Amy Poehler’s career knows no bounds, which is particularly awesome after the end of Parks & Rec. Her IMDb profile reveals some completed movies and current filming for the Wet Hot American Summer reboot on Netflix. Fast Company just named her #8 on its 100 Most Creative People in Business list. Their profile mentions that Poehler both champions other female comedians and mentors up-and-comers. Show business is hard on women, and comedy is a particularly tough branch for women to crack. As Kaiser mentioned when considering Amy Schumer, women don’t get as much leeway for the same jokes that men tell. In this interview, Poeher hints at that inequality and discusses the different treatment women receive as working parents. We talk a lot about how magazines are obsessed with asking women about parenting. Poehler says she receives the same treatment during professional meetings:

On surviving comedy as a woman: “I have these meetings with really powerful men and they ask me all the time, ‘Where are your kids? Are your kids here?’” she says with a sneer. “It’s such a weird question. Never in a million years do I ask guys where their kids are. It would be comparable to me going to a guy, ‘Do you feel like you see your kids enough?’”

The scrutiny makes her uncomfortable: “It’s a struggle for me to remain open. To not shut down because I’m defensive or scared or maybe my ego is getting in the way. And the other side of that is just believing that I belong where I am and deserve to take up space. I fight constantly between those two things, between not apologizing for what I want and staying vulnerable and creatively supple and not thinking I know better than everyone else.”

On talking like a man: “I often look to men to model behavior. Not because I want to squelch what’s feminine about me, but because sometimes I want a little more action, a little less feeling in my interactions. I’ve been doing this thing lately where I try to talk slower at meetings. I take a lot of meetings with women and we all talk really fast. But every guy talks so much slower. I think men are just a little bit more comfortable taking up conversational real estate. So I’ve been seeing how slow I can tolerate talking. I’m doing it now. Let me tell you, it’s really hard for me.”

Why she works so heavily with emerging female talent: “It’s selfish. I just like working with women.”

She’s very involved with the Worldwide Orphans Foundation: “When I’m with my kids, I feel so lucky to have all this love in my life. But these orphans have nobody who lights up when they come into the room, and that’s really, really heavy.”

[Form Fast Company]

I love that Amy is talking to a major business/entrepreneurship magazine about the unbalanced treatment of working mothers and fathers. During last year’s promotion of her Yes Please memoir, Amy also discussed an “unspoken pact“ that women feel they should follow. She said working mothers are supposed to act guilty, and stay-at-home moms are supposed to act bored without a career. Really, both groups are happy with their choices, but society tells us to always question whether we’re doing the wrong thing. Guilt, man.

Amy’s involvement with the Worldwide Orphans Foundation continues to impress. The charity’s CEO, Jane Aronson, told Fast Company that Amy “gets totally involved. She’s better than a board member, she’s a partner.” Amy’s visited Haiti, and she’ll head to Ethiopia in the fall. She isn’t simply a celebrity name on the charity’s roster.

Photos courtesy of WENN