Staffers at Denver-based The Cable Center are very much ready for Super Bowl 50 this Sunday, pitting their beloved (but underdog) Denver Broncos against the powerful Carolina Panthers in a matchup of younger (Carolina's Cam Newton) and older (Denver's Peyton Manning) top-gun quarterbacks.

Cable Center CEO (and head coach) Jana L. Henthorn, a member of the 2016 class of MCNWomen to Watch, led the celebration of "Bronco Friday" at the center, which is the nonprofit educational hub celebrating the cable industry.

Here's who's in the photo.

Back Row, L to R: Matt Hollingsworth, Brian Kenny, Nic van Dessel, Bethany Friday, Diane Christman, Jessica Weimer, Emily Gibson (hat tip to Emily for sending the photo).

Front Row, L to R: Luke Woodruff, Steve Luiting, Sarah Clausen, Jana L. Henthorn, Joyce Alden-Schuyler, Monsi Vazquez (Intern and 2015 TLC Say Yes to the Prom participant).

MEGAN CLARKEN

TITLE: Executive VP, Global Product Leadership, Nielsen

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Since joining Nielsen in 2004, Clarken has held such posts as managing director of media client services in APMEA (Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa), and managing director of Nielsen’s digital businesses in both Asia Pacific and Australia.

QUOTE: “The trick is to make sure you’re not introducing things too early. We’re often asked why did mobile only get introduced into our digital ratings 18 months or two years ago … If it was introduced any prior to that, we might have been measuring BlackBerrys. ”

— Megan Clarken

Ask people about Nielsen executive vice president of global product leadership Megan Clarken and a lot of words come up in the conversation — smart, no-nonsense, fearless, knowledgeable, confident, driven. Those qualities first came to the surface in what Clarken thought would be her first and only career as a world-class track and field athlete. But they’ve proven to be even more valuable in her current role as the point person for what is arguably the most anticipated measurement product since the People Meter: Total Audience Measurement.

A native of New Zealand, Clarken left school at 16 to pursue her track and field dreams. A long-jumper who once held New Zealand’s women’s national record at 6.52 meters, Clarken qualified for the New Zealand Olympic team and was preparing for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul when she injured her ACL in an accident, effectively ending her career. For the next decade, she worked to get back into Olympic form before deciding in her 30s to finally abandon that career and focus on what had become her new passion — information technology.

“I fell into IT because I was interested in data entry and shiftwork so I could train during the day,” Clarken said, adding that her initial goal was to find another sport she could pursue at the Olympic level.

“It didn’t work out,” she said. “I could never get to the same standard with the knee that I was left with.”

DRIVEN TO SUCCEED IN TRACK, IT

Clarken said she then turned her focus on her business career, using the skills and determination she had developed through athletics.

After a stint at the Microsoft Network in Australia, where she said she “fell in love with digital media” while working on a joint venture between Australia’s Channel 9 and MSN, Clarken steadily moved through the digital ranks, consulting for News Corp. and holding leadership positions at several tech firms including Akamai Technologies. She was hired by Nielsen in 2004, taking roles in leading commercial and product development and later heading up Southeast Asia operations. That’s where she attracted the attention of Nielsen global president and chief operating officer Steve Hasker, who joined the company in 2010.

Hasker said he had tried for years to bring Clarken to New York to run Nielsen’s media operations, finally succeeding in 2013. Clarken’s deep understanding and appreciation of the media business, operational excellence, fearlessness and drive made her perfect for the job, he said. “A lot of people give great presentations,” Hasker said. “She’s the one who gets it done.”

He recalled a recent meeting of about 200 top Nielsen sales and media executives, where Clarken took the stage to the tune of Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation.”

“That really encapsulates Megan,” Hasker said. “She will talk it through, but she’s much more comfortable getting it done than she is talking about it, and much more comfortable moving on to the next program rather than celebrating the last one.”

LEARNING FROM ROCK STARS

“I look to learn something from everybody I work with,” Clarken said. “And I have been fortunate enough to have a team of people who are absolute rock stars and teach me something that will aid me every day. Both my direct manager and our CEO are both brilliant and bring a set of skills to me every day that I can learn from. There’s not one mentor, just everybody that I surround myself with. Where I can find nuggets, I’ll take them.”

Hasker, a former Australian track and field athlete himself, said Clarken’s sports background has given her confidence and a fierce competitive instinct that have helped her succeed.

