April 9, 2025 • 52 mins
Jeffrey Thompson embodies what it means to be a transformational leader in today's rapidly evolving media landscape. With remarkable clarity, he walks us through his journey from being the first Chief Diversity Officer at Disney to spearheading digital strategy at Condé Nast, bringing a unique perspective on navigating massive organizational change amid technological disruption.
Thompson's approach to diversity at Disney wasn't simply about representation but about authentic storytelling that resonated globally. "Media companies are creating culture," he explains, highlighting the special responsibility entertainment companies bear in showcasing the world's richness. This philosophy guided Disney's evolution from characters like Cinderella and Snow White to developing content featuring Princess Tiana and productions like Coco and Black Panther – moves that were both culturally significant and commercially successful.
The conversation shifts to his time at Condé Nast, where he faced the monumental challenge of transitioning a traditional print publisher into the digital age. Thompson reveals his methodology for driving change: building compelling data-driven business cases that help executives visualize market trends and consumer behavior shifts. He cautions against the fate of companies like Kodak and BlackBerry that failed to transform despite having the technology to do so, emphasizing that while being first isn't always necessary, intentional planning for what's next is non-negotiable.
As Commissioner of LA County Workforce Development, Thompson now tackles how technological advancement will reshape employment across industries. From mechanics learning to service electric vehicles to healthcare transformed by analytics, he envisions pathways for workers to adapt rather than be left behind. His documentary work, including "Scrum" and the upcoming "Gibraltar Project," demonstrates his belief in finding "riches in the niches" – stories with profound impact that major studios might overlook.
Join us for this masterclass in leadership during periods of massive change, and discover why Thompson's parting advice to seek perspectives different from your own might be the most crucial skill in an increasingly personalized digital world.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital
changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Hi everybody and welcome toMediascape, and I want to
(00:26):
introduce you to somebody who isvery, very special, close to
our program, to our university,and who has accomplished just an
amazing number of things, inaddition to being one of the
kindest, warmest, mostthoughtful executives and
veteran leaders in the mediaspace that I have ever met.
This is Jeffrey Thompson.
(00:51):
Jeffrey, thank you so much forjoining us today.
Hello Joseph, thank you forhaving me.
Delighted to be here.
All right, everybody, just takea deep breath, grab a cup of
tea, because I'm going tointroduce Jeffrey and I'm not
even going to go through all ofhis incredible credits and
experience, he would take toolong.
You can look him up on LinkedIn, jeffrey Thompson, but I'm
going to give you just a coupleof highlights.
You get a sense of the breadthand scope of experience that
(01:11):
this wonderful gentleman brings.
So Jeffrey is a media executiveand he has been at a couple of
very notable companies, andagain I'm only going to name a
few.
He was the first chiefdiversity officer at the Walt
Disney Company and we'll betalking about that extensively.
He was the vice president ofdigital strategy and business
(01:33):
development at none other thanCondé Nast.
He's currently an executive atOracle.
He also balances his time.
He seems like he has more thanseven days in the week and more
than 24 hours in the day as afeature documentary film
producer, and his most recentfilm is called Scrum, which is
currently available on AmazonPrime.
(01:54):
I encourage everybody to checkit out.
It's a really, really greatfilm.
Additionally, he is thecommissioner of the LA County
Workforce Development Commission, which is part of his service
to our community here in LosAngeles, and amazingly, he is
also an instructor for multipleclasses in multiple programs at
the USC Annenberg School forCommunication.
(02:17):
So it's going to be hard to fitit all in.
I think we're going to have toschedule a few episodes, jeffrey
, but thank you again for beingwith us and let's just dive
right in.
I want to ask you to set thetable before we go back and get
into your history.
I want to ask you one questionright up front.
Okay, what's the most importantthing that our listeners and
(02:40):
our students should be thinkingabout to frame our conversation?
That's the most important thingto you right now, in March of
2025?
.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You know I have to tell you that's a difficult
conversation and my EDD which iswhy I do different things like
this won't allow me to say onething.
But let me try to say one thing.
We are at the crossroads ofwhere we see entertainment,
media, digital, the entireecosystem of telecommunications
sort of collapsing andintegrating, meaning that our
(03:13):
technology allows us to becomeone with the world, meaning that
I can get to any country withdata, with targeting, with great
marketing, and I can also getto every culture, every language
, every subpopulation, and sodiversity and the conversation
that we're having arounddiversity meets technology.
Entertainment andtelecommunications and how we
(03:35):
get our news out to anywhere inthe world is one of the things
that is absolutely top of mindto me and I'm spending a lot of
time on it these days.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
That's a great place for us to start.
All right, let's reel it backand head back to your Disney
days.
Right, one of the pillars ofyour career.
Did you always love Disney,since you were a kid?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, you know, I played alto and tenor sax, so
you're a musician, you love art,you love those musicals and you
love things about you know thecreative expression.
So when you looked at Disney Iwouldn't say I was a Disney file
, which means that I lovedeverything Disney, but I grew up
with Disney.
A big part of my ecosystemright, the imagination of Disney
(04:17):
, the vision of Disney, thealways looking at what's next in
innovation of a Disney thosepieces are really important to
me and I've held on to so howdid you come to be at Disney in
the beginning?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
It must have been a really exciting thing that
happened for you.
Did you just go straight intothat role of chief diversity
officer, or did that incubatefor something else?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
No, I was at Disney 11 years, people 11.
Year 8, I was appointed by WesColeman, the chief human
resources officer, and Bob Iger,who's now currently the CEO, to
be in that alliances, workingon sort of strategic alliances.
Sometimes that was integrationtype things.
(05:09):
With Pixar, we made anacquisition of Pixar, we
acquired Fox Family, which endedup being ABC Family.
So I was on one of theintegration teams for that when
we were putting certain contentpieces together, and those are
really important discussions.
What I would tell you is thatthe diversity role was by far
(05:29):
the most important role,impactful role that I've had and
it was what we call atransformational role, meaning
it was designed to help me growmy career, but also for me to
leverage my knowledge of all thebusiness units of Disney and
the challenges of Disney and thechallenges of Disney and where
we were trying to get to from anaudience perspective, and
(05:50):
that's why we we picked someonethat was inside the organization
to take on this very first VPof global diversity role and
help build what is our firstcomprehensive strategy for
diversity across.
So the Walt Disney company,which people forget, is ABC,
it's ESPN, it's theme parks,it's Disney Channel, it's hotels
(06:10):
around the world and commercearound the world and great
product offerings and charactersaround the world.
So I was very proud.
Let me just say one last thingon this because I think it's so
valuable.
Many companies are going throughtheir same iterations of
probably what Disney started 15or 20 years ago, which was
looking at the fact that Disneywe all grew up with, main Street
(06:32):
America, which is, you know,little America, all the
wonderful values of LittleAmerica and Main Street America,
so those local towns throughoutAmerica, and what we've seen is
now Little America has gone toLittle Globe, meaning that
Disney has theme parks aroundthe world in Paris, in China,
you know, disneyland Pudong andDisneyland Shanghai is in Pudong
(06:55):
, a very beautiful place inChina, hong Kong Disneyland,
tokyo Disneyland, our Floridaparks, of course, and then
California parks.
Where I'm getting with that is,every culture around the world
loves something about a companylike Disney.
But we were targeting still alot of very mainstream
characters, right?
(07:16):
So we looked at our princessfranchise and we had wonderful
princesses that had wonderfulcharacter values.
And I look at them it'sCinderella and it's Snow White
and it's Sleeping Beauty andit's Ariel.
All great characters, greatfranchise elements.
But as we're starting to buildbusiness in India.
What does it mean about?
(07:36):
How do we have characters thatexpress our love for India as we
start to express our desire tobroaden our terms and create
products like Coco or BlackPanther or Princess Tiana,
princess and the Frog?
These were characters that wehad to learn and we had to go
out of our way to be intentionalabout showcasing the world that
(07:58):
we care about those brands andwe want you to see yourself in
our movies and in our content,and so it's that kind of
targeting that sometimes it canbe very intentional, but it's
very authentic because audiencesare changing and most consumer
companies are finding that theyhave to do some of the same
things, despite the fact thatthere's a lot of controversy in
the news these days aboutdiversity and what it means for
(08:20):
not just our country, but whatit means for you know who
potentially might be left behind, which I contend is no one.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, we're going to circle back to that a little bit
later, but I just want to askyou about this because it's
always been on my mind.
You know, everybody of acertain age and generation has
grown up with Disney as theframe for our experience and our
understanding of how the worldworks, how it can work.
I'll just speak for myself.
(08:47):
I grew up in really during thatgolden era of the Disney
musicals Little Mermaid, beautyand the Beast, aladdin, lion
King.
I was a span of ages but Iwatched those over and over.
My point is that I think Disneyhas the most awesome opportunity
and responsibility of anycompany that's ever been created
(09:11):
to set the values for.
It's crazy, not just kids, butI mean it's like the whole
country starts off as kids andwhat are they watching?
They're watching Disney.
They get a sense for how theworld operates.
So you know, I want to ask you,you know in your time as chief
diversity officer there atDisney and you were also the
(09:33):
vice president of globaldiversity and inclusion a word
that we hadn't even really heardabout all that much back in the
2000s you know we've heardabout diversity, but we weren't
using that word inclusion toomuch.
You know we've heard aboutdiversity, but we weren't using
that word inclusion, too much.
Talk to me about thatresponsibility that you feel,
that Disney holds, the power itwields, and what you tried to do
to make sure the kids wereabsorbing these sophisticated
(09:57):
ideas in an entertaining way,but being really responsible
about it.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Well, it's interesting that you asked this
kind of question because it'svery passionate and sort of near
to my heart, and I think thatwhen I look at the management
team at the time of Disney,which you had some people that
really were focused on this youknow sort of the changing
audiences that we were targetingand you had others that were
like look, I've grown up in thisbusiness, I've been in this
business for 30 years, I don'tneed to really do anything
(10:32):
different.
But let me just say this myfeeling is that media companies
and technology companies have ahigher hurdle when it comes to
showcasing products andcharacters and the diversity of
our world and our country, right, whether I'm talking about the
United States or whether I'meven talking about LA County,
which has 10 million people inLA County, a population bigger
than 42 states.
So I've always said that, youknow, companies have a sort of a
responsibility.
However, when you're a mediacompany, you're creating
(10:56):
entertainment, you're creatingfilms and TV shows.
In fact, you're creatingculture, you're creating, in
some cases, what people believeabout themselves, and so media
companies have, in my mind, anincremental burden to make sure
that they are showcasing therichness of the diversity of our
world.
(11:20):
If you go back to the 1950s and60s kind of what I identify, as
you know, you didn't see many ofus on television and you didn't
see us and many times when youdid see us on television or film
, it was in very stereotypicalroles.
So when things like PrincessTiana came out and great
properties like that it's notjust that can you commercialize
and can you monetize and can youis there a business case for
(11:42):
diversity, which becomesimportant.
