Maya Angelou worked as a cook, streetcar conductor, waitress, singer, dancer, editor, teacher, civil rights organizer, and actress before becoming one of America’s most beloved writers. Now 85 and a professor at Wake Forest University, she says her success as a storyteller stems from “seeing us as more alike than we are unalike”—that is, from finding universal themes.
A version of this article appeared in the May 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review.