Alumni Spotlight: Daniel Payne, Class of 2002

Daniel Payne HeadshotDaniel Payne graduated from BHP in 2002. After working in investment banking and financial services, he decided to change paths and pursue a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University. He is now a consultant for AEA Consulting, one of the world’s leading arts, culture and entertainment consulting firms based in New York. Prior to joining AEA, he worked on exhibitions and installations that appeared in the New Museum, Center for Architecture, New York Fashion Week, PS1, Storm King Art Center and the galleries at Columbia University.

 

Tell me more about what AEA does and your role as a consultant with them?

AEA is an arts and cultural consulting firm. We have two main services. We serve as consultants for anyone involved in the arts and cultural world planning a capital project, helping them determine what spaces their buildings will need to fulfill the organization’s mission and also figure out what they’ll need to do from an operational and organizational side to use the space to the best of their abilities. The other thing we do is help with strategic planning and program assessments for these same sorts of arts organizations, as well as foundations and governmental bodies who have an impact in the world of arts and culture. I am often called in on the capital project side where I can merge the business and architecture sides of my background, but I work on the strategic planning side as well.

 

You started in investment banking working for Citigroup then moved into design. How did that shift come about? Was design an area you were always interest in pursuing?

I was always interested in design. I took a few classes in the architecture school at UT. I also did a lot of home projects and woodworking growing up with my dad. I had come to a point working on Wall Street where I was ready to expand my horizons and work in a more multidisciplinary way than I could in banking. I started thinking about the options and talking to people, and I decided that if architecture was something I wanted to do, it was the right time to make the shift. I took a year off to complete some prerequisites I needed in order to apply to architecture school, then got into Columbia for their three-year Master of Architecture program.

Architecture provides me the opportunity to have my hands in lots of things. I am not doing pure architecture per se right now – we don’t draw the building’s plans or manage the construction –but I am working with architects, fundraisers, artistic folks and a wide range of people who have an impact on culture.

 

You are consulting on projects all over the world from China to Afghanistan. What are the most challenging aspects of this?

The most challenging part is getting to know the local environment in each place and understanding how art has a role in that society. We are working on a project in Malaysia right now and there is a long tradition of art there, but not a long tradition of supporting art philanthropically like we have in the West. Developing people’s mindsets for what these institutions can do for them in preserving their history and how that can impact their lives today through museums, opera houses, theaters, is a challenge. We are finding ways to get people to understand that dual role and teaching the organizations how to maximize their resources – financially, organizationally and creatively. We are also working on a project in Athens [the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center] and they have completely different challenges. They are dealing with many economic challenges in Greece, and we are helping them put together a strategy that will allow them to maximize their huge financial commitment for the benefit of both the nation’s culture and the economy as a whole.

 

What aspect of your job do you enjoy the most?

The sheer variety of things we are involved in and the way our work has an impact on the lives of the people in the cities where these projects are housed. Art and culture can play a big role in promoting creativity. To be able to see that happen in so many places and so many ways is great. Knowing that what I am doing has a lasting impact on a city and its people is really exciting and gratifying.

 

Daniel Payne Reader PhotoYou did independent design and installation work in New York. What were some of your favorite projects?
I was a part of an exhibition at the New Museum called “The Last Newspaper” exploring how things were changing in news and media. This was in 2010, so there were many changes happening, especially following the financial crisis, that had still not been explored at much depth. During the exhibition, I was on the staff of a short-run newspaper called the New City Reader, which aimed to explore these issues further and examine the impact of these changes on cities and citizenship.   The project was particularly interesting because we worked out of the galleries in the museum, so I got to interact with people coming in and out of the museum on a daily basis – they didn’t know there was a newspaper being produced inside, so their reactions in watching us work were fascinating. We would translate conversations we were having with people into stories for the paper, and then we would paste the papers weekly all around New York City. It was really interesting to take what was happening in this one place, the museum, and take it into the city to see how people react to it. It was a great social concept.

