Finding Purpose: How to defend your values (w/ Yara Shahidi & Keri Salter) | from Fixable

**Modupe Akinola** (0:00)
Hi, listeners, it's Modupe, the host of TED Business. On this show, we talk about the business of business and the why of it all.
A sense of purpose is often at the heart of successful, impactful work. And these are the big questions that we're constantly asking on TED Business. How do you seek out meaningful work? How do you locate meaning in your work? What does the word purpose even mean? Well, I'm not the only one in the extended TED family asking these questions. Over on the podcast Fixable, leadership coaches Frances Fry and Anne Morris have done a four-part series on Finding Purpose, and I'm sharing each part of it with you today. I just know you guys are going to love it. So without further ado, Frances and Anne are going to take it from here.

**Keri Salter** (0:56)
There is somebody out there who makes the best fricking brown butter chocolate chip bars, right? And they've just been giving them as gifts. And at one moment, they may turn their head and say, I can sell these.
Your purpose is to make somebody's Friday after work just feel decadent.

**Anne Morris** (1:17)
Yeah.

**Keri Salter** (1:17)
Purpose doesn't have to loom large.

**Anne Morris** (1:26)
This is Fixable, a show where we take the problems at work that feel unfixable and prove that they're not. I'm Anne Morris. We're back with another episode of our Purpose at Work series. And today I want to explore what purpose actually does, not just what it is. We throw the word around a lot, but today's guests are true practitioners of what it means to have clear purpose. Purpose is the operating system. It's the thing running in the background of every decision, what to make, who to work with, which stories need to be told. I'm talking about Yara Shahidi and her mom, Keri Salter, who I spoke with at TED 2026 in Vancouver. You probably know Yara as Zoe Johnson from the hit shows Blackish and Grownish. But beyond the acting, she and Keri are building something together, a production company called 7th Sun Productions, where the whole point is to make Hollywood more imaginative, more inclusive, and a lot more honest about who stories get told.
What makes them unusual is that they're a mother and daughter who actually work together. And what holds them together isn't just family loyalty or shared taste, it's a sense of purpose that feels bigger than either of them when they keep revisiting, stress testing, and building on together.
I got so much out of this conversation. Purpose only works if it comes with you, shaping not just the big calls, but the small ones too.
Yara and Keri, welcome to Fixable.

**Keri Salter** (2:57)
Thank you.

**Yara Shahidi** (2:59)
Thank you for having us.

**Anne Morris** (3:00)
It is such a personal, selfish pleasure to have both of you here. You're our first mother-daughter duo.

**Keri Salter** (3:07)
Hey.

**Anne Morris** (3:09)
And I have lots of follow-up questions about that. But I want to start with 7th Sun Productions.
What made you want to start this company, and what made you want to do it together?

**Yara Shahidi** (3:20)
I feel like the evolution of 7th Sun happened quite naturally. Tell me what I'm missing, but at least in my recollection. What do you miss?

**Anne Morris** (3:30)
Thank you.

**Modupe Akinola** (3:31)
Mom, that's the right start.

**Yara Shahidi** (3:34)
It happened quite naturally because we were doing the work producing without a title. I think our work has always naturally been together because we've had the same values.
Outside of the cheekbones, I've inherited her outlook on life and media, and why I wanted to be in television to begin with was because of the stories that she set in front of me. And so when we stepped into producing projects, whether it be short form, whether it be for our business partners in the fashion side, we were already doing what it is to cast, to line produce, to go through a story and think macro about what narrative that we're telling. And many times the title comes after the work, which is I think what happened here.

**Keri Salter** (4:17)
That's so true. Yeah, and I think, you know, some people know, but they didn't watch TV growing up. So to have a family of actors, they were playing library in the backyard.

**Anne Morris** (4:27)
So was that a very deliberate choice?

**Keri Salter** (4:29)
Absolutely. So I was in my bathroom at midnight watching Law and Order.
But I wanted a really big, flourished world for these bicultural children that I have. And so the idea of allowing them to imagine was really important to me. I don't know where it came from. I remember my father saying to me when I was younger, the reason we don't watch soap operas, why would you take on other people's imagined or real troubles if you don't have to? Right.