Sanford Climan (MBA/MS 1979)
(Illustration by Gisela Goppel)

Sanford Climan (MBA/MS 1979)
(Illustration by Gisela Goppel)

I grew up in the northeast part of the Bronx. There was no internet, so how did you learn about the world? If you had any resources in my neighborhood, you might have had the Encyclopedia Britannica. A little less, maybe the World Book. Neither of my parents went to college. In our case, they struggled to buy a letter a week of the encyclopedia available through the A&P, where we bought groceries. That was how I learned about the world—that, and movies, television, and books.

How do you get out of the Bronx? Being good at science. I was valedictorian of my class at Bronx Science and that was the ticket to Harvard, a school I had only visited by watching the movie Love Story. As an undergrad, I realized that although my privileged classmates were better traveled, I often knew more than they did about the history and culture of the faraway lands they had visited, thanks to what I’d read and watched while growing up. Understanding the universal, equalizing, connecting power of media was a turning point, even if I didn’t initially know what it meant for my life and career.

That became clearer when I got to HBS. I learned that, in addition to being inspired by media, I liked to work on projects that had a beginning, middle, and end, which fit perfectly with the world of film and television. All signs were starting to point toward Hollywood. After graduation I got on a plane and went to California for the first time, eventually finding a secretarial job at a starting salary that would have driven down our class average dramatically, had I reported it to HBS. But I knew this was the world where I wanted to work. I’d met the CFO of MGM while working on an HBS research project, and he referred me to a job in distribution, before I was able to move into production. Unfortunately, Hollywood studios have much in common with politics, and after 13 films, I was swept away as part of a regime change.

That was a turning point, too. I had always made it a priority to help as many people as I could while working at MGM. Creative Artists Agency was still very new, and their agents had restricted expense accounts, so I always made sure to invite my friends at CAA to screenings so they could have an early look at talent they wanted to sign as clients. A little over six years later, I was hired as founding head of CAA’s corporate practice and had the opportunity to work with Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, Danny DeVito, Kevin Costner, and director Michael Mann—all true storytellers and translators of the human condition.

Since I joined the industry over four decades ago, there’s been a technological shift from a local delivery platform to one that is global. In tandem, we’ve seen a transformation from a culturally and ethnically centralized world of actors, writers, and directors to one that embraces a diversity and complexity of life experiences. Entertainment is the single binding thread that brings people together, no matter who they are or where they’re from.

We’re now in a world where what you can do is more important than where you went to school. This is especially true in the creative arts. Looking to the future, I’m most excited about that potential, as well as the power of global, cross-cultural storytelling to create dialogue. At a time when we’re so often driven apart, we need to educate and inspire the next generation of storytellers to use their creative gifts, to bring people together and to offer the kind of window on the world—and opportunity—that movies, television, and books gave me as a child.

Sandy Climan is founder and CEO of Entertainment Media Ventures.

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