I also worked on the design and implementation of a project called “Low Rise High Density” which was an exhibition on history of the housing type at the Center for Architecture. I was involved at an early stage and helped develop it with my friend who was curating. It was an interesting lesson in how to make research tangible and understandable in a gallery.

 

Daniel Payne constructionHow do you think your degree in Architecture has complimented your degree in business and how have you seen the two disciplines intersect in your work?

They complement each other incredibly well. There is a myth that some architects would like to perpetuate that there is a grand singular genius behind designs, but in reality, it is very collaborative. Business, and in particular the way BHP teaches business, with its team-building focus and how to connect people to one another, are so important. Ultimately that is how architecture happens. It is about how to make the vision a reality and all of the planning and steps that go into that. You have to create the organizational structures needed to make the project successful.

I was able to leverage my business background when I was in architecture school to add a unique voice to the conversation, because most people had a liberal arts or architecture background. The business side drives so much of the project in the “real world”, so there is a lot of that which needs to be thought about even at the conceptual level during school. At Columbia, they are doing a great job of thinking of all the ways architects can be involved, not just through purely design. In business, you are thinking of all the aspects involved in decisions and that is the same in architecture.

 

What advice do you have for current BHP students?

Spend time building your network of people you know inside and outside of the program. That will lead to a lot of opportunities later. When you are in school, you are thinking about that first job, but there is 50 years of work life after that, and you are going to be looking for interesting opportunities down the line, which may come from people you know. Don’t limit yourself by what you think the options are when you come out of the program. There are so many options out there and there is probably a position that fits exactly what you want to do.

 

What was the best piece of advice you received while in college?

Early in the program, someone said half of what you will get from college will come from outside of the classroom. I did lots of things on and off campus and the city of Austin is an incredible resource. Don’t be afraid to get experience in an area that you love, even if you don’t know how it might apply to your eventual career. There are so many amazing opportunities in Austin, even if it is through volunteer work with an organization you find interesting.

Alumni Spotlight: Paul Myhill, Class of 1989

Paul Myhill3 Paul Myhill is an entrepreneur and consultant for social ventures and non-profits. He graduated from BHP in 1989 and earned an MBA from UT in 1991. While at UT he took to heart the motto, “What starts here changes the world,” and he has spent his entire career working to make a significant contribution to the world by creating and collaborating with companies to fund charitable causes that are close to his heart. He is the founder of the Traffic Jam Campaign that rescues children from trafficking and slavery and, most recently, he founded One Percent for Children which enlists companies – primarily start-ups and early-stage ventures – to give one percent of their equity and/or one percent of their annual gross revenues to a variety of pre-selected global causes that impact the safety and wellbeing of children

How would you describe your unique career path?

I have always had a desire to change the world and make a difference and while I was in BHP and the MBA program, I developed a real love of entrepreneurship. To me success is not monetary, but defined by significance and how much positive change I can create. I wanted to make a significant contribution to the world while pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors. My career has been focused on creating income-producing ventures that can benefit the world through their close association with, and support of, relevant causes and charities. My passion for entrepreneurial pursuits has spanned a host of industries, products, services and business models, both public and private. In all cases, there is a common theme of using the products or services directly, or the income they produce, to help high-impact charitable endeavors. The charitable gifts can come from equity on the front end, a percentage of annual revenues or royalties, an amount based on the attainment of certain performance benchmarks, or any number of other options. As the businesses are successful, the charities they are supporting are also successful. Value is also created for the businesses involved in these programs through increased exposure and goodwill, resulting in greater revenues through better customer attainment and retention.

Tell me more about the causes you are passionate about and what you are working towards with your various involvements in these causes.

