Career Path Of A Principal Working With Startups

As an undergraduate at Berkeley, I studied the political economy of industrial societies. I initially majored in architecture, but I quickly realized I didn't have the necessary passion for it.

I ended up in an undergraduate program that allowed me to be more of a generalist. I took classes in political science, economics, history, and statistics. Towards the end of my undergraduate studies, I interviewed with some of the big six accounting firms and started taking accounting classes, as friends suggested I might be a good fit for those companies.

I went to Arthur Andersen right after my undergraduate program and spent two years there. I then decided I didn't want to be a CPA either. After failing architecture and CPA aspirations, I decided I wanted to get into features and television production.

I moved to Los Angeles and started working in the production finance group at Warner Brothers Television. My role involved tracking budgets and accounting for television shows, including *Friends*. We started in production finance for about the first 10 years of my career.

I worked at major studios and did some freelance work on location for specific film and TV projects in places like Toronto, Vancouver, or Atlanta. Then I returned and ran a production finance group for a couple of small startup companies that were producing both television content and feature films.

I started both divisions within those companies. Later, I decided I wanted to get my MBA and enrolled in UCLA's Anderson School of Management part-time program, working and going to school simultaneously.

During that time, I became the divisional CFO for Touchstone Television at The Walt Disney Company, which later became ABC Studios. I worked there for about five years, managing their financial reporting strategy, budgeting, and more for the studio.

Then, I decided to make a career change. Within that studio, I had the opportunity to move into business affairs. This is a unique role in the entertainment industry where you negotiate deals for licensing television content, either into a platform or out from a studio. You also work on projects that are going to be licensed or are licensed, negotiating deals for the talent involved in the production.

This involved working with agents, lawyers, and managers to negotiate deals for those projects. I did that at ABC Studios for about three years.

I then read an article about Netflix getting into original content. A friend who had worked there previously knew the person running that division. I met with them; they weren't actively looking for someone at the time, but about six months later, they called, saying they really needed help and wanted to move forward.

I went over to Netflix and was there for about eight and a half, almost nine years. I ran the business side of their original series initiative, licensing content from third parties and building out a studio within Netflix to produce content ourselves.

In 2020, I left and took some time off to consider my next steps. An opportunity came up at The Walt Disney Company to do something similar to what I was doing at Netflix, but broader across multiple divisions, including Hulu, the ABC network, and ABC Studios. They had recently acquired 20th Century Studios, Freeform, and some of their other linear channels.

I was doing something similar to my Netflix role but across multiple divisions, acting as a business partner for the creative teams at those groups. I left Disney about a year and a half ago and started my own consulting firm.

Now, I primarily work with startup companies, generally in the technology space. I help them with their go-to-market strategies and raising financing for their ventures. That's about it.