There's a lot of brown peoplearound the world that Disney
targets, right From Brazil toIndia and other.
You know people want to seethemselves in content and that
(12:06):
becomes very powerful.
And that's different than youknow when you're doing iPhone
marketing or other types ofproduct offerings, because
people are part of their culture, is part of the actual product
itself.
Yeah, that's why I'm sopassionate about it.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
It is an awesome responsibility and a
multi-layered responsibility.
It's pretty incredible thatit's hard for me to wrap my mind
around it and I just have tosay that, for all of the from my
perspective I know that there'sbeen bumps and some foibles
along the way I think thatDisney has embraced it and has
done about as good of a job ascan be done with their intention
(12:44):
and with the vast amount ofprogramming that they have done.
It's amazing.
Okay, so let's move on.
So you wrapped your time at theDisney company and you moved on
to Condé Nast oh my gosh, fromone monster company of influence
to another, just amazing andyou were the vice president this
(13:05):
is amazing to me of digitalstrategy, which is its own whole
huge bucket, and businessdevelopment, which is its own
whole bucket.
Tell us about, actually, youknow what?
There's a friend of mine wholikes to say the bluff, which is
the bottom line up front.
She was the Undersecretary ofDefense at the Pentagon and so
(13:27):
she would always say this isjust an aside.
But she would also say alwayssay you know, you never know
when you're briefing thepresident how long he's going to
have.
So we just say the bottom lineup front, and then we give them
the details.
Tell us, if you could, condéNast, what's Condé Nast's
mission from the inside out?
What is Condé Nast about?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Now you think about it, because I love what you just
said about bluff.
Let me give you the bluff andthen I'll go back to what Condé
Nast is about.
I went to Condé Nast as a vicepresident of digital strategy
and business development.
I went with a new managementteam.
I went to New York, loved thatentire experience right and,
although it was challenging,went for the purpose of driving
(14:07):
them out of magazines and intonew forms of business.
Did not want to see Kodak.
We did not want to see whathappened to Kodak Happened to a
great, wonderful brand likeCondé Nast.
For those of you who don't knowCondé Nast, we had 20 different
brands from fashion brands likeVogue and GQ and Glamour
(14:27):
magazine.
You know we were the heyday ofsome of the very best
advertisers in the world.
We had Architectural Digest.
We had the New Yorker.
We had, you know, bridesmagazine.
We just had a bunch of greatpublications, no-transcript,
(15:06):
disrupted by things that at thetime I went to Condé Nast, we
knew.
We had social media.
We had Facebook.
We had YouTube.
We had all these new forms ofdigital distribution.
But look at what TikTok hasdone just in the last five years
, and so that directly competes,even though it doesn't look
like publication againstpublication, it's like a new
(15:27):
medium of distribution competingagainst an old school medium
that was very important in thedevelopment of countries like
America.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
It's just amazing, guys, everybody who's listening
to this, let's realize that weare listening right now to
somebody who has been one of thedrivers in one of the biggest
shifts that has ever happened inthe history of communication.
You know, you think about whenthe printing press came, the
transition from print to digital, with global distribution and
(16:00):
publishing abilityinstantaneously, and not just
that, but user generated content.
You know, and on and on,jeffrey, the fact that you were
able to be this leader and tonavigate these huge companies
that are not, they can't,they're not nimble that's the
word I was looking for, right,they can't just make a switch
easily the fact that you wereable to be one of the captains
(16:23):
of that big navigation.
It's quite amazing.
Just can you talk about thatfor just a minute, about what
that's like being an executiveand inside of such a behemoth of
a company and figuring out howto persuade them to make these
big changes?
(16:43):
You know, like moving intodigital.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Well, think about it for a minute.
And, by the way, you're beingvery kind.
You know, understand that eachof us has to understand our own
strengths and what our ownopportunities and what are areas
that we kind of don't like tofocus on.
In mine, I learned early onthat I was an executive who was
always going to be atransformational executive.
(17:06):
So I'm all about and, by theway, a lot of companies are
forced to be thinking alwaysabout one step into now and one
step into wait what's our future?
What's our future roadmap?
Where does the market go astechnology shifts?
Or, in this case, like now, asAI integrates?
Like what products do I need tocreate?
(17:26):
So I'm what's called atransformational executive.
I'm always on the businessdevelopment side, where we're
looking three to five years outwhat new products?
What new businesses?
What is going to be disrupted?
Right, it's very predictablethat you could say that, okay, I
could see that publishing fromhindsight was going to be
disrupted now that we're lookingback.
(17:46):
But there were some executivesthat were saying we know it's
going to be disrupted in thenext five years.
What do we do to either changethat shifted, optimize our
position or create new productsor get out of certain businesses
.
So, like, for me, it's knowingwho you are, knowing what keeps
you up at night.
And for me, like, even like oneof the jobs that I don't talk
about much at Disney but I loved, was when we were transitioning
(18:09):
from DVD, I know, but like anold school technology.
Then we were exploring our veryfirst digital technology, which
was not streaming.
First digital technology wasmoving to Blu-ray disc, which
was, and that was the moving youknow, most of our content, of
our six or seven studios andgetting the motivation and the
movement to say you got to moveto that next digital strategy in
(18:31):
that next digital projectbefore you get to pure digital.
And pure digital is what?
When we've gotten rid of theconsumer package, good meaning,
you don't have the disc anymore.
Now you go straight tostreaming with Netflix and other
you know, disney plus and othertypes of of straining platforms
that are really technologyplatforms.
So it's getting people focusedon what's next in your business.
(18:53):
And maybe what's some of theconsequences if we don't move
right?
What are the consequences if wedon't build our brand in
another direction, if we don'tbuild?
You see, like Condé Nast was areally great exercise for me
because it was leaving a big,ubiquitous company like Disney
and getting to a company that'smainly distribution was
(19:14):
publications and magazines.
And it was pretty obvious tothe team that went in that if we
don't move and look for theserevenue streams in other areas
and new types of products, right, you go from a magazine, do you
go to a digital reader?
You say yes, but then that'snot what the marketplace
accepted.
Right, some people move todigital readers, but most people
(19:35):
move to social media, mostpeople move to actual video, and
so it becomes like wait aminute, we're not a video
company.
How do you convince executives?
And let me just say this lastpiece, because I think it's
really important you got to I'mburying the lead here, folks you
got to use data and building abusiness case, a strategic
(19:55):
business case, to moveexecutives down a path.
Right, you have to consistentlyshow research of where the
market trends are going, whatconsumer behavior is, observing
behavior.
I always say in classroomsobserve people's eyes, what
they're doing, not what they'resaying.
Observe what they're doing withtheir time, what they're doing
with their spare time, theirfree time, their work time,
(20:17):
observe the new trends andhabits, and then you're come a
long way to understanding thatyou know sort of what direction
you'd go.
I was in the airport last week,headed to Washington DC, and I
just sat around and watchedpeople and I had one of those
flashbacks.
20 years ago there would havebeen a bunch of people with
newspapers and magazines andbooks and guess what People are
(20:38):
reading.
But they're reading on theiriPhones and they're reading on
their tablets and they'rewatching videos and they're
sending notes to their friendsand they're doing social media
and so watching that behaviorare really great insights of
what's coming Right, and youcould have seen that if a lot of
company executives could haveseen that.
So I've been spending my timemainly in that space.
(21:00):
Convincing people is not easy,folks.
My time mainly in that space.
Convincing people is not easy,folks.
When you're trying to tell acompany that their products are
ugly or that you know that.
You know that's outdated, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
They're kids.
You're up in a young but you'reobsolete.
You did, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I have to be the one to tell you but yeah, you got to
do that with data, you have todo that with research, you have
to do that with, you know,keeping people focused on what
is our vision for the future forour company.
And I look at companies likesome of my favorite companies
Kodak, right, and one of thecompanies that invented the
digital camera, yet it put themout of business because they
(21:36):
didn't transform their oldbusinesses fast enough and
modernize them.
And I look at, like you know,one of the very first products
that I was able to do, email I'mdoing this email outside of the
office a company calledBlackBerry.
But BlackBerry got crushed bynot continuing to innovate, and
the iPhone came along with itstouch screens and storing photos
(21:57):
and iCloud and an app store andphotographs, and guess what
happened?
Put a great technology like theBlackBerry into sort of
dormancy, and so it's thosekinds of things that you don't
want.
You know you have to lead oryou got to move out of the way
in a disruptive environment, andso I'm a big believer in
leading in those areas.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You are one of our lead teachers if not our lead
teacher in teaching leadershipin the program at DMM.
There was one semester lastyear where you couldn't teach it
and so I said, okay, I'll pinchit and I'll step in for you,
and I probably did a prettyshadow of a job compared to what
you normally do.
But when we were talkingthrough leadership with the
class, my biggest thought aboutwhat I think is really important
(22:40):
in leadership is the sense ofembracing change, making change
the norm, so that as leaders,we're like there's a
prescriptive and there's amachinery that is built in that
we just say we never stopchanging.
We are only thinking aboutwhat's next, next, next, next,
next, next, next.
And then that keeps that wordthat I couldn't think of right
away before nimble.
That keeps your whole teamnever thinking like, okay, we're
(23:02):
.
And then that keeps that wordthat I couldn't think of right
away before nimble.
That keeps your whole teamnever thinking like, okay, we're
just going to be in, we'regoing to go into maintenance
mode for a long time.
You know, leadership means we'reon the front, we're in the
front, we're pushing, we're,we're the tip of the spear,
we're the scouts I think of.
You know big groups of people.
There was always like a scoutor two that were.
(23:22):
They were out there miles maybe5, 10, 15, 20 miles ahead of
everybody else that are lookingaround.
So to me that's a big one.
But I want to throw it back toyou because you know you've been
talking about change andleadership and just that
philosophy of making change, nota reaction.
But that is the norm.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Well, in a disruptive environment, in a fast-paced
environment like we're in withthe digital ecosystem,
telecommunications when I saydigital ecosystem,
telecommunications, all thetechnology industries, all the
social media companies which arevery powerful and big and
global your traditional studiosand television networks, but so
media, entertainment technology,telecommunications those are
(24:03):
big, robust areas wheretechnology is driving a super
fast pace of change.
Now I'm a big believer that youhave to drive to what's next.
I'm also a big believer thatyou don't have to be first.
Sometimes, like you drive tofirst, like Microsoft Surface
that their Surface tablet wasfirst, they had the first tablet
(24:26):
, not iPad, and it was ahorrible failure at the time
because they were ahead of themarket.
Consumer behavior hadn't caughtup to where the visionaries at
Microsoft at the time were.
Apple launched iPad years later.
There was better contentofferings, there was better
technology infrastructure sothat someone would put on a
(24:47):
little video on their iPad andit actually worked and it was a
good experience.
So sometimes there's anargument that you want to be
first but you don't have to befirst If you have a big, robust
business.
But you have to be intentionalabout planning for what's next.
Think about what Disney hasdone with Disney Plus.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Disney was in the movie.