Paul Myhill1I am passionate about helping orphaned, abandoned, abused and exploited children. My primary goal is to use businesses to fund work that helps children around the world. My involvement first started with orphans in the developing world. I wanted to get them into loving homes in their communities instead of the default institutionalization model or, worse, letting them fend for themselves in slums and sewers. As I was working with these populations of orphaned and abandoned children around the globe, I started to notice them going missing, later finding out that they were being snatched up by human traffickers and sold into the child sex trade. I wanted justice for these kids and to help prevent them from being preyed upon. I realized the need for more prevention and rescue programs, safe houses, and aftercare support – rehabilitation and restoration facilities. Now my goal is to help create a movement of companies to tackle the gross injustices suffered by tens of millions of children around the world through One Percent for Children. I initially started with businesses I founded and consulted with to make an impact. Now I am scaling what I learned through my venture and philanthropic experience to expand for greater outcomes and impact.

What has been the most memorable moment of your work so far?

There are memorable moments from all aspects of my life. Getting a product [Protandim] featured on ABC Primetime Live was very memorable. That breakthrough product alone is a legacy creator and that was the proudest moment of my life from a business and product-development standpoint. Likewise, winning the MOOT CORP competition was my greatest memory and proudest achievement from an academic standpoint.

It is hard to pick one on the charitable side. I adopted my daughter from Asia and my heart leaps even more so when we see kids rescued from slavery in Asia. For example, I work with the Vietnamese community in Cambodia, a population that is at high-risk for sex trafficking. It is estimated that thirty-percent of the Vietnamese families in Cambodia have sold a child into the Cambodian sex trade just to survive and pay off debt.  On one of the many trips I have taken there, a local teacher pointed out two 12-year old girls and told me their parents were going to sell them the very next week. I was able to immediately make sure that didn’t happen by putting their girls in a skills-development program. We invested in the girls by educating them. We prepared them to be able to produce an income for the family in the future so the parents wouldn’t sell them. I have pictures of those girls on my desk from then and also from when they were 16 and 18. I know that those two girls didn’t have to endure the prostitution, rape and resulting stigma, and that they are now able to help support their families and community. Those kinds of prevention stories are the ones that impact me the most, even more so than the rescues.

You continue to use your business skills to make an impact through non-profit work. Are there any common themes you see in your work with non-profits that are barriers to their success?

One of the problems is a lot of the non-profits are well-intentioned but because they are US-based charities, they have to go through a series of partnership connections to get their money into the field because they aren’t in the field themselves. For example, you might have a non-profit that raises funds, then takes out their administrative fees before they pass the funds on to another non-profit oversees, that also takes out their own administrative fees before they pass it on and so on. By the time it gets to the front-line specialist, there could be four or five levels of administrative fees that were taken out, so only fifty-percent of the original donation is in the field.

We focus on finding the right front-line partners through extensive due diligence and high-accountability systems, to cut out this chain of diminishing applied resources. My non-profits direct 100 percent of public donations to the front-line specialists who are doing the real work. Partnerships with companies to apply equity and revenues to administrative costs enables general public contributions to go straight into the field. One Percent for Children, for example, is a warehouse for getting such funds from businesses, but we also have developed and apply core competencies that have been achieved through the collaboration with child-focused programs in over 75 countries. These competencies include due diligence and accountability in the field, getting funds straight into the hands of front-line practitioners without “middlemen,” and the sharing and implementation of best practices for more effective and lasting outcomes.

You won the UT MOOT CORP competition while you were in school. What was your business plan and did that lead to anything?

It was for advertising sales and placements using the boards that you now see in multiple locations like restrooms, stadiums, elevators, etc. We were one of two companies started at the same time that opened up this whole new concept in advertising. We could sell extremely targeted advertising to captive audiences that were very well defined demographically. When we won the competition with that plan a couple of the judges subsequently invested in the company. All expenses were tied to the revenue and so the costs were completely variable. It was a great business model, but the other teammates had other dreams, so we ran it for a year or so, then passed it on to another operator who now franchises it around the world.

*Note: The UT MOOT CORP competition was the predecessor to the Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition.

What advice do you have for current students?

