Photo by Stella Kalinina

Photo by Stella Kalinina

A seasoned media executive, Sarah Harden (MBA 1999) was serving as interim CEO of the media company Hello Sunshine when she was brought up short by an early conversation with company founder Reese Witherspoon. “Reese told me that before she did Big Little Lies, she had never been on a call sheet [daily shooting schedule] with another senior actress,” Harden says. (The hit series, set in Monterey, California, costars Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley, Zoë Kravitz, and Meryl Streep.) “That’s crazy to me. Women represent at least 50 percent of viewership on every platform.”

Witherspoon made Harden’s CEO appointment official in 2018; now, as then, the Australian native is leading Hello Sunshine’s efforts to focus on strong, female-focused narratives across film, television, unscripted, and animation divisions, in addition to a slate of podcasts (How It Is, My Best Break-Up, In All Fairness) and Reese’s Book Club. “It’s been a time for deeply human leadership,” says Harden of working remotely during the pandemic. “I’ve shared the struggles of having a full-time job, three children, and a husband who has also been working from home during the pandemic. I can say I’m doing my best, and here’s what my best looks like. On some days, my best is pretty raggedy. And that’s okay.”

Harden came to Hello Sunshine through the Chernin Group’s Otter Media. Named president of Otter in 2015, Harden worked on the acquisition and creation of a number of media brands, including Hello Sunshine. “Reese has this incredible ability to step back and ask a question that shifts my thinking,” Harden says. “We’ve come to consider curiosity a core value of our company as a result of her example.”

Production on the second season of Hello Sunshine’s The Morning Show was paused due to COVID restrictions. Even so, the company continues to grow; Harden mentions onboarding eight employees remotely during the pandemic (adding to a staff of more than 50) as she hops from a call to a Zoom interview with a potential new hire. It’s not clear when filming will resume; in the meantime, Harden is keeping her focus on the fundamentals: building Hello Sunshine’s team and being a good steward of the startup’s resources and its mission. “We’re putting women at the center of the narrative, not only because it’s a good thing to do, but because it makes good business sense,” she says. “We’re addressing a massive gap in content.”

Aussie advantage: “The general perception of Australians is that we’re easygoing and approachable. And the accent invites a conversation, which is never a bad thing.”

Startup: “My first entrepreneurial venture was around age 10, catching fish off a jetty near my house and selling them to fishermen as live bait. They paid 20 cents per fish, and for a dollar I could buy my own game of mini golf.”

First order: “The CEO sets conditions around our values, capital, infrastructure, and team. So many of my conversations with Reese, Lauren [Neustadter, Head of Film and Television] and other members of our team focus on: Is this the highest and best use of our time? We’ve found a model of collaborative leadership that is highly effective, and also incredibly joyful.”

New normal: “Early on I realized I had to get out of the house by myself. Every morning I get up between 6:00 and 6:30 and try to get in 6,000 to 10,000 steps. I bring our dog, and she is so over it: ‘Stop taking me for walks. You’re killing me.’ ”

Silver lining: Family dinner every night. “Pre-COVID, my kids would often eat without me during the work week. Now we have a nightly ritual. My kids take turns setting the table, which they fight over every single day. And my husband and I are doing a lot of cooking together, which is great.”

Podcast priorities: Jameela Jamil’s I Weigh; Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us. “I also love This American Life and The Daily from the New York Times—although there are some days when I really try to control my news consumption.”

Buy the book: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Second act: “Probably a singer. I’ve never been anything but a shower singer, but I’ve always loved musical theater. I was in the HBS Show my first year and co-wrote the show in 1999, BGIE Nights, which was a takeoff on Boogie Nights.”

HBS takeaway: “Professor Myra Hart brought in female business leaders as speakers for a second-year course called Women in Business, which really demystified for me what it meant to be a CEO. She told us to think about our lives as a series of five-year careers; that concept has really stuck with me.”

Guilty pleasure: Coffee with real whipped cream. “I used to drink it black, but one morning I had leftover whipped cream I’d made for an apple pie—so I put a little in my iced coffee. Now every morning I say, ‘It’s a pandemic, I can have whipped cream in my coffee.’ ”

In the queue: From Scratch, based on a memoir by Tembi Locke with Netflix; Daisy Jones & The Six, based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid with Amazon. “They were both supposed to be filming now; we’re obviously waiting to see when it’s safe to come back.”

Thumbtack North Star: “At graduation, Dean Kim Clark told us, ‘No success in business will ever make up for a failure at home.’ It’s a saying I’ve kept tacked on my notice board as I try to balance building a career, having a family, being a good friend, and contributing to my community.”

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