming in the refrigerator.  

So, I stayed as a freelancer. I could work anytime I wanted, and because there was enough work as a news video editor to work around the clock: morning shows, evening, you know, midday shows had started in Los Angeles, actually, while I was there, and I did that for about five and a half years, in addition to doing some small independent productions, but made the decision to take the big leap to New York City, where I knew independent film was king, and I had relatives in New York City, and once I moved to NYC, that was like 24 years of living there and really enjoying it, 10 films, rather, I did. I joined the Black documentary collective. I was a founding member and New York women of film and television, that’smy sisterhood. And worked at NBC News and CBS News, worked on CBS Sunday Morning for about 10 years. So I was juggling a lot, but those wonderful colleagues of mine would come and support all of my productions. That was the only way I could do it was community, community, community, and from a wealth of different ethnicities and ages and people that just love good stories and yeah, the pandemic brought me back to the Midwest, and now I’m a communications director at a university. 

Aisha El-Amin  9:48   

I have so many questions. So, taking you back as you begin your story at UIC, kind of this, this, this pivotal moment where dad was like: Hey, you gotta, you gotta do something here. How did that look for you as you entered into UIC, and now you find yourself in all in a space where a bunch of different majors. Did you go to different spaces for you, know, a sense of belonging. Were you part of any clubs?  What did that space look like?  

Nicole Franklin  10:25   

It was quite welcoming. First thing is that you had to make friends in the dorms. So we, luckily, did not have, we had a coed dorm, but we it wasn’t a coed floor. So I think that’s happening now, so, you know, but I felt really great about just walking into somebody’s room and saying, Hi, I’m Nicole, and that’s what I did, and made friends for life with my roommates next door. I would say roommates, because if you go to UIC on Halsted, those dorms that are there with, like the, you know, the curved bay window type of style. I was the first resident because we were on the west xampus and those were being built.  

So, my second year at UIC, we camped out the night before my friends from the girls’ floor and the guys above us, they were one step ahead of us, and we were right behind them, and we all stayed the night and claimed those rooms right there, so we were looking at downtown Chicago. We were the first residents, and yeah, so that was like a little fun fact, but I think my dad was concerned that I would fall into the wrong crowd, possibly. And so he asked me, you know, is there a Black… I think he already looked it up…There’s a Black student retention center. I want you to call them. And I think he called because I remember the woman who was running, and I wish I remembered her name. She’s so sweet. She goes: Your dad called and wanted us to meet you. This is what we’re doing, is when we’re meeting and all that. So that was fun community. I mean, I got a new group of friends there.  

My friends were just from the suburbs, but their parents, you know, suggested that they live on campus, and they were Asian, Indian descent, Filipino. It was just all one big world on our campus, which was super cool, learning something every day. Then I was in a class with my advisor. So, you’re assigned an advisor, which is also great to help you through school. And he saw the classes I was taking as a communications major, English minor, and he’s like: Nicole, what do you want to do? I said, I want to be a producer. He said, Well, Nicole, to produce, you have to write, write, write. So, I joined the student newspaper. And the student newspaper at that point had been around for a bit, the Chicago Flame, and quickly met some friends who so, you know, fast friends who were like, Nicole, we’re getting ready to start our own newspaper. Do you want to come with us? And I’m like, Yeah, sure. And so we left that paper, formed our own paper, the Campus Chronicle, c squared, and Kelly Baroni was the editor in chief, and he had me and my friend, Irene, and Irene was the president of the Polish club on campus, PASA, I remember It was called the Polish Student Association, and we were called “salt and pepper, spice up your life.” So, because I’m Black, she’s white, and so our column was just on, hey, what’s hip and happening around you know, campus, while the guys who were like, really running the editorial side were on the budget, and they were all over the administration and doing the more serious stuff. You know, Gus handled the artwork, and I was photo editor for a time. So it was really, really fun the newspaper, and I was, you know, writing as well, and Irene and I didn’t write till 5 a.m. the morning of the due date. So we were like, What are we going to talk about today? We got to submit it to Kelly. Oh, he wants it at 8 a.m. but we figured we call each other 5 a.m. because we knew we were up and nobody else was, and we were just literally pulling stuff, you know, out of, you know, where and so. But people followed us, and it was really, really fun. 