Paul Myhill2The opportunity that you have been given – being part of such a prestigious program – is not only going to embed skills that can be used to make a tremendous difference, but will open many doors to you. As they say, “with great power comes great responsibility” – you are in a program that is truly empowering. Appreciate that, but realize you have a responsibility to use that in ways that can create positive change, and not just earn you money. You will have opportunities that others can only dream of. Define success as significance and truly change the world as you strive for it. Of course, I would encourage you to give to One Percent for Children if you end up creating a new business. How beautiful it would be to see many businesses run by BHP students and alumni coming together to help impact so many children’s lives around the world.

I also want to stress to you that, for me, it has never been a case of either choosing to go into for-profit or non-profit. With the right motives and plans, there can be a great synergy between the two. You can indeed be in a for-profit making a difference. It doesn’t have to be compartmentalized; they can be tied together in a mutually-beneficial relationship, as platforms of support for each other.

Alumni Spotlight: Rod Morris – VP of Marketing and Operations for Opower, Class of 1995

Rod MorrisRoderick Morris is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Operations for Opower, the global leader in cloud-based consumer engagement solutions for the utility industry. Rod graduated from UT Austin with degrees in Business Honors, Philosophy and MIS in 1995, then went on to earn an MBA from Stanford in 2002. Using behavioral science and big data analytics, Opower creates innovative software that motivates utility customers to save energy and better manage demand. Since 2007, Opower has become an industry trendsetter, working with 93 utilities and serving 32.1 million households worldwide. To date, the company has helped consumers save more than 4 terawatt hours of electricity – equivalent to $460 million dollars or €338 million euros.

You seem to have vast responsibility within Opower. What are the main functions of your role and what are your main goals in the position at this time?

At the highest level, I run the marketing, client services, and operations sides of the company. I am growing Opower’s top line through marketing, enhancing relationships with the client base, and delivering on an increasingly streamlined quality implementation of our products around the world. Opower’s future growth is going to come from new customer acquisition, existing customer expansion, new product introduction, and international market growth. Everything I do is in support of that: from creating awareness around our new products, to ensuring that the client base is interested in expanding relationships, and making certain our clients are satisfied with the execution of rollouts on their behalf.

What gets you excited about the work you are doing?

It’s really exciting being a part of a double bottom line business. In addition to serving our utility client’s needs, every dollar of revenue has a benefit to the planet. With our double bottom line and high growth, we have a huge opportunity to make a difference in the world while also providing great growth opportunities to our employees.

Before coming to Opower, I was working in software and doing volunteer work on the side. I never had an opportunity to do something for profit that also had a social benefit. This job gave me the opportunity to combine both of those worlds (watch a short video about this).

When I joined, we were less than 100 employees and had 23 clients. Today, we have more than 500 employees and 93 clients worldwide. We had $89 million in gap revenue in 2014 and had an initial public offering (IPO) in April.

You work with both domestic and international utility partners. What are the unique challenges of working with your partners in foreign countries and how do you determine the best messaging for the consumers in those cultures?

With our utility partners, we spend a lot of time localizing our products and innovating in those markets. The core elements of behavioral marketing are pretty consistent across all parts of the world though. What compels someone in Europe to turn off the lights is the same thing that compels them to do it in the U.S. It’s just a matter of localizing the product so we give them clear actions they can take that are relevant to their situation.

We have rapidly expanded the portion of our revenue that is international. One of the main differences in other countries is there isn’t as much regulation of the utility industry. In the U.S., there are many regions that are highly regulated. In other countries, there are more competitive markets for energy. Our U.S. utility partners use us to reach energy efficiency goals, whereas international partners are interested in the competitive advantage we bring to them.

You have degrees in business, philosophy and MIS. Your role seems to have an element of all of these areas. How did your education at UT prepare you for your career?

The thing they have in common is logical problem solving. As I have become more senior, a lot of the problems I have seen require me to go back to those problem-solving skills I learned in school.