I was just thinking aboutDisney Plus.
I mean there is.
In some ways it looks likethey're way behind Disney.
When are you going to get onthe game?
But boom, when they arrive, didthey arrive?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, yeah, you want to make sure that you're.
You know like, remember thereis risk mitigation.
You don't need to always befirst and cannibalize your
business, but if eyeballs aremoving and platforms are
developing that are strategic toyour long-term vision for your
company, you have to find a wayto be intentional about moving
and exploring.
Disney bought a company rightBantech to start learning how to
(25:41):
stream and to startunderstanding getting that
muscle.
They started looking at how doI move direct to consumer, which
is, remember, a company likeDisney is like a lot of
companies where their technologyor their products went through
third parties.
You know you did a TV show atDisney, usually it was going to
a third party platform.
Or if you did a movie, it wasgoing to a theater owner's
(26:03):
platform.
Disney didn't own thoseplatforms.
So Disney had a lot of revenuethat would come through what we
call B2B platforms business tobusiness right.
And at the time you havecompanies like Netflix starting
to grow up saying, hey, we'regoing to be direct to consumer,
we're going to have contentdirect and you own the
subscriber, you own the customerservice, you own the quality or
(26:31):
not of the platform.
You know you own theengineering, you own the sort of
that verticalized platform.
A lot of companies Sony, disney, warner Brothers, fox go
through most of your traditionalstudios, the third party
businesses, were how theymonetize most of their content
and now that was changing into averticalized.
So it becomes important to sayhow do we get the muscle to
change, how do we get the newkind of talent to change the big
(26:52):
difference?
Like you know, like when I waswatching Blu-ray disc, you
needed a consumer package.
Could you know sort ofbackground.
So meaning you're doing PNLs,like profit and loss statements
you're doing.
You know you're developing aproduct just like you would
developing a Procter Gamble.
You know a line of deodorantbut it's a different kind of
product.
You're going to retailers andthird parties but very similar
(27:14):
to sort of consumer packagedgoods skillset.
And now you go to distributionof direct to consumer streaming.
And now you need wait a minute,we got data scientists we need.
We need different kind ofanalytics teams.
We need different types ofengineering teams and product
iteration.
Our marketing teams are nowbecoming digital marketing teams
.
So when you start reallythinking about it, you put those
(27:35):
together and you have a realopportunity.
And I've concentrated on Disneyand media because it's kind of
fun and sexy and people kind ofknow Disney and media and media
because it's kind of fun andsexy and people kind of know
Disney and media.
But think about it if you're intransportation right now and
you're just seeing thisrevolution to electric vehicles
and this revolution to cars thathave 500,000 sensors on each
(27:55):
car that might become autonomouscars or driving vehicles, like
we're seeing with Waymo drivingaround the city of Los Angeles
right now, as driverlessvehicles that are on their own,
independent, and you're seeing awhole new ecosystem.
So that's the same kind ofdigital, but deployed
differently.
Think about how healthcare isabout to be transformed thanks
(28:17):
to acquisitions that Microsofthas made Oracle right currently
work Oracle.
We bought a company calledCerner all around healthcare
analytics and outcomes of thefuture.
And how do you triangulate andadvance medicine and healthcare
outcomes based upon havingadvanced technology?
So I'm mentioning three bigones, of course, but financial
(28:39):
transformation, you're going tosee just a ton of the digital
ecosystems that have cut acrossevery single area.
Let me give you one that I tellmy students, but I just want you
to make sure you understand.
I tell them you don't have togo into all the new sexy,
glamorous industries.
Think about what Uber has beenable to do to the taxicab
business to transform a dormantyou know sort of taxicab
(29:02):
experience and they created awhole nother way, leveraging an
app, somebody else's platform,either Apple or, you know,
android's platform and theycreated a business on top that
competes directly againsttaxicabs.
Right, they just relooked,reengineered, revisited and
innovated and disrupted amarketplace that's been in place
(29:22):
for over a hundred years.
So you don't have to be in justsomething brand new.
You can do things by looking atwhat could be made more
efficient or where could therebe another, a better
customer-friendly experience, orchange that user experience
dynamic.
So I'm very passionate about itand it can happen in a lot of
different industries, as we see.
I gave an example in class thispast week.
(29:46):
Poppy was purchased by PepsiCofor $2 billion, and I think it's
Allison Ellsworth is thefounder of Poppy.
The soda you know like adifferent kind of soda pop.
Right, it's like more you know,with probiotics and sort of new
technology inside of the soda.
(30:07):
And you ask, why didn't Pepsidevelop themselves?
They paid $2 billion because alot of innovation comes from
small groups and small teamsthat are on the ground looking
at the gaps in the space thatare occurring because of
changing tastes, at the gaps inthe space that are occurring
because of changing tastes,changing habits, changing trends
(30:31):
.
And this lady caught on.
Five years later she sold hercompany to $2 billion to one of
the biggest beverage companiesin the world.
So it can happen across almostany industry, looking for sort
of those gaps that innovationhas brought on by.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Why don't we stay right in this lane, right here?
Because you are doing thisincredible civic leadership job
as the commissioner of the LACounty Workforce Development
Commission and that's thinkingahead to where jobs are headed.
And I know a whole bunch ofpeople are very, very scared
about AI.
They're scared about autonomyand robotics and things that are
(31:05):
coming to disrupt andpotentially take away parts of
the workforce.
So how long have you beencommissioner?
And then could you tell usabout this work that you're
doing at the commission?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Commission all about.
You know how do we train ourlabor force of 10 million people
here in California, our biggestcounty in the United States,
but also, what does a job of thefuture look like, how do we
protect our labor and ourmarkets, and how do we innovate
as a region as technology shifts?
And the examples I use would bethings like, for example, you
know if you're a mechanic.
Well, are you a mechanic of atraditional car?
(31:46):
Are you learning how to be amechanic of an electric vehicle
or autonomous driving vehicle?
So that's sort of the easy one.
Right, you're a roofer.
Are you doing solar roofingrather than old school roofing?
So the thought process is youknow what are those extensions,
what are the types of traininggaps that we have?
And then how do we get peopleskilled up to take on these
rules, which sometimes will bevery disruptive?
(32:08):
You mentioned artificialintelligence.
It's going to be one of thosetechnologies that's kind of like
Google.
Remember when we you know, ohgo, google, it go, search on
something.
Be an ingredient that is goingto end up being in a lot of our
products and a lot of ourservices.
Right, it's going to be athinker for us, it's going to be
(32:30):
an extender, but it's alsogoing to be an innovator, but
it's also going to be adisruptor, right.
The same way that, you know,the automobile or the bicycle
disrupted horseback riding right, which used to be
transportation.
We're going to see innovationand change and disruption, and
so getting people's skill tomove to the next level becomes
very important.
How I got into this, I've beentalking about this what's next
(32:50):
stuff for a while, right, what'snext in transportation?
What's next in healthcare?
What's next in media andentertainment?
You know, what's next in ourinfrastructure for utilities and
energy, and those are alldisruptive areas that disrupt
labor forces, right.
And so, as one of the biggestcounties, or the biggest county
in the United States, you know,la County was saying like, how
(33:11):
do we, you know, begin to get astrategy around the posture for
what's next right, in some ofthese really big areas?
We have this big thing in threeyears called the Los Angeles 28
Olympics that are going to beright here, a global showcase
for LA.
And while some people want totalk about the flaws of Los
Angeles, I talk about like weare a center of gravity, a
(33:33):
laboratory for the world.
We're going to show innovationof new technology.
You know, I look at so manycompanies that have developed in
California from you know, newcompanies like Rivian or Lucid
companies that my students nowget jobs in which I love, but
these are companies that arelike developing what's next
Waymo, right, the autonomousdriving company that was started
(33:54):
by Google, but there's so manymore.
We talk about the fact that theiPhone was created right here in
California by, you know, one ofthe biggest companies in the
world, apple, but it wasn'tcreated for California, it
wasn't created for the UnitedStates, it was created for the
world, and so it's important tounderstand that a lot of the
products that we're creating aretransforming society and we're
(34:16):
just the laboratory here inCalifornia, in Southern
California.
So really powerful, importantand important work of thinking
what's next in our labor force.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Wow, I love what you just said.
It gave me some chills as Ithink about California and
Southern California and LosAngeles and what our region
means I think about.
Here at USC, you know, one ofthe heartbeat educational
incubators of the great mindsyou know, along with our friends
(34:48):
over at UCLA and the othergreat universities that are all
around the Los Angeles area.
I've always believed that weare the engine of creativity and
innovation for the whole world,absolutely, and we are.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I mean, like you, think about what you just said
about ucla and usc, which is a,you know, traditional rivalries.
But I love ucla and I love allthe think about just southern
california.
Great universities are herefrom you, from cal arts to
caltech to kelsey, fullerton, tocal poly, to uc irvine to uc
san diego.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
You just heperdine and lmu and chapman.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, and think about now.
You take all those universitiesand put them in the middle of
Wyoming or the middle of Idahoor the middle of other great
states, and they would kill tohave those universities with all
those freshmen and graduateschool students coming in to
innovate and lead and learn, andit transforms areas, it
(35:43):
transforms regions.
So I think that you know, weshould never take for granted
how many great and, by the way,I've only mentioned, like
schools in Southern California,and I didn't even mention the
Northern part of the state,which also has great
universities the fact is we havethis great innovation, this
great robust thinking that comesin every single year to
Southern California and it'ssomething that we should, just,
(36:05):
you know, pride ourselves in.
So thank you for mentioning it.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
We're transformers.
We're more than meets the eye.
You might say we have a globalcrossroads.
So, in addition to all thiswork that you've done on a
corporate level, you also are acreator yourself.
So you've done, we've talkedabout your big macro projects,
(36:30):
but then you are a film producer.
You know one movie at a time.
Tell us about Scrum.
Tell us about that, and thenI'm really excited to hear about
your new project that's coming.
But tell us about Scrum.
Tell us about how that spoke toyou as somebody who you know.
Diversity not only it's who youare, right, it's in your
(36:51):
heritage, it's in your blood,but it's also in your soul and
your spirit and what you projectout and teach the rest of us
about.
Why did Scrum appeal to youfrom all of those, from all of
those areas, and what the heckwere you thinking?
Going trying to make a movie?
I can't think of anythingharder than that.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Well, let me tell you , you put good teams together.
I'm the producer, so I buildthe teams, build the budget and
things of that and you know youcan work if, as long as you have
a good director, good writingand a sort of a good storyline
and concept and some flexibilityalong with funding, you can
tell a great story.
Let me tell you.
I'll tell you a tiny bit aboutScrum and a little bit of how I
got into this.
Scrum is a story about rugby,and that's the surface story.
(37:31):
But the secondary story which Idid learn at Disney is it's a
story about love.
It's a story about redemption,with kids starting out in rugby
and then turning into nationalchampions.