Aisha El-Amin  14:44   

That was the following before social media following. There it is. 

Nicole Franklin  14:49   

This is way before social media. 

Aisha El-Amin  14:52   

That’s right, how following looked, you know, like people would read your papers instead of, like, read your posts. 

Nicole Franklin  14:58   

Yeah, there you go. We’d be stopped in the hall. We’re like, oh yeah, we did talk about that event. Do you have another event coming up? We need something for next week, you know. So that was a blast. And there was a marketing area in the student center. I wrote some articles for them, for athletics and, you know, got my clips together, and that helped me get the broadcast internship that my advisor turned me on to. That was Illinois sponsored. I think it was an Illinois state-sponsored “minority,” I’m putting air quotes on for those who are listening, because I don’t like that word “minority,” but it was “minority” internship and I was lucky enough to get a spot at WAND. 

Aisha El-Amin  15:44   

 Oh, I love it. So you said, for one of the things you were describing, you said, Hey, and I can do it quick, like I can edit, I can edit. Yeah, I could do that. How do you? How did you? Where did you get this confidence from? It sounds like you had a lot of experiences, and I will say we are in, the data has shown we are one of the nation’s most diverse campuses today. Yes, oh yeah, I love that is the same experience that students are coming in and getting now, and so I love to hear about that and how rich it was for you, so, but what did, what did the confidence come from, where you were, like, yep, I could do it, and I could do it fast, and I’m also going to do this internship, and I’m all, and I, and I started this, you know, all of the things that you’ve been able to do? I mean, you’ve worked with OWN, you work with Hulu, like where did this confidence come from? 

Nicole Franklin  16:39   

Yeah, coming from the state school, you know, and being with the “Today Show” and nightly news, you know, with Tom Brokaw, if anybody remembers him, sweetheart, Tom Brokaw, yeah, all those big shows, you know, just a couple years later, it’s just, you have to work really hard. And I worked really hard, you know, and that comes from the East St. Louis, grit of my family, Kinloch, Missouri, from my family. Those are my roots and people I watched growing up, you know, mainly who were part of my ancestral line or my parents themselves. My two sisters work really hard. There’s a lot in our community still left to do, and for me, those were stories to tell about us, the good stories, you know, or educate all of us enough to make it through, right? So, there was a way to do that, and you know, I had the willingness to just get my hands dirty and investigate things and put together a visual. You know, this is how we do it. You know, here, got some video, edited it together and all of that.  

But when I saw that in news, if I could turn this thing around quickly, turn around a story quickly, I was like, you know, what? I could work anywhere in the United States as my day gig doing this and then pursue any stories I want to write or develop. You know, spend time on that later. But my day gig could be this, because everybody’s going to need an editor. This is at that time. Now you got, like, AI editing your stuff together, but, but then yeah. And so, what I tell a lot of younger people is, even in this area of AI and things that are automated, still learn a technical skill, because the tech still has tosupport the creative and supports a lot of industries. So if you can just get your hands in there and do something that people thinking, Oh, I’ll never learn that, or that seems a little too mundane. It’s not if you put your own, you know, if you develop your own craft, whatever that technical expertise is and no, not everybody wants to do it. Not everybody wants to do a morning show and go to work at 2 a.m. I was fine. I was like, I’m available. Call me. Oh, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, I’m available. Call me. And so the running joke, actually, like when I was working in the early ’90s on was that morning shows, morning television news, was always populated by Black and Latinos, and so before we got cornered, there it was like, we get we’re really, like, only showing up on the weekends. Guys, you know, we needed to expand. We made a push for during the week presence on these big broadcasts. So but, but yeah, people would show up, and those were the shifts that were available and holidays, of course, you could work and make double. 

Aisha El-Amin  19:56   

Nicole, what would you say was your inspiration for storytelling? You have this deep passion, and I mean just expertisearound storytelling. Where did that come from?  