In philosophy I learned that the best messages are the simplest ones. It is actually really difficult to come up with simple messages that resonate with people on an emotional level. The building blocks I gained in my MIS classes and as a TA for a software development class have helped me work with teams doing software implementations around the world. I use the building blocks from BHP in all aspects of my job. I would be hard-pressed to find a better business education than I received from BHP.

How did your experiences in BHP compare to going through the Stanford MBA program and did the program prepare you well?

The program prepared me very well. Stanford’s curriculum is tailored to the individual. Because of the base of knowledge I had built in BHP, I was able to focus my learning on elective projects. I wrote entrepreneurial cases, did entrepreneurial coursework and led the marketing club. Those of my classmates who had degrees in business had more freedom to pursue their own interests earlier. I think my BHP education put me in good standing within my cohort.

Your career has had many twists and turns. You had roles with the Peace Corps, Simmons & Co., Bain, LexisNexis and Vovici. Did you find that one thing led to another or were you deliberate in your transitions?

The only thing I was deliberate about was working hard and helping out whatever team I was on, as well as networking to build relationships. I didn’t plan out my career. I sought out the best opportunities and did the best I could in those positions. The variety in my career has given me valuable perspective and kept my life interesting. While recruiters were sometimes involved, pretty much every job I have had has happened because of a relationship in my network. I learned a great deal in each position, but I learned a tremendous amount as an investment banker at Simmons and a consultant at Bain. Those positions were foundational for me and really impacted how I approach my work daily.

What advice do you have for current BHP students?

I would encourage people to be more linear than I have been. It has worked out for me to bounce around to different opportunities, but there is a lot to be said for building functional expertise in one area. If you can find that area earlier on, it will be easier for you.

What is next for you?

Opower just went public and we have a huge market ahead of us. I will be working on growing the company. I had never been through an IPO and it was thrilling to be an integral part of it. I built much of the company from the early days, and had an opportunity to be deeply involved in scaling a really cool company. It was rewarding to go from that to helping in the IPO roadshow to share the company’s story and growth opportunitywith investors. It was a milestone in my professional life.

Note: To learn more about opportunities at Opower, visit the current postings page on their website.

Alumni Spotlight: Pegah Javidpour Taylor – Principal for KIPP CONNECT, Class of 2007

Pegah JavidpourPegah Javidpour Taylor graduated with degrees in BHP and MIS in 2007. She is now the principal for KIPP CONNECT Houston Middle School in Houston. The school will serve 108 5th grade students in Fall 2014, and will ultimately grow to serve approximately 430 students from the Sharpstown and Gulfton neighborhoods of southwest Houston. Pegah believes that all students in this world deserve an excellent education, and she has made her life’s work to try to end the injustice that is hindering this.

You started at KIPP through Teach for America right after college. Why did you decide to go to TFA?

It started with doing Business in Brazil, a McCombs study abroad program, after my freshman year. I was starting to pay attention to when I was just taking notes in class for learning and when I was actually passionate about what I was learning. One of the things we learned about in the program was education issues in low-income areas of Brazil, and how so many children didn’t have access to education after primary school. I was very interested in that topic and realized I was passionate about education and mentoring.

When I returned to McCombs, I signed up for the Bridging Disciplines Program which allowed me to combine my interest in education with my interest in business. Through the program, I was able to have internships in the education field that counted for business credits. I had a few internships, including ones with Teach For America’s Human Resource Department, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Dept. of Education in Washington, DC through the Archer Program. Through my internships in education policy, I realized that as much as I loved working on a level that was impacting students across the nation, what I really wanted was to work directly with children. So I joined Teach for America after I graduated college, so I could have a direct impact on kids at the classroom level.

KIPP serves students from low-income families. Tell me more about their model and what makes their schools unique?

