Newsmakers
Hollywood Squared
In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (September 4, 2007), Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Michael Lynton (MBA ’87) declared that from his perspective “the global economy in general — and the entertainment business in particular — is absolutely not turning the world into an American shopping mall.” Citing an “explosion of home-grown content” in diverse countries around the world, he added that “globalization does not mean homogeneity. It means heterogeneity.”
Lynton’s is a respected voice, as was underscored a few days after his WSJ column when he and Sony Pictures cochairman Amy Pascal were honored with Variety’s 2007 “Showman of the Year” award. The pair, cited for personifying excellence in entertainment and for setting standards for performance and leadership, have overseen hits such as The Pink Panther, The Da Vinci Code, and Talladega Nights, among many others.
“In Hollywood shorthand, Pascal’s the creative and Lynton’s the suit, but that shorthand suggests more conflict, and rigid boundaries, than exist for this pair,” Variety (September 10, 2007) asserted. Said Pascal of Lynton, “What he does in his own enigmatic, quiet way is make everyone better — and he gets enormous pleasure from making people look good.”
Subprime Time
With markets reeling in the wake of the subprime mortgage fiasco, BusinessWeek (September 3, 2007) turned to Wall Street eminence and Lazard CEO Bruce Wasserstein (MBA ’71) for “much needed perspective on the current turmoil.” Asked about lessons to be learned, Wasserstein said, “One is some modesty for all concerned: the rating agencies, the banks, asset managers. And certainly the masters of the debt universe and the Ph.D.’s with their black boxes turned out to be fallible. You can look at this as a shakedown cruise of our modern financial system. There are a lot of loose bolts here and there. That’s OK, if they are tightened.
A return to common sense is overdue. We need a dramatic retooling of risk management and portfolio selection. The regulatory techniques and the rating agency approaches also need a revamp.”
In the Spotlight
Because the New York City Opera’s new general manager and artistic director, Gérard Mortier, won’t take over full-time until 2009, a distinguished stand-in has stepped into that role: NYCO board chair Susan Baker (MBA ’76). After a highly successful career in finance, Baker now devotes most of her time to board work with other cultural institutions, although “it’s clear that NYCO will take up the lion’s share of Baker’s time in the near future,” declared the Opera News (September 1, 2007).
In an interview, Baker noted that the NYCO was founded in 1943 by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, during a time when a wave of cultivated European immigrants was arriving in New York and America.
“La Guardia believed that it was very important to provide this audience with an enormously high quality of opera, and that it should be accessible, innovative, and wonderful,” Baker said. “If you go back and look at what City Opera has done over the years, there’s been enormous innovation here. It was and is a thinking person’s opera company.”
Coach “Chuck” Jukes Convention
’Tis the season for bowl games and playoffs! If you’re stuck at midfield on your shopping list with the clock winding down, The Complete Handbook of Coaching Wide Receivers would make a great Hail Mary holiday gift. The treatise’s author is Coach S. “Chuck” Myers, aka Susan Reno Myers (MBA ’78) to her HBS classmates. A former Wall Street investment banker, Myers moved to football-worshipping Texas in 1992, became fascinated with the game, attended football camps, hung out with players and coaches, and eventually became a coach herself at the high-school and college levels. “I wanted to show people that I do know what I’m talking about,” Myers explained to the Dallas Morning News (October 7, 2007) when asked why she wrote the book.
Myers: In the testosterone-laden world of Texas football, Coach Myers employs the element of surprise as the author of an acclaimed handbook for receiver coaches.
Courtesy Susan Reno Myers
“I thought with my business background I would be able to figure out a way to learn football quickly,” Myers told World’s Football News (August 30, 2007). “But if there’s a way to shortcut it, I can’t find it. It’s a game of reps — even for the coaches.” Of Myers’s book, Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach said, “It is insightful, comprehensive, and a must-have resource for every coach who is serious about improving the efficiency of his [sic] passing game.”
Man on a Mission
Girand
Courtesy Jim Girand
Jim Girand (MBA ’61), who’s been a high-tech entrepreneur since the 1960s, is also a veteran duathlete and former age-group national champion who hasn’t let a bout with prostate cancer slow him down. Indeed, after successful surgery in 2006, he’s dedicated a large part of his life to a campaign to promote prostate-cancer awareness and education, including a Web site. The site, which taps into the experiences of patients and doctors, provides a lot of the information Girand could not find when he was researching options for himself after his initial diagnosis. “With the Web site’s survivor stories and expert opinions, the patient will be armed with information to approach his doctor and make a more informed decision about the best treatment,” Girand told Triathlete magazine (June 2007).