We tell the story of anAfrican-American coach in the
middle of the deep South at avery prestigious, affluent,
primarily Caucasian university,that this guy is going through
(37:53):
midlife crisis, teaching rugbyat a small college and he wanted
to be an investment banker, andso his parents are like we paid
for graduate school, we've doneall these things and you're a
little rugby coach in the middleof the deep South, where we
don't even play rugby that much.
Well, year three, this guy notonly turns this group of
(38:14):
students around, including theschool mascot, which used to be
a big character, recruited thatperson to the rugby team, turns
into Division II NationalChampions for America, division
II National Champions forAmerica, and they won the
Division II NationalChampionship.
Rags to Riches Hero Story.
I worked with a great team and adirector by the name of Thomas
(38:37):
Morgan who ideated and createdthe story.
I partnered with him and, bythe way, it's a great example
that I talk to my students about.
Make sure you're alwaysnetworking, make sure you're
never burning bridges.
I was brought into this project.
I didn't adiate the project.
I was brought into it at astate where I could have a good
impact on it by my former seniorvice president at the Walt
(38:58):
Disney Company right.
So I had left Disney yearsprior.
My former boss came in and saidlook, we're working on this
great project.
You could be a part of this,and I jumped all over it and,
sure enough, three years later,we have not only a great film
that's on Amazon Prime right now, it's called Scrum S-C-R-U-M,
but it's at Sony and it's beenpicked up and we're trying to
(39:20):
get it to be a live actionpicture.
Now, why am I saying all this?
Disney got my creative juicesflowing because I got my first
producer credit while I was atDisney on ABC Family and that
was on a back to school specialcalled Schooled like school with
an E-D.
Like you know, I got schooledkind of thing, but as a manager
(39:41):
as it ended up being a VP atDisney you can't be in
management in a studio like thatand also produce.
You can't be in management in astudio like that and also
produce.
And so when I left Disney, Iended up getting to a small
startup called Shout Factory andShout Factory it's called Shout
Factory TV now and these littleyoung entrepreneurs, they were
(40:04):
busy trying to transform theirbusiness and they were taking
artists like James Brown andRichard Pryor and Steve Martin
and you know they were takingartists that were sort of, in
many cases you know, had beenaround for years.
In the case of Richard Pryorand James Brown, they were both
deceased entertainment.
(40:30):
We were like repurposing andcreating new content from a lot
of these old groups that werevery important culturally.
It's like how do we bringRichard Pryor back to life even
though he's no longer on thisearth?
And so we were doing these kindsof digital deals and my first
producer credit outside ofDisney was there and that led me
to start saying, wait a minute,maybe I could start doing these
documentaries and tell storiesthat go back, put the diversity
(40:51):
hat on, tell stories that bigHollywood would have trouble
picking up, because you know theeconomics and the
commercialization, you knowthey're niche stories and I've
always said can you find richesin the niches?
And many times you can't findriches in the niches and many
times you can't.
And so you know I tell them.
You know when I talk aboutscrum and rugby and this midlife
(41:12):
crisis guy going through youknow the tough time in his life
putting this bad news bears ofgroups together and then they
win the national championship.
It's a niche story that becomesbigger than when we originally
intended, and so we try to findways like that.
If you want.
I'm working on another one now,but I can talk about it later
if you'd like.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
No, no, right now.
That's exactly where I hope youwere going Because, again,
you're always right on the edgeof.
You know, right at thebeginning we talked about it's
not just entertainment for you,you know, it's not just digital,
it's culture and entertainmentat its heart and in the soul.
And I teach this to my studentsthat a great story has three
elements.
Well, a story should have threeelements.
(41:52):
Right, the characters' lifeshould change.
You know, on the inside, that'sgreat.
Their life should change on theoutside, that's better.
But if they change the worldthat they live in in some way
we've seen this in the Star Warsand the Harry Potters I think
about.
You know, we're talking aboutkid stories that you know, I
(42:13):
think about how to train yourdragon they actually changed
their culture.
So I love this that you are asa storyteller, you're always
right on the bleeding edge ofwhat's happening culturally, and
so tell us about this, the nextvery timely story that you're
working on now.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, it's funny because streaming has brought
about the fact that I can youknow, there's an independent
producer class of directors andproducers that has grown up in
the last maybe 10 to 15 yearsthat can take projects and take
them directly to streamingservices and get stories told
(42:45):
that were hard to get picked upand hard to tell previously.
I want to be clear when I saythis If you're an independent
producer, you're always lookingfor stories that are either
niche or overlooked, that can becommercialized.
Right.
If it's a big, huge story BlackPanther, disney's got it right,
spider-man you know you get thebig ones.
(43:05):
You're going to have bigstudios pick them up.
So I can take on projects thatare a little more controversial,
that have a little more edge tothem, or pick up something
that's dormant, that might beresurging, like, right, that was
James Brown.
That was a voting rightsdocumentary that I did about.
You know something that youknow other big studios weren't
(43:26):
picking up Scrum was about thesame thing.
Well, I want to introduce youto the Gibraltar Project.
This is a project that's aboutone of those important subjects
that a studio is not going topick up but that I can sliver
and take a narrative andcommercialize it, and we talk
about this difficult subjectcalled reproductive rights and
(43:48):
reproductive health and we talkabout the debate that's going on
in Europe.
It's called the GibraltarProject.
Gibraltar is in the territory inEurope and we filmed in
Gibraltar, and Gibraltar had avery interesting take on
reproductive rights.
They were very conservative.
You could go to jail.
You could get convicted of acrime if you did not follow
(44:11):
their policies, which were muchmore restrictive on reproductive
rights.
At the same side, america, theUnited States, was much more
moderate on abortion rights andreproductive rights, and so what
we've done is we've taken thetwo sides and we share both
sides of it.
As Gibraltar is going moremoderating on reproductive
(44:34):
rights, america is tightening upand moving to where you're
making reproductive rights lessavailable, and what's happening
is we explore that in thejuxtaposed positions, and so we
do that at a really interestingrate.
It's called the GibraltarProject.
We've finished principal filming, we're now in editing, we want
to go to festival next year.
(44:56):
We're telling a great story.
We have some high-level people,including the premiere of
Gibraltar on camera in thisdocumentary, and so I'm
encouraged by what we are seeing.
But you know, anyone who's beenin the creative space knows
it's when you get.
You know, you, we, the editingroom is an important room
(45:18):
because it talks about what isthat story, what's the story arc
, what makes it educational, butalso what makes it entertaining
.
You know, I will say one lastthing about this.
I'm in the documentary categoryfor a reason because my heart
of hearts is I'm a storytellerand I like telling stories about
nonfiction and these stories.
There's so many rich storiesabout different parts of
(45:41):
American society or globalsociety that are never told,
that are really important, orglobal society that are never
told, that are really important,and I feel like I can do my
little bit to tell a story in adifferent way, in ways that I
learned about when I was at theWalt Disney Company, but even
when I was at Condé Nast andwhen I was at Shout Factory.
Really important to learn totell stories that can resonate
(46:02):
with either niche audiences orregional audiences and in some
cases you might get big globalaudiences.
So super critical GibraltarProject.
Please look out for it.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
All right, thank you for sharing that with us.
Well, we saw it at the Oscarsthis past year that there is a
renaissance of really smallfilms, important films,
important stories that haveevergreen truths baked into them
.
But they don't necessarily haveto be these gigantic,
big-budget films to have impact.
(46:32):
And I'm a filmmaker, as youknow, and a director, writer and
producer and it's reallyheartening to me to see and to
hear from you and to see thisshift that's happening.
Some of these very small, veryniche, the niches, the riches
and the niches.
I like that.
I'm going to hold on to that oneand think about how a really
(46:54):
small story that seemingly isvery small can be a microcosm of
really big themes that arehappening around the world.
You know, here at USC Annenberg, right, we're the communication
school.
I say it until I'm blue in theface the most important force,
the most powerful force in theworld, it's not money, not bombs
(47:18):
or war, it's communication, theability to communicate, and
that starts with the ability totell a story that is human, a
story that's compelling, andthat word compel is an
interesting one.
What makes something compelling?
It means that it compels you toact, and that's what we're in
(47:40):
the business of as communicatorsand communication teachers For
anybody who's listening.
I hope that you think about thatidea and the power that we have
to take ideas just words andideas and somehow compel our
audiences to turn those ideasinto action.
(48:02):
And we are the engineers ofthat process.
We don't engineer planes orbridges or vaccines.
We engineer ideas that turninto action, and that comes from
great storytelling.
Jt, I've kept you on for a longtime and I know it's just about
time to wrap up, so I didn'tprep you for this one, but I
(48:23):
want to ask you the questionthat I love to ask, if you
wouldn't mind, which is if youhave one piece of advice or
maybe it's a saying that youhave or that you've developed or
that you heard about fromsomewhere one piece of advice
that you could share, and itcould be something related to
career, it could be lifephilosophy One core, abiding
(48:48):
piece of advice that you couldshare with anybody who's
listening right now.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
You know in this, you know one of the powerful piece
about everything we've talkedabout with digital and this
digital ecosystem and targetingaudiences and all the analytics
of that, and I, you know, youkind of have data to understand
what populations are doing.
If you're a marketer, it'swonderful.
You know what people's favoritecolors are, you know what
favorite cars are.
(49:13):
You know where to put theirmoney to get them to be
influenced.
You do the same thing infilmmaking in many cases.
Let me do one of the cautions.
It's something that's on mymind a lot and that is that you
know we see these wonderfulplatforms like Meta, facebook
and Instagram and TikTok thathave revolutionized the world in
many ways, and how we capturedata and how we capture eyeballs
(49:36):
.
Right now, we get news andentertainment out, but now we're
seeing that more than 50percent of people Americans are
getting their news fromplatforms like Facebook or an
Instagram or a TikTok.
And to your point, the onething that I would share is more
of a caution Make sure you'rereading wide enough.
(49:57):
Don't just read your opinion.
Read other people's opinions.
Debate both sides, like we'redoing with Gibraltar Project.
We're not just showing one sideof the reproductive rights
story, we're showing the otherside of the reproductive rights
story.
Get into the head of people thatmay be disagreeing with you,
and the challenge we have isthat technology allows me to
(50:19):
target so closely to what wealready like or what you already
like.
So if you look at thealgorithms, I get what I already
know I like and I have to gosearch for things that might be
different than my opinion.
I think the world's going to bea better place if we figure out
that there is something calledover-personalization.
(50:40):
I want to personalize.
I want to know when you likesomething.
I even want to know when youdislike something, because I
need to know how to convince youdifferently if I'm a marketer.
But when it comes to socialissues and how we learn and how
what is, you know, the sky isblue or the sky is gray.
It's important that you arewell read and seek out opinions
(51:00):
that are different than your own.
So that'll be my wisdom of youknow for the day.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
I have so many thoughts on that, but we're
going to leave it right therebecause I want you to have the
last word and I want to say thedeepest thank you.
It's really an honor that you'dcome and teach with our
programs, an honor that you'dshare an hour, an hour and a
half of your incredibly valuabletime with all of us.