KIPP caters to low-income families or those who do not have access to resources other more affluent families may have. The students are in school longer, which helps them catch up since they tend to come in more behind.  Research says that the discrepancies in children’s knowledge, experience, and parent-child interaction lead to children from high-income families being exposed to 30 million more words than children from low-income areas. The students also don’t always have access to extracurricular activities, so KIPP offers that during the school day. Another difference is that we have a KIPP Through College program, so our students are tracked starting in 8th grade to make sure they have the support they need to go to and through college. We are very focused on student achievement, but in a well-rounded way. We teach character in addition to academics, which is unique.

You have been with KIPP for six years now. What do you love about working for KIPP.

I love the staff. Because of our extended hours, extended school year, and unique mission, there is a special breed of teachers that are attracted to the school. They have a similar mindset. They believe that every student has the ability to learn and go to college. It is amazing to see the growth of our students over time. We work really long days, so to have that to get up to is great.

You are in your third year of the KIPP School Leadership Program. Tell me more about that.

I am a Fisher Fellow this year through the KIPP School Leadership Program. It is my third year in the program. The first year, I was in a training program for Grade Level and Department Chairs, and the second year, I was in a training program for Assistant Principals. It is a fellowship for any person nationwide starting a KIPP school. You get a year to plan when you open a new KIPP school. I traveled to about 30 schools across the nation to come up with my structures for the classes and the culture of our new Houston campus school. We also have ongoing programming to cover different topics, such as budgeting and hiring. It all started with a five-week summer institute with courses taught by experts in various fields, including business, education and sociology. There are 18 other people like me opening up KIPP schools this year, but I am the only one in Texas. This varies year-to-year based on specific growth plans of the different KIPP regions across the nation.

What has been the most meaningful accomplishment for you so far in your career?

My first year of teaching I had tremendous student achievement in my 8th grade math class. They had the highest achievement of any class in the district. One student in particular represents so much to me. She came in with very low scores and told me she was not a “math student.” In that year, I saw what was truly possible with any kid. She struggled in many ways, but she grew so much both in character and in math abilities. More importantly, she proved to herself what she can be capable of.  That is why I do this work. She reminds me that all the work I do is for students like her who don’t believe in themselves, but then show themselves they can achieve.

How do you think BHP prepared you for what you are doing now?

Having a business background has really helped me manage all the different aspects of my job. Sometimes I feel like I am running a small city. The BHP community helped me turn a huge campus at The University of Texas into a small family. I made great connections through the program. BHP also gave me a vision of what I wanted my students to be able to achieve.  BHP helps me see what amazing high school seniors need to be capable of to have a great college experience and opportunities.

What advice do you have for current BHP students?

I always followed my passion for education and kids. I suggest students do what they are passionate about and not feel like they are wasting a degree if they do not follow the traditional route.  Their business skills can be applied no matter which field they go into.  . I am so glad I have followed my heart, and it is okay to be non-conventional. You want your job to feel like something you would do if you weren’t getting paid for it. So, think about the different organizations you are involved in now and the parts of your day you choose to do.  Those parts of the day will usually show you what you would do even if you weren’t getting paid.  This way you can turn what you love doing into a career or weave it into your full-time job.

Alumni Spotlight – Kelly Merryman, VP of Content Acquisition for Netflix

Kelly Merryman headshotKelly Merryman, BHP ’98, manages content acquisition for Netflix in Europe.  She began her tenure at Netflix in 2007 licensing content for the US market. She co-led Netflix’s international expansion, acquiring TV series and films, in countries including Canada, Latin America, the UK and Ireland, the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Prior to joining Netflix, Kelly held positions in digital distribution and business development at Sony Pictures Entertainment, and spent time at both Bain & Company and Audax Group, a private equity firm in Boston.

Take me through your career progression from starting at Bain to ending up at Netflix.

Coming out of UT, I was looking for an opportunity to work in management consulting. I thought it would be a great way to build a strong skill set working in different industries and learning about various companies. I accepted a job with Bain in their Dallas office as a consultant. I worked for an airline in South Africa and actually lived there for a bit. I also worked in the automotive and paper sectors, as well as online travel. I learned a lot about myself and about working in different, large organizations.