Nicole Franklin  20:12   

Well, I think growing up in the ’70s, I was born in 1969 right there, on the cusp growing up in the ’70s, I needed to know things before I walked out the door. So that was my dad, my mom, I think, would leave it to my dad. She would have some lessons, and she would tell us. But he was, you know, a long-time reporter, editor with the St. Louis Post Dispatch, a second Black reporter there, and anything that was happening that we needed to know as a Black person to navigate the world that would be told to us at the dinner table, and I think my sisters would tell you, that was told to us all day long. Here’s what happens when this situation, you know. So we got the talk daily, weekly. It was nonstop, and so within, I couldn’t reveal that I had the talk whenever I’m in certain spaces, you know. So, yeah, that’s a lot of responsibility on a young person. But there were things I knew and then I would watch. I’m like, oh, yeah, that played out that way. It prepared me for how people thought, you know, putting people in certain categories. We put ourselves in certain boxes, you know. And so there’s a lot of things that from his generation. I’m like, Hey, let’s be a little more open-minded, and you learn for yourself. And I don’t know that he was around, I don’t think he was around as many diverse student population, people in student population as I was. He went to Carbondale and Howard for a minute, you know. And I went, you know, to UIC. 

Aisha El-Amin  21:58   

Well, as we close our time out here, can you give advice? Some advice, some things that I’ve pulled from you already and I’ve wrote down is, you know, like, work hard, want to step up and volunteer. Experience, you know, experience the diversity that that you have around you, and engage in those things beyond the classroom, you know, those curricular activities. What would you tell students that are coming into UIC, Black students, who are, you know, trying to figure it out, you know, trying to find their way and may not have that dad. That’s like, hey, you need to, you need to get here. 

Nicole Franklin  22:37   

Who makes the phone call for you? You’ve got to have community. And I don’t know that that’s taught in high school. You know, people are thrown into or sign up for sports teams or clubs and activities, but that is so important, because you could be working hard and excellent, but if you’re at home and nobody knows it, you know and you have to navigate certain spaces, and you do have to put yourself out there, but it’s less scary, and you’ll have more courage when you have a network, when you have a tribe.  

When I went to New York, you know, there were 8 million people there at the time, and I remember a friend of mine saying, you will find your tribe here. You’re going to find the people that you connect with. And I did, you know, especially in my film groups, and that was really wonderful. That’s my film family.  

But in school, definitely you have to, I think you’re going to navigate to certain people and certain communities. But yes, you know, stretch out a bit. You know what’s going on over here? Oh, Culinary Club, you’ll meet a lot of different ethnicities and experiences. You know people with just a wealth of knowledge and who are looking to you. You know to learn things too, and so always in a space of discovery, is what I would encourage. But definitely build a support network and find mentors. Mentors are very much more important than even financing, you know, I got this project I need, filmmaker. I always needed money, you know, but when I had that sponsor as a mentor, the introductions that they make and the resources they were able to bring, we call it in kind, right, not monetary or financial, you know, through, you know, cash, but props would be there. A location would be there, the equipment would be there, the knowledge would be there. And hey, the introduction to so and so at such and such, you know, big Hollywood studio that could distribute your piece would be there. So, you know, take it all in, and then those people that are meant to stay with you will stay with you. 

Aisha El-Amin  24:52   

No, that’s, that’s great advice. It’s, it’s interesting you ended with that because you reminded me of an interview I listened to with Michelle Obama. She said, you know, some people are lost in the climb. They didn’t make it with me. And so, absolutely great advice. 

Nicole Franklin  25:08   

Chicagoan, yeah, yep. 

Aisha El-Amin  25:12   

Absolutely. Well, we are proud to call you one of our UIC Flames alum, and happy to continue to cheer you on with all the great things that you’re putting out in the world, and keep telling stories and keep inspiring. Nicole, thank you. 

Nicole Franklin  25:26   

 I hope to be back. I love UIC, so thank you. Thank you for all you’re doing. 

Announcer  25:35