I can't wait to share your thisepisode out with as many people
(51:26):
as I can, and I will alwaysremember what it was that you
said right there at the end tobe reading broadly, especially
the things that we might notagree with absolutely.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
It's been great, joseph professor jeffrey
thompson, among so many otherincredible roles and accolades,
that he's had different titles,different things, and I couldn't
help but, sitting here, think,boy, we need people like you and
more and more public serviceand politics, which is really an
incredible act of service, andI hope that you'd consider that,
(52:05):
because we need people like youwho are leading with warmth and
thought, innovation, ethics allthe things that you embody on a
daily basis.
Thank you very much for joiningus everybody here on this
latest episode of Mediascape andI'll see.
We have so much more to discusswith Jeffrey no-transcript.
(52:37):
To learn more about the Masterof Science in Digital Media
Management program, visit us onthe web at dmmuscedu.
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital
changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Hi everybody and welcome toMediascape, and I want to
(00:26):
introduce you to somebody who isvery, very special, close to
our program, to our university,and who has accomplished just an
amazing number of things, inaddition to being one of the
kindest, warmest, mostthoughtful executives and
veteran leaders in the mediaspace that I have ever met.
This is Jeffrey Thompson.
(00:51):
Jeffrey, thank you so much forjoining us today.
Hello Joseph, thank you forhaving me.
Delighted to be here.
All right, everybody, just takea deep breath, grab a cup of
tea, because I'm going tointroduce Jeffrey and I'm not
even going to go through all ofhis incredible credits and
experience, he would take toolong.
You can look him up on LinkedIn, jeffrey Thompson, but I'm
going to give you just a coupleof highlights.
You get a sense of the breadthand scope of experience that
(01:11):
this wonderful gentleman brings.
So Jeffrey is a media executiveand he has been at a couple of
very notable companies, andagain I'm only going to name a
few.
He was the first chiefdiversity officer at the Walt
Disney Company and we'll betalking about that extensively.
He was the vice president ofdigital strategy and business
(01:33):
development at none other thanCondé Nast.
He's currently an executive atOracle.
He also balances his time.
He seems like he has more thanseven days in the week and more
than 24 hours in the day as afeature documentary film
producer, and his most recentfilm is called Scrum, which is
currently available on AmazonPrime.
(01:54):
I encourage everybody to checkit out.
It's a really, really greatfilm.
Additionally, he is thecommissioner of the LA County
Workforce Development Commission, which is part of his service
to our community here in LosAngeles, and amazingly, he is
also an instructor for multipleclasses in multiple programs at
the USC Annenberg School forCommunication.
(02:17):
So it's going to be hard to fitit all in.
I think we're going to have toschedule a few episodes, jeffrey
, but thank you again for beingwith us and let's just dive
right in.
I want to ask you to set thetable before we go back and get
into your history.
I want to ask you one questionright up front.
Okay, what's the most importantthing that our listeners and
(02:40):
our students should be thinkingabout to frame our conversation?
That's the most important thingto you right now, in March of
2025?
.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You know I have to tell you that's a difficult
conversation and my EDD which iswhy I do different things like
this won't allow me to say onething.
But let me try to say one thing.
We are at the crossroads ofwhere we see entertainment,
media, digital, the entireecosystem of telecommunications
sort of collapsing andintegrating, meaning that our
(03:13):
technology allows us to becomeone with the world, meaning that
I can get to any country withdata, with targeting, with great
marketing, and I can also getto every culture, every language
, every subpopulation, and sodiversity and the conversation
that we're having arounddiversity meets technology.
Entertainment andtelecommunications and how we
(03:35):
get our news out to anywhere inthe world is one of the things
that is absolutely top of mindto me and I'm spending a lot of
time on it these days.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
That's a great place for us to start.
All right, let's reel it backand head back to your Disney
days.
Right, one of the pillars ofyour career.
Did you always love Disney,since you were a kid?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, you know, I played alto and tenor sax, so
you're a musician, you love art,you love those musicals and you
love things about you know thecreative expression.
So when you looked at Disney Iwouldn't say I was a Disney file
, which means that I lovedeverything Disney, but I grew up
with Disney.
A big part of my ecosystemright, the imagination of Disney
(04:17):
, the vision of Disney, thealways looking at what's next in
innovation of a Disney thosepieces are really important to
me and I've held on to so howdid you come to be at Disney in
the beginning?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
It must have been a really exciting thing that
happened for you.
Did you just go straight intothat role of chief diversity
officer, or did that incubatefor something else?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
No, I was at Disney 11 years, people 11.
Year 8, I was appointed by WesColeman, the chief human
resources officer, and Bob Iger,who's now currently the CEO, to
be in that alliances, workingon sort of strategic alliances.
Sometimes that was integrationtype things.
(05:09):
With Pixar, we made anacquisition of Pixar, we
acquired Fox Family, which endedup being ABC Family.
So I was on one of theintegration teams for that when
we were putting certain contentpieces together, and those are
really important discussions.
What I would tell you is thatthe diversity role was by far
(05:29):
the most important role,impactful role that I've had and
it was what we call atransformational role, meaning
it was designed to help me growmy career, but also for me to
leverage my knowledge of all thebusiness units of Disney and
the challenges of Disney and thechallenges of Disney and where
we were trying to get to from anaudience perspective, and
(05:50):
that's why we we picked someonethat was inside the organization
to take on this very first VPof global diversity role and
help build what is our firstcomprehensive strategy for
diversity across.
So the Walt Disney company,which people forget, is ABC,
it's ESPN, it's theme parks,it's Disney Channel, it's hotels
(06:10):
around the world and commercearound the world and great
product offerings and charactersaround the world.
So I was very proud.
Let me just say one last thingon this because I think it's so
valuable.
Many companies are going throughtheir same iterations of
probably what Disney started 15or 20 years ago, which was
looking at the fact that Disneywe all grew up with, main Street
(06:32):
America, which is, you know,little America, all the
wonderful values of LittleAmerica and Main Street America,
so those local towns throughoutAmerica, and what we've seen is
now Little America has gone toLittle Globe, meaning that
Disney has theme parks aroundthe world in Paris, in China,
you know, disneyland Pudong andDisneyland Shanghai is in Pudong
(06:55):
, a very beautiful place inChina, hong Kong Disneyland,
tokyo Disneyland, our Floridaparks, of course, and then
California parks.
Where I'm getting with that is,every culture around the world
loves something about a companylike Disney.
But we were targeting still alot of very mainstream
characters, right?
(07:16):
So we looked at our princessfranchise and we had wonderful
princesses that had wonderfulcharacter values.
And I look at them it'sCinderella and it's Snow White
and it's Sleeping Beauty andit's Ariel.
All great characters, greatfranchise elements.
But as we're starting to buildbusiness in India.
What does it mean about?
(07:36):
How do we have characters thatexpress our love for India as we
start to express our desire tobroaden our terms and create
products like Coco or BlackPanther or Princess Tiana,
princess and the Frog?
These were characters that wehad to learn and we had to go
out of our way to be intentionalabout showcasing the world that
(07:58):
we care about those brands andwe want you to see yourself in
our movies and in our content,and so it's that kind of
targeting that sometimes it canbe very intentional, but it's
very authentic because audiencesare changing and most consumer
companies are finding that theyhave to do some of the same
things, despite the fact thatthere's a lot of controversy in
the news these days aboutdiversity and what it means for
(08:20):
not just our country, but whatit means for you know who
potentially might be left behind, which I contend is no one.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, we're going to circle back to that a little bit
later, but I just want to askyou about this because it's
always been on my mind.
You know, everybody of acertain age and generation has
grown up with Disney as theframe for our experience and our
understanding of how the worldworks, how it can work.
I'll just speak for myself.
(08:47):
I grew up in really during thatgolden era of the Disney
musicals Little Mermaid, beautyand the Beast, aladdin, lion
King.
I was a span of ages but Iwatched those over and over.
My point is that I think Disneyhas the most awesome opportunity
and responsibility of anycompany that's ever been created
(09:11):
to set the values for.
It's crazy, not just kids, butI mean it's like the whole
country starts off as kids andwhat are they watching?
They're watching Disney.
They get a sense for how theworld operates.
So you know, I want to ask you,you know in your time as chief
diversity officer there atDisney and you were also the
(09:33):
vice president of globaldiversity and inclusion a word
that we hadn't even really heardabout all that much back in the
2000s you know we've heardabout diversity, but we weren't
using that word inclusion toomuch.
You know we've heard aboutdiversity, but we weren't using
that word inclusion, too much.
Talk to me about thatresponsibility that you feel,
that Disney holds, the power itwields, and what you tried to do
to make sure the kids wereabsorbing these sophisticated
(09:57):
ideas in an entertaining way,but being really responsible
about it.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Well, it's interesting that you asked this
kind of question because it'svery passionate and sort of near
to my heart, and I think thatwhen I look at the management
team at the time of Disney,which you had some people that
really were focused on this youknow sort of the changing
audiences that we were targetingand you had others that were
like look, I've grown up in thisbusiness, I've been in this
business for 30 years, I don'tneed to really do anything
(10:32):
different.
But let me just say this myfeeling is that media companies
and technology companies have ahigher hurdle when it comes to
showcasing products andcharacters and the diversity of
our world and our country, right, whether I'm talking about the
United States or whether I'meven talking about LA County,
which has 10 million people inLA County, a population bigger
than 42 states.
So I've always said that, youknow, companies have a sort of a
responsibility.
However, when you're a mediacompany, you're creating
(10:56):
entertainment, you're creatingfilms and TV shows.
In fact, you're creatingculture, you're creating, in
some cases, what people believeabout themselves, and so media
companies have, in my mind, anincremental burden to make sure
that they are showcasing therichness of the diversity of our
world.
(11:20):
If you go back to the 1950s and60s kind of what I identify, as
you know, you didn't see many ofus on television and you didn't
see us and many times when youdid see us on television or film
, it was in very stereotypicalroles.
So when things like PrincessTiana came out and great
properties like that it's notjust that can you commercialize
and can you monetize and can youis there a business case for
(11:42):
diversity, which becomesimportant.
There's a lot of brown peoplearound the world that Disney
targets, right From Brazil toIndia and other.
You know people want to seethemselves in content and that
(12:06):
becomes very powerful.
And that's different than youknow when you're doing iPhone
marketing or other types ofproduct offerings, because
people are part of their culture, is part of the actual product
itself.
Yeah, that's why I'm sopassionate about it.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
It is an awesome responsibility and a
multi-layered responsibility.
It's pretty incredible thatit's hard for me to wrap my mind
around it and I just have tosay that, for all of the from my
perspective I know that there'sbeen bumps and some foibles
along the way I think thatDisney has embraced it and has
done about as good of a job ascan be done with their intention
(12:44):
and with the vast amount ofprogramming that they have done.
It's amazing.
Okay, so let's move on.
