The WICT Network has named the media executives who will receive the trade organization's Women of the Year and Women to Watch honors this October.

Named as Women of the Year are Colleen Langner, the executive VP and chief operating officer of Cox Communications, representing cable operators and Wonya Lucas, the president and CEO of Hallmark Media, representing programmers. This honor is bestowed on individuals who embody its mission to develop women leaders who transform the industry, the organization said. Honorees have achieved top industry status and show great resolve to help others along their path.

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Honored as Women to Watch are the following executives from an operator, a programmer and a technology organization: Shannon Atkinson, regional VP, field operations, West Division, Charter Communications; Lisa Williams-Fauntroy, senior VP, business & legal affairs, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Urvi Shah, VP, global key account marketing, CommScope. The accolade recognizes leaders who show tremendous achievement and progression in their professional goals with a strong commitment to their company and the industry at large, WICT said.

The awards will be presented their awards during the Touchstones Luncheon held Monday, October 10, at the New York Marriott Marquis as part of The WICT Network Leadership Conference. AMC Networks is champion sponsor of the 2022 Touchstones Luncheon.

“The WICT Network looks forward to celebrating the many accomplishments of our esteemed Women of the Year and Women to Watch honorees at our 2022 Touchstones Luncheon this October,” Maria E. Brennan, CAE, The WICT Network's president and CEO, said in a statement. “These strong, dynamic, and inspirational women are paving the way for the next generations of media and technology leaders. Our industry is stronger for having them in their influential roles, and we are honored to give them recognition.” ■

Cox Communications kicked off the New Year by promoting three long-time executives — Len Barlik, Colleen Langner and Mark Lawson —  to key management roles, the company said Wednesday.

Barlik, formerly executive VP and chief operations officer, has been named chief technology officer, succeeding Kevin Hart, who was named CEO of Cox-owned fiber provider Segra earlier this week. Langner, who has previously served as EVP and chief marketing and sales officer, becomes chief operating officer; and Lawson, formerly senior VP of digital, moves into the executive VP and chief marketing and sales officer role. 

Barlik joined Cox in 2010 as EVP of product development and management and during that tenure helped launch the company’s flagship video product Contour, its ultra-high-speed broadband product Gigablast and its Homelife home security and automation portfolio. As CTO, Barlik will oversee product and technology innovation and the development of new products and services for both residential and commercial customers. He will also assume leadership of the Cox Network Transformation initiative, the company’s billion-dollar project to support future residential and business applications.  

“Len is a true innovator with a proven track record of bringing compelling new products and services to market that deliver superior customer experiences and drive revenue growth,” Cox Communications CEO Mark Greatrex said in a press release. “His ability to take a long-range, strategic vision, create a sense of urgency and move organizations to deliver on strategy makes him the natural choice to shape the future of product and technology development at Cox.”

A 26-year veteran of Cox Communications, Langner has held several senior leadership roles in the company, including SVP of field operations, with overall responsibility for field operations and vendor management. Langner also led marketing operations for the company, where she drove residential marketing strategy and execution nationwide. 

“Colleen built an intimate knowledge of our markets, our customers and what it takes to support the services we sell,” Greatrex said in the release. “Her leadership experience across our regions gives her great perspective and a well-rounded view of our business that serves our Senior Team well.”

Lawson joined Cox Communications about eight years ago, leading the company’s digital marketing and helping to digitize sales, customer care and, more recently, customer retention and base management. 

“We are moving rapidly to more digital customer journeys and interactive services and Mark is a top-notch digital expert who already has helped us blaze trails in the digital realm,” Greatrex said in the release. “He will be a tremendous asset to our senior leadership team, lending his digital vision and expertise to our growth and business strategy.”

Cox Communications said it has promoted Colleen Langner to executive VP and chief marketing and sales officer and Jeff Breaux to executive VP of Cox Business. Both will report to incoming president Mark Greatrex, who is scheduled to replace the retiring president Patrick Esser at the end of the year. 

Langner, a 2017 Multichannel News Wonder Woman, was previously senior VP of field operations for Cox, and in her new role succeeds Greatrex who held the position for a decade. Langner has more than two decades of experience leading marketing and sales teams at the regional and national levels and in her new role will be responsible for leading the company’s residential sales team and marketing activities.

Breaux has been with Cox Business for more than seven years, most recently as senior VP of sales. In his new position he will oversee Cox Business’s commercial solutions portfolio, including sales, operations, customer experience, product development and marketing for business customers, wholesale services for telecom carriers, as well as investment and acquisition of related B2B adjacent businesses.

“Colleen and Jeff have both proven themselves as extremely talented leaders who drive competitive results and motivate and inspire others around them,” Greatrex said in a statement. “With these two exemplary additions, our Cox senior leadership team is now in place. I’m ready to hit the ground running with this amazing group. I have the utmost confidence in their leadership abilities to make our plan and use our products and services to create increasingly important connections for residential and business customers.”