That background convinced Hasker that Clarken was the right person to head up the TAM initiative, which will enable Nielsen to track audiences over multiple platforms and devices. Set for widespread launch later this year, TAM will be watched by every media buyer and network looking for a new currency to quantify TV’s evolving audience.

Nielsen plans to put digital content ratings into syndication (meaning they are no longer proprietary, everyone can see each other’s data) in late Q1 and total content ratings are scheduled for syndication in the second half of this year.

While Nielsen had mapped out the TAM strategy and a digital audience product before Clarken took over, the initiative needed the right executive to steer it, Hasker said. “We had the beginnings [of a TAM product], but we needed someone who was a world-class programming executive and a leader,” he said. “That’s a pretty rare skill set.”

TACKLING TAM CHALLENGE

Putting together a new ad currency isn’t something that gets done overnight, though, and Nielsen has had to deal with criticism on several fronts concerning the product.

Total Audience Measurement is not a simple concept to understand, Clarken acknowledged, but she believes people are beginning to get the idea that pairing panel data with big data will lead to more reliable measurement.

“We didn’t dream this up over the weekend,” she said. “It has been a vision we’ve been pursuing for some time. We’re getting better and better at articulating it, which is no mean thing; it’s complicated. But the trick has been to simplify it as much as possible.”

Clarken added that in order for TAM to be successful, it will require the backing of large and small industry players.

“Measurement is a team sport,” she said.

STEPHANIE McMAHON

TITLE: Chief Brand Officer, WWE

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: McMahon worked her way up the WWE ranks from an account executive position and was most recently executive VP of creative.

QUOTE: “One of the company values that’s been instilled in us by my father [Vince McMahon] is to treat each day like it’s the first day on the job. What that really means is to challenge the status quo.”

— Stephanie McMahon

Stephanie McMahon isn’t a villain. But she plays one on WWE Monday Night Raw, one of the highest-rated — and longest-running — cable shows.

McMahon’s evil persona on the USA Network series is a telltale sign that she is vastly different than your standard entertainment executive. She holds the title chief brand officer at World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which was founded by her parents.

Bonnie Hammer, chairman of NBCUniversal Cable Enter tainment and one of McMahon’s mentors, describes her this way: “She is first and foremost the daughter of one of the most physically big and professionally big guys in the world.” She refers to Vince McMahon, the chairman and CEO of WWE.

COVERING EVERY PART OF THE FAMILY BUSINESS

She also has a very big mandate. McMahon works with WWE’s business units to support key growth initiatives and, as global brand ambassador, represents the company among vital entities including government, advertisers, media, business partners and investors. She’s the primary spokesperson for WWE’s social-responsibility initiatives. And she’s a member of the company’s board.

McMahon works with her husband, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, a WWE wrestling star who also plays a villainous on-air character. He serves as WWE’s executive vice president of talent, live events and creative and is also a member of the company’s board.

The duo are jointly known as “The Authority” on Raw, but off -air, they’ve created a charitable fund called Connor’s Cure, which focuses on pediatric brain and spinal cancer research. It was named after a young WWE fan, Connor Michalek, who passed away from brain cancer. So far, the fund has raised close to $1 million.

A ‘GIVER’ AND A ‘DOER’

As a result of her humanitarian efforts, McMahon was asked to join the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation’s board of trustees. Greg Barrett, president of the foundation, said that McMahon is not only a giver; she’s a doer.

Despite her heavy workload and travel schedule, “she can still find time to figure out how to publicize things for us — whether it’s fundraising or research findings. She’s able to fly at 30,000 feet and also be boots on the ground,” Barrett said.

“She’s an incredibly savvy, smart woman in a very, very male world, dealing with some of the nicest people in the world, but also some big, physical people. And she holds her own,” added Hammer in speaking of McMahon’s work at WWE.

FOLLOWING IN HER MOTHER’S FOOTSTEPS

The nickname that her brother, Shane McMahon, gave her — the Vincess — hints at which parent she most resembles. But she is proud to be following in the footsteps of another Wonder Woman, her mother, Linda McMahon. In fact, they are the first mother-daughter Wonder Woman combo in the history of the honors.

Linda, the one-time CEO of WWE, helped build the company into the powerhouse that it is today, with 11 offices around the world and annual revenue of over $540 million. She left WWE in 2009 to turn her attention to politics.

Stephanie McMahon said that she always wanted to have a role at WWE. “My parents were working round the clock. And one of the ways that I could relate to them, or even just spend time with them, was by being a part of what they did,” she said.