So you wrapped your time at theDisney company and you moved on
to Condé Nast oh my gosh, fromone monster company of influence
to another, just amazing andyou were the vice president this
(13:05):
is amazing to me of digitalstrategy, which is its own whole
huge bucket, and businessdevelopment, which is its own
whole bucket.
Tell us about, actually, youknow what?
There's a friend of mine wholikes to say the bluff, which is
the bottom line up front.
She was the Undersecretary ofDefense at the Pentagon and so
(13:27):
she would always say this isjust an aside.
But she would also say alwayssay you know, you never know
when you're briefing thepresident how long he's going to
have.
So we just say the bottom lineup front, and then we give them
the details.
Tell us, if you could, condéNast, what's Condé Nast's
mission from the inside out?
What is Condé Nast about?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Now you think about it, because I love what you just
said about bluff.
Let me give you the bluff andthen I'll go back to what Condé
Nast is about.
I went to Condé Nast as a vicepresident of digital strategy
and business development.
I went with a new managementteam.
I went to New York, loved thatentire experience right and,
although it was challenging,went for the purpose of driving
(14:07):
them out of magazines and intonew forms of business.
Did not want to see Kodak.
We did not want to see whathappened to Kodak Happened to a
great, wonderful brand likeCondé Nast.
For those of you who don't knowCondé Nast, we had 20 different
brands from fashion brands likeVogue and GQ and Glamour
(14:27):
magazine.
You know we were the heyday ofsome of the very best
advertisers in the world.
We had Architectural Digest.
We had the New Yorker.
We had, you know, bridesmagazine.
We just had a bunch of greatpublications, no-transcript,
(15:06):
disrupted by things that at thetime I went to Condé Nast, we
knew.
We had social media.
We had Facebook.
We had YouTube.
We had all these new forms ofdigital distribution.
But look at what TikTok hasdone just in the last five years
, and so that directly competes,even though it doesn't look
like publication againstpublication, it's like a new
(15:27):
medium of distribution competingagainst an old school medium
that was very important in thedevelopment of countries like
America.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
It's just amazing, guys, everybody who's listening
to this, let's realize that weare listening right now to
somebody who has been one of thedrivers in one of the biggest
shifts that has ever happened inthe history of communication.
You know, you think about whenthe printing press came, the
transition from print to digital, with global distribution and
(16:00):
publishing abilityinstantaneously, and not just
that, but user generated content.
You know, and on and on,jeffrey, the fact that you were
able to be this leader and tonavigate these huge companies
that are not, they can't,they're not nimble that's the
word I was looking for, right,they can't just make a switch
easily the fact that you wereable to be one of the captains
(16:23):
of that big navigation.
It's quite amazing.
Just can you talk about thatfor just a minute, about what
that's like being an executiveand inside of such a behemoth of
a company and figuring out howto persuade them to make these
big changes?
(16:43):
You know, like moving intodigital.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Well, think about it for a minute.
And, by the way, you're beingvery kind.
You know, understand that eachof us has to understand our own
strengths and what our ownopportunities and what are areas
that we kind of don't like tofocus on.
In mine, I learned early onthat I was an executive who was
always going to be atransformational executive.
(17:06):
So I'm all about and, by theway, a lot of companies are
forced to be thinking alwaysabout one step into now and one
step into wait what's our future?
What's our future roadmap?
Where does the market go astechnology shifts?
Or, in this case, like now, asAI integrates?
Like what products do I need tocreate?
(17:26):
So I'm what's called atransformational executive.
I'm always on the businessdevelopment side, where we're
looking three to five years outwhat new products?
What new businesses?
What is going to be disrupted?
Right, it's very predictablethat you could say that, okay, I
could see that publishing fromhindsight was going to be
disrupted now that we're lookingback.
(17:46):
But there were some executivesthat were saying we know it's
going to be disrupted in thenext five years.
What do we do to either changethat shifted, optimize our
position or create new productsor get out of certain businesses
.
So, like, for me, it's knowingwho you are, knowing what keeps
you up at night.
And for me, like, even like oneof the jobs that I don't talk
about much at Disney but I loved, was when we were transitioning
(18:09):
from DVD, I know, but like anold school technology.
Then we were exploring our veryfirst digital technology, which
was not streaming.
First digital technology wasmoving to Blu-ray disc, which
was, and that was the moving youknow, most of our content, of
our six or seven studios andgetting the motivation and the
movement to say you got to moveto that next digital strategy in
(18:31):
that next digital projectbefore you get to pure digital.
And pure digital is what?
When we've gotten rid of theconsumer package, good meaning,
you don't have the disc anymore.
Now you go straight tostreaming with Netflix and other
you know, disney plus and othertypes of of straining platforms
that are really technologyplatforms.
So it's getting people focusedon what's next in your business.
(18:53):
And maybe what's some of theconsequences if we don't move
right?
What are the consequences if wedon't build our brand in
another direction, if we don'tbuild?
You see, like Condé Nast was areally great exercise for me
because it was leaving a big,ubiquitous company like Disney
and getting to a company that'smainly distribution was
(19:14):
publications and magazines.
And it was pretty obvious tothe team that went in that if we
don't move and look for theserevenue streams in other areas
and new types of products, right, you go from a magazine, do you
go to a digital reader?
You say yes, but then that'snot what the marketplace
accepted.
Right, some people move todigital readers, but most people
(19:35):
move to social media, mostpeople move to actual video, and
so it becomes like wait aminute, we're not a video
company.
How do you convince executives?
And let me just say this lastpiece, because I think it's
really important you got to I'mburying the lead here, folks you
got to use data and building abusiness case, a strategic
(19:55):
business case, to moveexecutives down a path.
Right, you have to consistentlyshow research of where the
market trends are going, whatconsumer behavior is, observing
behavior.
I always say in classroomsobserve people's eyes, what
they're doing, not what they'resaying.
Observe what they're doing withtheir time, what they're doing
with their spare time, theirfree time, their work time,
(20:17):
observe the new trends andhabits, and then you're come a
long way to understanding thatyou know sort of what direction
you'd go.
I was in the airport last week,headed to Washington DC, and I
just sat around and watchedpeople and I had one of those
flashbacks.
20 years ago there would havebeen a bunch of people with
newspapers and magazines andbooks and guess what People are
(20:38):
reading.
But they're reading on theiriPhones and they're reading on
their tablets and they'rewatching videos and they're
sending notes to their friendsand they're doing social media
and so watching that behaviorare really great insights of
what's coming Right, and youcould have seen that if a lot of
company executives could haveseen that.
So I've been spending my timemainly in that space.
(21:00):
Convincing people is not easy,folks.
My time mainly in that space.
Convincing people is not easy,folks.
When you're trying to tell acompany that their products are
ugly or that you know that.
You know that's outdated, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
They're kids.
You're up in a young but you'reobsolete.
You did, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I have to be the one to tell you but yeah, you got to
do that with data, you have todo that with research, you have
to do that with, you know,keeping people focused on what
is our vision for the future forour company.
And I look at companies likesome of my favorite companies
Kodak, right, and one of thecompanies that invented the
digital camera, yet it put themout of business because they
(21:36):
didn't transform their oldbusinesses fast enough and
modernize them.
And I look at, like you know,one of the very first products
that I was able to do, email I'mdoing this email outside of the
office a company calledBlackBerry.
But BlackBerry got crushed bynot continuing to innovate, and
the iPhone came along with itstouch screens and storing photos
(21:57):
and iCloud and an app store andphotographs, and guess what
happened?
Put a great technology like theBlackBerry into sort of
dormancy, and so it's thosekinds of things that you don't
want.
You know you have to lead oryou got to move out of the way
in a disruptive environment, andso I'm a big believer in
leading in those areas.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You are one of our lead teachers if not our lead
teacher in teaching leadershipin the program at DMM.
There was one semester lastyear where you couldn't teach it
and so I said, okay, I'll pinchit and I'll step in for you,
and I probably did a prettyshadow of a job compared to what
you normally do.
But when we were talkingthrough leadership with the
class, my biggest thought aboutwhat I think is really important
(22:40):
in leadership is the sense ofembracing change, making change
the norm, so that as leaders,we're like there's a
prescriptive and there's amachinery that is built in that
we just say we never stopchanging.
We are only thinking aboutwhat's next, next, next, next,
next, next, next.
And then that keeps that wordthat I couldn't think of right
away before nimble.
That keeps your whole teamnever thinking like, okay, we're
(23:02):
.
And then that keeps that wordthat I couldn't think of right
away before nimble.
That keeps your whole teamnever thinking like, okay, we're
just going to be in, we'regoing to go into maintenance
mode for a long time.
You know, leadership means we'reon the front, we're in the
front, we're pushing, we're,we're the tip of the spear,
we're the scouts I think of.
You know big groups of people.
There was always like a scoutor two that were.
(23:22):
They were out there miles maybe5, 10, 15, 20 miles ahead of
everybody else that are lookingaround.
So to me that's a big one.
But I want to throw it back toyou because you know you've been
talking about change andleadership and just that
philosophy of making change, nota reaction.
But that is the norm.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Well, in a disruptive environment, in a fast-paced
environment like we're in withthe digital ecosystem,
telecommunications when I saydigital ecosystem,
telecommunications, all thetechnology industries, all the
social media companies which arevery powerful and big and
global your traditional studiosand television networks, but so
media, entertainment technology,telecommunications those are
(24:03):
big, robust areas wheretechnology is driving a super
fast pace of change.
Now I'm a big believer that youhave to drive to what's next.
I'm also a big believer thatyou don't have to be first.
Sometimes, like you drive tofirst, like Microsoft Surface
that their Surface tablet wasfirst, they had the first tablet
(24:26):
, not iPad, and it was ahorrible failure at the time
because they were ahead of themarket.
Consumer behavior hadn't caughtup to where the visionaries at
Microsoft at the time were.
Apple launched iPad years later.
There was better contentofferings, there was better
technology infrastructure sothat someone would put on a
(24:47):
little video on their iPad andit actually worked and it was a
good experience.
So sometimes there's anargument that you want to be
first but you don't have to befirst If you have a big, robust
business.
But you have to be intentionalabout planning for what's next.
Think about what Disney hasdone with Disney Plus.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Disney was in the movie.
I was just thinking aboutDisney Plus.
I mean there is.
In some ways it looks likethey're way behind Disney.
When are you going to get onthe game?
But boom, when they arrive, didthey arrive?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, yeah, you want to make sure that you're.
You know like, remember thereis risk mitigation.
You don't need to always befirst and cannibalize your
business, but if eyeballs aremoving and platforms are
developing that are strategic toyour long-term vision for your
company, you have to find a wayto be intentional about moving
and exploring.
Disney bought a company rightBantech to start learning how to
(25:41):
stream and to startunderstanding getting that
muscle.
They started looking at how doI move direct to consumer, which
is, remember, a company likeDisney is like a lot of
companies where their technologyor their products went through
third parties.
You know you did a TV show atDisney, usually it was going to
a third party platform.
Or if you did a movie, it wasgoing to a theater owner's
(26:03):
platform.