I felt it was time to make the bets myself and move away from consulting, so I decided to join a private equity shop. Audax Group was founded by leadership from Bain Capital, looking to return to Bain Capital’s roots of investing in middle-market companies. It was an opportunity to execute on the vision component I had worked on as a consultant and see if it actually worked. I got to see what it meant to motivate an employee base during a change in strategy. The experience of thinking about the value of brands and consumers was really fun.

After getting my MBA from Harvard I took a job in LA with Sony and spent two years in their business and corporate development group figuring out how their distribution of media was going to evolve with the introduction of digital. From there, I jumped into the licensing group to actually do the distribution deals and not just plan them. I enjoy the value of negotiating deals and finding a way for two partners to create a new business.

In 2007, a lot of players entered the market place for digital distribution and Netflix reached out to me about joining their team to do digital licensing. I have been here ever since and have had an unbelievable experience. We had about 7 million subscribers in the US when I joined, now we have over 44 million on the streaming side and about a quarter of those are outside of the U.S.

What are your key responsibilities and areas of focus as the VP of Content Acquisition?

I am responsible for content acquisition for Europe.  This means that my team and I set the programming strategy for Netflix in the different countries we serve in Europe.  We select the titles, negotiate the deals and manage the budget.  Another key part of my role is driving the European expansion strategy for Netflix, determining which countries we should move into next.  I do this in close alignment with our Marketing VP for Europe.

I read that one of the ways you determine viewers’ interest in a show before buying it is checking how it has done on piracy sites. Can you talk more about that?

There are a variety of ways in which we evaluate programming. We focus most of our time on feature films and scripted TV series. We look at their performance in the market to see what the demand is. Performance on piracy sites is one piece of the puzzle, so are box office figures and linear TV ratings as well as DVD sales. This information helps us understand where there is a need. If we can identify a TV series people are watching on a pirate site because it isn’t available, we can try to license it so they have a legitimate way to view that content.

Can you talk more about Netflix’s decision to make original series content?

Ted Sarandos, our head of content,  was the champion of House of Cards, one of our first original series. He had a vision and we all jumped on board quickly. As we continue to grow our business, we want to have a much more exclusive set of TV series and films, and some of those will be original productions. This helps us define our brand and generate excitement and buzz. Netflix today is much more like a channel, albeit pure on demand, instead of a broad distributor. This strategy helps keep subscribers longer.

You were very involved in the expansion of Netflix to other countries. What were the main challenges in making those deals and how has that expansion affected the company?

The biggest question we had was “is Netflix a U.S. service?” We had to ask ourselves if everyone in the world would be interested in on-demand, or if that was uniquely American. Expanding into other countries validated that the demand was there. For the content side, we had to dive in and recognize that each market is unique and we needed to spend the money to develop those local partnerships to get the right content. We had to convince investors of the need for upfront investments that would pay off later. And they have.

What is the best part of your job?

The people. We have such a unique culture over here. We find really impressive experts in their space and give them freedom and responsibility. Being at the forefront of changing this industry is special and exciting.

Were there any specific classes at McCombs that stand out to you or helped prepare you for what you have been doing?

The case method taught in small classrooms was great. It was valuable to learn to work through solving a problem that wasn’t just in one area, but in all areas and learning how they came together. My favorite class was a marketing class taught by Shelby Carter. He would talk about unique challenges he had faced in his professional life and ask us how we would have dealt with it. Seeing those real-life examples and the grey area was enlightening. I realized nothing was as easy as it looks on paper and the answers aren’t always black and white.

Any advice for current BHP students?

Spend time networking with your classmates. They will be some of the most important people in your future. Always ask questions and ask speakers about their most challenging moments and how they handled it. Understanding how people deal with challenges can teach you a lot.