COLLEEN LANGNER

NAME: Colleen Langner

TITLE: Senior Vice President, Marketing Operations

COMPANY: Cox Communications

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Helped launch cable’s first triple-play bundle while a Cox marketer in Orange County, Calif. Launched first Cox Solutions Stores (there are now more than 100). Steadily adding responsibilities, she now leads all marketing operations, including customer acquisition and retention teams, and media planning and buying, reporting to EVP Mark Greatrex.

QUOTABLE: “I always want to be in a role where I’m closest to the consumer. The consumer will tell you their wants and desires.”

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Colleen Langner got “the cable bug” with her first job out of college (Marquette University), working with the cable marketing council in her hometown of Chicago. The road to her current role as senior vice president of marketing operations for Cox Communications included milestones like helping the MSO launch broadband Internet service, digital telephone and digital cable in a groundbreaking three-service bundled offering in Orange County, Calif.

Her husband Dan’s job took them west, in 1990; her career rise at Cox brought them to Atlanta about four years ago. Along the way, they have raised three teenage sons who have grown up with the business.

“I had my oldest when digital cable launched, and I had my second when high-speed Internet came around and then, when I had my third, it was phone,” she said recently, referring to 19-year-old Jack, 16-year-old Corey and 14-year-old Ryan. “My husband said to me, ‘There’s no more products.’ So thank God we didn’t launch home security until recently.”

‘COOL AS A CUCUMBER’

That sense of humor is part of what makes Langner, in Cox chief operating officer Jill Campbell’s words, “an extremely positive, optimistic leader.”

Campbell gave an example. During a period last year when Cox was trying to increase its average revenue per customer and people were bombarding Langner with ideas, Langner remained “cool as a cucumber,” thanking everyone and praising their suggestions.

“She never, never says negative things,” Campbell said. “People really want to follow her and they will take the hill because of how she presents things.”

Mark Greatrex, Cox’s chief marketing and sales officer, credits her help as a key lieutenant in leading two big transformations of the marketing team, moving from state-by-state approaches to a centralized one with nationwide portfolios in categories such as customer acquisition and retention and digital outreach.

Among other attributes, she’s agile at tweaking campaigns on the fly and moving marketing resources around quickly as needed, Greatrex said. “In a very high change environment, that’s tremendously important.”

Change was certainly in the air in mid 1990s Orange County, when Cox began offering an alternative to the then-Pacific Bell phone monopoly and introduced high-speed Internet to consumers weary of dial-up modems. “We used to say with high-speed Internet, we all lived in Missouri, the show-me state. People had to see it to believe it, to see how fast it was.”

Digital cable, which upped the channel ante from 30 to hundreds and added an on-screen guide to sort through them, was another revelation marketers wanted consumers to experience first hand.

Kip Simonson, who was Langner’s boss at the Cox system back then (and now works at Mediacom Communications), said Langner was adept at helping branch out into this new realm of retail marketing. One weekend, Simonson said, Cox set up a 10,000-square-foot tent in the parking lot of a CompUSA store and, he recalled, more than 5,000 people showed up to try out the new products.

“She was a huge help in setting up big events,” he said.

The Mediacom marketer saw Langner at the recent CES in Las Vegas. In an interview shortly after the gadget-fest ended, Langner said highlights for her were “around smart home: home security, home innovation and how our products are now working together.”

Keeping up (or even staying ahead) of what consumers want nowadays leads Langner into marketing those home-monitoring and automation services in Cox Homelife, and clueing Cox consumers into the benefits of the new Contour video platform, with voice remote and enhanced search, and Gigabit Internet.

When Cox reintroduced Contour — now incorporating X1 technology developed by Comcast — she led an employee campaign within Cox to make everyone a knowledgeable ambassador for New Contour. “She has got tremendous collaboration and influencing skills,” Greatrex noted, both for communicating with her team of more than 100 employees and for dealing with her senior-management peers.

ALL ABOUT TEAM BUILDING

Langner said she gets a lot of satisfaction from watching the personal growth by members of her team as they learn new capabilities made possible by data and technology to get to new levels of marketing — “seeing how they’ve flourished and the accomplishments they’ve made not only at Cox but within the industry.”

“For me, it’s really around building teams that I can trust and know that people have your back,” she said. “That’s what I instill with my team members. And make sure they also stay close to the consumer. … I think that can lift and move the whole business forward.”

The youngest of six children, Langner’s dad (her pre-married surname was McKay) was a Chicago city policeman and her mom was a bank vice president.

In addition to Campbell and Greatrex and former Cox marketing chief Joe Rooney, Langner counts her mom, Pat, who is now 85, as a mentor “and a role model. Gosh, if she can do it with six kids. I only have three.”

Keeping up with her sons’ activities, including football and wrestling, keeps her busy outside of work. Since moving east from Southern California, the family maintains a love of the beach by visiting ones on the Gulf Coast, including Destin, Fla., and gets back to the Golden State at least a couple of times a year.

“I like to say there’s nothing that a good book and a walk on the beach can’t help.”