Disney didn't own thoseplatforms.
So Disney had a lot of revenuethat would come through what we
call B2B platforms business tobusiness right.
And at the time you havecompanies like Netflix starting
to grow up saying, hey, we'regoing to be direct to consumer,
we're going to have contentdirect and you own the
subscriber, you own the customerservice, you own the quality or
(26:31):
not of the platform.
You know you own theengineering, you own the sort of
that verticalized platform.
A lot of companies Sony, disney, warner Brothers, fox go
through most of your traditionalstudios, the third party
businesses, were how theymonetize most of their content
and now that was changing into averticalized.
So it becomes important to sayhow do we get the muscle to
change, how do we get the newkind of talent to change the big
(26:52):
difference?
Like you know, like when I waswatching Blu-ray disc, you
needed a consumer package.
Could you know sort ofbackground.
So meaning you're doing PNLs,like profit and loss statements
you're doing.
You know you're developing aproduct just like you would
developing a Procter Gamble.
You know a line of deodorantbut it's a different kind of
product.
You're going to retailers andthird parties but very similar
(27:14):
to sort of consumer packagedgoods skillset.
And now you go to distributionof direct to consumer streaming.
And now you need wait a minute,we got data scientists we need.
We need different kind ofanalytics teams.
We need different types ofengineering teams and product
iteration.
Our marketing teams are nowbecoming digital marketing teams
.
So when you start reallythinking about it, you put those
(27:35):
together and you have a realopportunity.
And I've concentrated on Disneyand media because it's kind of
fun and sexy and people kind ofknow Disney and media and media
because it's kind of fun andsexy and people kind of know
Disney and media.
But think about it if you're intransportation right now and
you're just seeing thisrevolution to electric vehicles
and this revolution to cars thathave 500,000 sensors on each
(27:55):
car that might become autonomouscars or driving vehicles, like
we're seeing with Waymo drivingaround the city of Los Angeles
right now, as driverlessvehicles that are on their own,
independent, and you're seeing awhole new ecosystem.
So that's the same kind ofdigital, but deployed
differently.
Think about how healthcare isabout to be transformed thanks
(28:17):
to acquisitions that Microsofthas made Oracle right currently
work Oracle.
We bought a company calledCerner all around healthcare
analytics and outcomes of thefuture.
And how do you triangulate andadvance medicine and healthcare
outcomes based upon havingadvanced technology?
So I'm mentioning three bigones, of course, but financial
(28:39):
transformation, you're going tosee just a ton of the digital
ecosystems that have cut acrossevery single area.
Let me give you one that I tellmy students, but I just want you
to make sure you understand.
I tell them you don't have togo into all the new sexy,
glamorous industries.
Think about what Uber has beenable to do to the taxicab
business to transform a dormantyou know sort of taxicab
(29:02):
experience and they created awhole nother way, leveraging an
app, somebody else's platform,either Apple or, you know,
android's platform and theycreated a business on top that
competes directly againsttaxicabs.
Right, they just relooked,reengineered, revisited and
innovated and disrupted amarketplace that's been in place
(29:22):
for over a hundred years.
So you don't have to be in justsomething brand new.
You can do things by looking atwhat could be made more
efficient or where could therebe another, a better
customer-friendly experience, orchange that user experience
dynamic.
So I'm very passionate about itand it can happen in a lot of
different industries, as we see.
I gave an example in class thispast week.
(29:46):
Poppy was purchased by PepsiCofor $2 billion, and I think it's
Allison Ellsworth is thefounder of Poppy.
The soda you know like adifferent kind of soda pop.
Right, it's like more you know,with probiotics and sort of new
technology inside of the soda.
(30:07):
And you ask, why didn't Pepsidevelop themselves?
They paid $2 billion because alot of innovation comes from
small groups and small teamsthat are on the ground looking
at the gaps in the space thatare occurring because of
changing tastes, at the gaps inthe space that are occurring
because of changing tastes,changing habits, changing trends
(30:31):
.
And this lady caught on.
Five years later she sold hercompany to $2 billion to one of
the biggest beverage companiesin the world.
So it can happen across almostany industry, looking for sort
of those gaps that innovationhas brought on by.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Why don't we stay right in this lane, right here?
Because you are doing thisincredible civic leadership job
as the commissioner of the LACounty Workforce Development
Commission and that's thinkingahead to where jobs are headed.
And I know a whole bunch ofpeople are very, very scared
about AI.
They're scared about autonomyand robotics and things that are
(31:05):
coming to disrupt andpotentially take away parts of
the workforce.
So how long have you beencommissioner?
And then could you tell usabout this work that you're
doing at the commission?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Commission all about.
You know how do we train ourlabor force of 10 million people
here in California, our biggestcounty in the United States,
but also, what does a job of thefuture look like, how do we
protect our labor and ourmarkets, and how do we innovate
as a region as technology shifts?
And the examples I use would bethings like, for example, you
know if you're a mechanic.
Well, are you a mechanic of atraditional car?
(31:46):
Are you learning how to be amechanic of an electric vehicle
or autonomous driving vehicle?
So that's sort of the easy one.
Right, you're a roofer.
Are you doing solar roofingrather than old school roofing?
So the thought process is youknow what are those extensions,
what are the types of traininggaps that we have?
And then how do we get peopleskilled up to take on these
rules, which sometimes will bevery disruptive?
(32:08):
You mentioned artificialintelligence.
It's going to be one of thosetechnologies that's kind of like
Google.
Remember when we you know, ohgo, google, it go, search on
something.
Be an ingredient that is goingto end up being in a lot of our
products and a lot of ourservices.
Right, it's going to be athinker for us, it's going to be
(32:30):
an extender, but it's alsogoing to be an innovator, but
it's also going to be adisruptor, right.
The same way that, you know,the automobile or the bicycle
disrupted horseback riding right, which used to be
transportation.
We're going to see innovationand change and disruption, and
so getting people's skill tomove to the next level becomes
very important.
How I got into this, I've beentalking about this what's next
(32:50):
stuff for a while, right, what'snext in transportation?
What's next in healthcare?
What's next in media andentertainment?
You know, what's next in ourinfrastructure for utilities and
energy, and those are alldisruptive areas that disrupt
labor forces, right.
And so, as one of the biggestcounties, or the biggest county
in the United States, you know,la County was saying like, how
(33:11):
do we, you know, begin to get astrategy around the posture for
what's next right, in some ofthese really big areas?
We have this big thing in threeyears called the Los Angeles 28
Olympics that are going to beright here, a global showcase
for LA.
And while some people want totalk about the flaws of Los
Angeles, I talk about like weare a center of gravity, a
(33:33):
laboratory for the world.
We're going to show innovationof new technology.
You know, I look at so manycompanies that have developed in
California from you know, newcompanies like Rivian or Lucid
companies that my students nowget jobs in which I love, but
these are companies that arelike developing what's next
Waymo, right, the autonomousdriving company that was started
(33:54):
by Google, but there's so manymore.
We talk about the fact that theiPhone was created right here in
California by, you know, one ofthe biggest companies in the
world, apple, but it wasn'tcreated for California, it
wasn't created for the UnitedStates, it was created for the
world, and so it's important tounderstand that a lot of the
products that we're creating aretransforming society and we're
(34:16):
just the laboratory here inCalifornia, in Southern
California.
So really powerful, importantand important work of thinking
what's next in our labor force.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Wow, I love what you just said.
It gave me some chills as Ithink about California and
Southern California and LosAngeles and what our region
means I think about.
Here at USC, you know, one ofthe heartbeat educational
incubators of the great mindsyou know, along with our friends
(34:48):
over at UCLA and the othergreat universities that are all
around the Los Angeles area.
I've always believed that weare the engine of creativity and
innovation for the whole world,absolutely, and we are.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I mean, like you, think about what you just said
about ucla and usc, which is a,you know, traditional rivalries.
But I love ucla and I love allthe think about just southern
california.
Great universities are herefrom you, from cal arts to
caltech to kelsey, fullerton, tocal poly, to uc irvine to uc
san diego.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
You just heperdine and lmu and chapman.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, and think about now.
You take all those universitiesand put them in the middle of
Wyoming or the middle of Idahoor the middle of other great
states, and they would kill tohave those universities with all
those freshmen and graduateschool students coming in to
innovate and lead and learn, andit transforms areas, it
(35:43):
transforms regions.
So I think that you know, weshould never take for granted
how many great and, by the way,I've only mentioned, like
schools in Southern California,and I didn't even mention the
Northern part of the state,which also has great
universities the fact is we havethis great innovation, this
great robust thinking that comesin every single year to
Southern California and it'ssomething that we should, just,
(36:05):
you know, pride ourselves in.
So thank you for mentioning it.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
We're transformers.
We're more than meets the eye.
You might say we have a globalcrossroads.
So, in addition to all thiswork that you've done on a
corporate level, you also are acreator yourself.
So you've done, we've talkedabout your big macro projects,
(36:30):
but then you are a film producer.
You know one movie at a time.
Tell us about Scrum.
Tell us about that, and thenI'm really excited to hear about
your new project that's coming.
But tell us about Scrum.
Tell us about how that spoke toyou as somebody who you know.
Diversity not only it's who youare, right, it's in your
(36:51):
heritage, it's in your blood,but it's also in your soul and
your spirit and what you projectout and teach the rest of us
about.
Why did Scrum appeal to youfrom all of those, from all of
those areas, and what the heckwere you thinking?
Going trying to make a movie?
I can't think of anythingharder than that.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Well, let me tell you , you put good teams together.
I'm the producer, so I buildthe teams, build the budget and
things of that and you know youcan work if, as long as you have
a good director, good writingand a sort of a good storyline
and concept and some flexibilityalong with funding, you can
tell a great story.
Let me tell you.
I'll tell you a tiny bit aboutScrum and a little bit of how I
got into this.
Scrum is a story about rugby,and that's the surface story.
(37:31):
But the secondary story which Idid learn at Disney is it's a
story about love.
It's a story about redemption,with kids starting out in rugby
and then turning into nationalchampions.
We tell the story of anAfrican-American coach in the
middle of the deep South at avery prestigious, affluent,
primarily Caucasian university,that this guy is going through
(37:53):
midlife crisis, teaching rugbyat a small college and he wanted
to be an investment banker, andso his parents are like we paid
for graduate school, we've doneall these things and you're a
little rugby coach in the middleof the deep South, where we
don't even play rugby that much.
Well, year three, this guy notonly turns this group of
(38:14):
students around, including theschool mascot, which used to be
a big character, recruited thatperson to the rugby team, turns
into Division II NationalChampions for America, division
II National Champions forAmerica, and they won the
Division II NationalChampionship.
Rags to Riches Hero Story.
I worked with a great team and adirector by the name of Thomas
(38:37):
Morgan who ideated and createdthe story.
I partnered with him and, bythe way, it's a great example
that I talk to my students about.
Make sure you're alwaysnetworking, make sure you're
never burning bridges.
I was brought into this project.
I didn't adiate the project.
