Java with Jamie: Vlad Duthiers and his journey to success

You know him from CBS Mornings: Vlad Duthiers is a featured host, bringing enthusiasm, energy and an infectious laugh to the table each weekday.

Recently, while he was in Los Angeles, he sat down for Java with Jamie and revealed what it's like to be hitting his stride, personally and professionally, in later adulthood.

Vladimir Duthiers came to Los Angeles to shoot a profile of the band TLC for CBS Mornings Mixtape.

You came to visit L.A. from New York, but I thought I would bring you to what we call "New York Street" -- part of where the show "Seinfeld" was shot. 

On the soundstage with me, Duthiers starts researching the back story of the infamous location. He's someone I know to be present in every moment, and it's that awe and excitement of discovery that has led to Duthiers's journalistic success. We settled in at Carla's Café on the Radford Lot in Studio City.

The Peabody and Emmy Award-winning CBS News Correspondent and Co-host of "CBS Mornings" reveals he started his career in finance.

"My parents are immigrants, and like a lot of immigrants, I think, who are first-generation Americans, they'll be able to relate to the notion that your parents really, when they come to America, this being the land of opportunity, they believe that the only thing that they want their children to study and to grow up to be, is either a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer," said Duthiers. "And everything else -- the fourth option is, you know, failure."

So what did you do?

"I moved back to New York and I was living with my fraternity brothers in Hoboken, New Jersey, and they were all ['Wall Street' film character] 'Gordon Gekko' wannabes," said Duthiers. "And my roommates were all working on Wall Street at the time, and I was still trying to like, write cover letters to the New York Times or to CBS, and obviously not getting any responses."

His plan was to be a stockbroker and financial planner for just one year. That turned into a move to Paris and traveling the world with his finance company.

"And now I'm a managing director and I've got a great life and 20 years have passed me by, but it's not that I didn't think about being a journalist -- I probably did not have it in my mind -- but I was still a news junkie," said Duthiers.

One day, after meeting with a business colleague who compared the company's CEO to the great Nelson Mandela, Duthiers had an epiphany.

"I don't fit in this world, even though I've had a great life in it and I loved my time doing it," said Duthiers. "So I went back to my hotel room and I remember very vividly watching the sun go down over the river in Stockholm. And I wrote down what did I want to be when I was 10, and I wrote 'teacher.' 'Police officer,' believe it or not. And 'journalist.' It was like, this is literally what I thought I wanted to do when I was that age."

Duthiers chose his love of language, world travels and real-life experience and applied to graduate school at Columbia University in 2009.

"And I got in, and once I got in, I think within a couple of weeks I had quit my job and I started as a student at Columbia. And then by August, I had applied for an internship at CNN. I was 39 years old. I was 39," said Duthiers.

I think that's an important lesson for people to hear, that at 39, almost going on 40, everyone has this like, "Oh my gosh, I'm almost turning 40. My life is, I'm going into the sunset." And you take an internship at CNN.

"Yeah. I mean, it was hard because I had to. People think that I retired from Wall Street," said Duthiers. "Even when I was interviewing at CNN, the guy who was interviewing me was like, 'So what are you like, retiring?'"

That internship led to a friendship with CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper, and eventually a job as an associate producer on "Anderson Cooper 360."

Duthiers, whose parents are of Haitian descent, was one of the first to cover the country's devastating 2010 earthquake.

"I would shoot pieces on my free time whenever I could," said Duthiers. "And eventually, one day, Anderson was like 'Can I see your stuff?' And I was like, OK. And so I would show him my scripts and he'd take out a red pen and he'd, you know, and he'd mark it up."

CNN then offered Duthiers a position based in West Africa, one considered one of the network's most challenging, based in Nigeria.

"I remember I said something like 'More challenging than Baghdad?' And they were like, 'Much more challenging.' And he goes, 'So, I'm not trying to dissuade you from it, but you wouldn't have a producer, you'd be your own producer.' And I said, 'I think I want the Nigeria gig.' And they were like, 'OK.' I mean, they were really shocked," said Duthiers.

While there he reported on everything from terrorist activities of Boko Haram to the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls to former President Obama's trip to Senegal.

After years of focusing just on his career, his personal life started to weigh on him. When CNN offered Duthiers a new contract, it was for either Beijing, China, or Johannesburg, South Africa.

"And I didn't want that because Marian, my wife, was going to break up with me," said Duthiers. "She had done almost three years, two and a half years, as long distance and was like, 'I can't do it again.'"

He flew to New York and his agent landed him a meeting at CBS, but there were no open positions. When Duthiers met Marian afterward...

"I remember she looked at her beer and I was looking at my beer and then we started to get a little misty-eyed, it was really sad. And I'm like, 'Oh, hold on, it's my agent.' And I walked out of the bar and she took a picture of me strolling, and my agent's like 'Vlad, I just got off the phone with CBS. They're making an offer today.' And I'm like, What? I'm like, 'Network correspondent in New York. Like, you gotta come back, we have to talk about what we're doing.' And here I am," said Duthiers.

By the end of that week he had a deal that brought him back to New York and the love of his life.

On September 1, 2020, Duthiers married Marian Wang, who is a senior news producer with "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver." And just this year, they welcomed a beautiful baby girl.

"She stuck with me and because of that, I'm whole, my life is whole and completed. She's given us, me, this, you know, both of us have now this incredible daughter, Celine, and, she's simply the best thing that ever happened to me," said Duthiers. 

I'm getting misty, because the two of you have been together a long time, and I've been witness to your journey, and it's been beautiful.

In May the announcement went out that Vlad Duthiers is a special co-host of CBS Mornings, where you can always find him telling you what to watch and doing stories on music and culture, while filling in at the desk with Gayle, Tony and Nate, or anchoring his own show on CBS's digital platform.