Ava DuVernay on the Beauty of a Midlife Career Change

Before she became an acclaimed writer, director and filmmaker, Ava DuVernay worked as a marketer and publicist for 14 years. The director of Selma and A Wrinkle in Time reveals that it was her mother—by leaving her career as a hospital executive behind to become a preschool teacher—who taught her that she didn't "have to stay one thing." She served as an example to young Ava that it's okay to make a change in the middle of life. "So, that's what she taught me, and that's what I did, by changing from being someone who supported artists to being the artist myself," Ava says.