I was brought into it at astate where I could have a good
impact on it by my former seniorvice president at the Walt
(38:58):
Disney Company right.
So I had left Disney yearsprior.
My former boss came in and saidlook, we're working on this
great project.
You could be a part of this,and I jumped all over it and,
sure enough, three years later,we have not only a great film
that's on Amazon Prime right now, it's called Scrum S-C-R-U-M,
but it's at Sony and it's beenpicked up and we're trying to
(39:20):
get it to be a live actionpicture.
Now, why am I saying all this?
Disney got my creative juicesflowing because I got my first
producer credit while I was atDisney on ABC Family and that
was on a back to school specialcalled Schooled like school with
an E-D.
Like you know, I got schooledkind of thing, but as a manager
(39:41):
as it ended up being a VP atDisney you can't be in
management in a studio like thatand also produce.
You can't be in management in astudio like that and also
produce.
And so when I left Disney, Iended up getting to a small
startup called Shout Factory andShout Factory it's called Shout
Factory TV now and these littleyoung entrepreneurs, they were
(40:04):
busy trying to transform theirbusiness and they were taking
artists like James Brown andRichard Pryor and Steve Martin
and you know they were takingartists that were sort of, in
many cases you know, had beenaround for years.
In the case of Richard Pryorand James Brown, they were both
deceased entertainment.
(40:30):
We were like repurposing andcreating new content from a lot
of these old groups that werevery important culturally.
It's like how do we bringRichard Pryor back to life even
though he's no longer on thisearth?
And so we were doing these kindsof digital deals and my first
producer credit outside ofDisney was there and that led me
to start saying, wait a minute,maybe I could start doing these
documentaries and tell storiesthat go back, put the diversity
(40:51):
hat on, tell stories that bigHollywood would have trouble
picking up, because you know theeconomics and the
commercialization, you knowthey're niche stories and I've
always said can you find richesin the niches?
And many times you can't findriches in the niches and many
times you can't.
And so you know I tell them.
You know when I talk aboutscrum and rugby and this midlife
(41:12):
crisis guy going through youknow the tough time in his life
putting this bad news bears ofgroups together and then they
win the national championship.
It's a niche story that becomesbigger than when we originally
intended, and so we try to findways like that.
If you want.
I'm working on another one now,but I can talk about it later
if you'd like.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
No, no, right now.
That's exactly where I hope youwere going Because, again,
you're always right on the edgeof.
You know, right at thebeginning we talked about it's
not just entertainment for you,you know, it's not just digital,
it's culture and entertainmentat its heart and in the soul.
And I teach this to my studentsthat a great story has three
elements.
Well, a story should have threeelements.
(41:52):
Right, the characters' lifeshould change.
You know, on the inside, that'sgreat.
Their life should change on theoutside, that's better.
But if they change the worldthat they live in in some way
we've seen this in the Star Warsand the Harry Potters I think
about.
You know, we're talking aboutkid stories that you know, I
(42:13):
think about how to train yourdragon they actually changed
their culture.
So I love this that you are asa storyteller, you're always
right on the bleeding edge ofwhat's happening culturally, and
so tell us about this, the nextvery timely story that you're
working on now.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, it's funny because streaming has brought
about the fact that I can youknow, there's an independent
producer class of directors andproducers that has grown up in
the last maybe 10 to 15 yearsthat can take projects and take
them directly to streamingservices and get stories told
(42:45):
that were hard to get picked upand hard to tell previously.
I want to be clear when I saythis If you're an independent
producer, you're always lookingfor stories that are either
niche or overlooked, that can becommercialized.
Right.
If it's a big, huge story BlackPanther, disney's got it right,
spider-man you know you get thebig ones.
(43:05):
You're going to have bigstudios pick them up.
So I can take on projects thatare a little more controversial,
that have a little more edge tothem, or pick up something
that's dormant, that might beresurging, like, right, that was
James Brown.
That was a voting rightsdocumentary that I did about.
You know something that youknow other big studios weren't
(43:26):
picking up Scrum was about thesame thing.
Well, I want to introduce youto the Gibraltar Project.
This is a project that's aboutone of those important subjects
that a studio is not going topick up but that I can sliver
and take a narrative andcommercialize it, and we talk
about this difficult subjectcalled reproductive rights and
(43:48):
reproductive health and we talkabout the debate that's going on
in Europe.
It's called the GibraltarProject.
Gibraltar is in the territory inEurope and we filmed in
Gibraltar, and Gibraltar had avery interesting take on
reproductive rights.
They were very conservative.
You could go to jail.
You could get convicted of acrime if you did not follow
(44:11):
their policies, which were muchmore restrictive on reproductive
rights.
At the same side, america, theUnited States, was much more
moderate on abortion rights andreproductive rights, and so what
we've done is we've taken thetwo sides and we share both
sides of it.
As Gibraltar is going moremoderating on reproductive
(44:34):
rights, america is tightening upand moving to where you're
making reproductive rights lessavailable, and what's happening
is we explore that in thejuxtaposed positions, and so we
do that at a really interestingrate.
It's called the GibraltarProject.
We've finished principal filming, we're now in editing, we want
to go to festival next year.
(44:56):
We're telling a great story.
We have some high-level people,including the premiere of
Gibraltar on camera in thisdocumentary, and so I'm
encouraged by what we are seeing.
But you know, anyone who's beenin the creative space knows
it's when you get.
You know, you, we, the editingroom is an important room
(45:18):
because it talks about what isthat story, what's the story arc
, what makes it educational, butalso what makes it entertaining
.
You know, I will say one lastthing about this.
I'm in the documentary categoryfor a reason because my heart
of hearts is I'm a storytellerand I like telling stories about
nonfiction and these stories.
There's so many rich storiesabout different parts of
(45:41):
American society or globalsociety that are never told,
that are really important, orglobal society that are never
told, that are really important,and I feel like I can do my
little bit to tell a story in adifferent way, in ways that I
learned about when I was at theWalt Disney Company, but even
when I was at Condé Nast andwhen I was at Shout Factory.
Really important to learn totell stories that can resonate
(46:02):
with either niche audiences orregional audiences and in some
cases you might get big globalaudiences.
So super critical GibraltarProject.
Please look out for it.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
All right, thank you for sharing that with us.
Well, we saw it at the Oscarsthis past year that there is a
renaissance of really smallfilms, important films,
important stories that haveevergreen truths baked into them
.
But they don't necessarily haveto be these gigantic,
big-budget films to have impact.
(46:32):
And I'm a filmmaker, as youknow, and a director, writer and
producer and it's reallyheartening to me to see and to
hear from you and to see thisshift that's happening.
Some of these very small, veryniche, the niches, the riches
and the niches.
I like that.
I'm going to hold on to that oneand think about how a really
(46:54):
small story that seemingly isvery small can be a microcosm of
really big themes that arehappening around the world.
You know, here at USC Annenberg, right, we're the communication
school.
I say it until I'm blue in theface the most important force,
the most powerful force in theworld, it's not money, not bombs
(47:18):
or war, it's communication, theability to communicate, and
that starts with the ability totell a story that is human, a
story that's compelling, andthat word compel is an
interesting one.
What makes something compelling?
It means that it compels you toact, and that's what we're in
(47:40):
the business of as communicatorsand communication teachers For
anybody who's listening.
I hope that you think about thatidea and the power that we have
to take ideas just words andideas and somehow compel our
audiences to turn those ideasinto action.
(48:02):
And we are the engineers ofthat process.
We don't engineer planes orbridges or vaccines.
We engineer ideas that turninto action, and that comes from
great storytelling.
Jt, I've kept you on for a longtime and I know it's just about
time to wrap up, so I didn'tprep you for this one, but I
(48:23):
want to ask you the questionthat I love to ask, if you
wouldn't mind, which is if youhave one piece of advice or
maybe it's a saying that youhave or that you've developed or
that you heard about fromsomewhere one piece of advice
that you could share, and itcould be something related to
career, it could be lifephilosophy One core, abiding
(48:48):
piece of advice that you couldshare with anybody who's
listening right now.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
You know in this, you know one of the powerful piece
about everything we've talkedabout with digital and this
digital ecosystem and targetingaudiences and all the analytics
of that, and I, you know, youkind of have data to understand
what populations are doing.
If you're a marketer, it'swonderful.
You know what people's favoritecolors are, you know what
favorite cars are.
(49:13):
You know where to put theirmoney to get them to be
influenced.
You do the same thing infilmmaking in many cases.
Let me do one of the cautions.
It's something that's on mymind a lot and that is that you
know we see these wonderfulplatforms like Meta, facebook
and Instagram and TikTok thathave revolutionized the world in
many ways, and how we capturedata and how we capture eyeballs
(49:36):
.
Right now, we get news andentertainment out, but now we're
seeing that more than 50percent of people Americans are
getting their news fromplatforms like Facebook or an
Instagram or a TikTok.
And to your point, the onething that I would share is more
of a caution Make sure you'rereading wide enough.
(49:57):
Don't just read your opinion.
Read other people's opinions.
Debate both sides, like we'redoing with Gibraltar Project.
We're not just showing one sideof the reproductive rights
story, we're showing the otherside of the reproductive rights
story.
Get into the head of people thatmay be disagreeing with you,
and the challenge we have isthat technology allows me to
(50:19):
target so closely to what wealready like or what you already
like.
So if you look at thealgorithms, I get what I already
know I like and I have to gosearch for things that might be
different than my opinion.
I think the world's going to bea better place if we figure out
that there is something calledover-personalization.
(50:40):
I want to personalize.
I want to know when you likesomething.
I even want to know when youdislike something, because I
need to know how to convince youdifferently if I'm a marketer.
But when it comes to socialissues and how we learn and how
what is, you know, the sky isblue or the sky is gray.
It's important that you arewell read and seek out opinions
(51:00):
that are different than your own.
So that'll be my wisdom of youknow for the day.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
I have so many thoughts on that, but we're
going to leave it right therebecause I want you to have the
last word and I want to say thedeepest thank you.
It's really an honor that you'dcome and teach with our
programs, an honor that you'dshare an hour, an hour and a
half of your incredibly valuabletime with all of us.
I can't wait to share your thisepisode out with as many people
(51:26):
as I can, and I will alwaysremember what it was that you
said right there at the end tobe reading broadly, especially
the things that we might notagree with absolutely.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
It's been great, joseph professor jeffrey
thompson, among so many otherincredible roles and accolades,
that he's had different titles,different things, and I couldn't
help but, sitting here, think,boy, we need people like you and
more and more public serviceand politics, which is really an
incredible act of service, andI hope that you'd consider that,
(52:05):
because we need people like youwho are leading with warmth and
thought, innovation, ethics allthe things that you embody on a
daily basis.
Thank you very much for joiningus everybody here on this
latest episode of Mediascape andI'll see.
We have so much more to discusswith Jeffrey no-transcript.
(52:37):
To learn more about the Masterof Science in Digital Media
Management program, visit us onthe web at dmmuscedu.
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