“I also happen to love the [wrestling] genre. It is storytelling. It is no different than a movie. It just also happens to incorporate incredible action, with conflicts that are settled inside a ring,” McMahon added.

She’s set some big goals moving forward. “I help support every line of business in our company. And our goals for 2016 are mainly focused on growing our [over-the-top] network,” she said. That effort includes transmissions of WWE’s live special events on the Web and via traditional PPV.

“Growing that subscriber base is game-changing for our company. We are already generating more revenue from our subscription service than we ever did, even in the greatest years of our pay-per-view business.”

GREAT TEAM ON THE ROAD AND AT HOME

She’s also focused on expanding the international business, with a special focus on India, China and South America. WWE reaches 650 million homes around the world in 25 different languages. However, “we’re looking to be more strategic in our approach and capitalize on all the different lines of business of WWE.”

While McMahon tackles all those goals, she and Levesque also are raising three daughters, currently aged 9, 7 and 5. Having a great team helps them to keep the home/work responsibilities manageable. She’s come to understand that “it’s never going to be an equal balance. There’s going to be sacrifices made, either on the business end or the personal end.”

She said her favorite times of day are when she’s taking the kids to school and putting them to bed. Around 10:30 p.m., she and her husband work out — sometimes until after midnight. That’s the way she relieves stress.

McMahon doesn’t take her own children’s future involvement in WWE as a given.

“They’re going to have to really, really want it,” she said. “I encourage them to pursue their dream no matter what it is. They just need to be willing to work hard for it.”

HOLLY JACOBS

TITLE: Executive VP, U.S. Reality and Syndicated Programming, Sony Pictures Television

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: After segueing from working as an art therapist and documentary filmmaker, Jacobs started producing commercial daytime TV for ABC Television and Buena Vista Productions. Prior to Sony, she oversaw development and production of unscripted series for Fox Television Studios.

QUOTE: “It’s great when you get to make quality shows where good things also happen to people.”

— Holly Jacobs

One of Holly Jacobs’s first projects when she became executive vice president of U.S. reality and syndicated programming for Sony Pictures Television nearly a decade ago was the launch of Shark Tank for ABC.

The series has become a flagship show for the network and is currently delivering 9.1 million viewers in the United States. Not only have the show’s investors — known as “Sharks” — become celebrities, but many of the businesses they’ve invested in have become multimillion-dollar companies, and reinvigorated the American dream for a younger generation now charged with entrepreneurial aspirations.

But when the show premiered in August 2009, it wasn’t the dreamy hit it would become.

“It started out in the first season, and even in the second season, it didn’t have good ratings, people weren’t aware of it, we fought very hard to keep it on the air,” Jacobs said from her office in Los Angeles. “We had really great partners in ABC who also believed in the vision of the show and the promise of the show and stuck with it to tremendous results.”

She’s since led the charge for the Emmy-winning show and its spinoff, Beyond the Tank (also for ABC), which premiered last May and gives viewers a first look at what happened after deals were made. The show ranked No. 1 in its time period among adults 18-49 and was second among Friday primetime programs in the demographic, behind Shark Tank.

“For eight years,” said Clay Newbill, producer of Shark Tank and Beyond the Tank, “she’s been, every step of the way with us, helping to hone and keep raising that bar, keeping the show fresh and exciting and helping to keep our machine working smoothly.”

TACKLING A ‘PYRAMID’ REBOOT

With these properties, Jacobs and her team have turned Sony’s Reality Programming division into one of the industry’s leading content providers, characterized by its high ratings and creative diversity. The group spearheads SPT’s Emmy-winning The Dr. Oz Show for first-run syndication and is overseeing the summer’s reboot of Sony’s hit property The $100,000 Pyramid, with host and executive producer Michael Strahan.

“Pyramid is really, truly the jewel in the Sony library format crown, and it’s certainly been on the air in many iterations,” Jacobs said. “We knew that the format was worthy of bringing back only if we found an incredible talent to go with it, and I can’t think of anyone more perfectly suited, and such a world-class talent as Michael Strahan — and as it turned out, this is a show he grew up watching and loving.”

Jacobs will also head up the spring launch of S.T.R.O.N.G. (Start to Realize Our Natural Greatness), a new fitness-focused aspirational reality series for NBC by Biggest Loser creator Dave Broome and executive produced by Broome and Sylvester Stallone.

“It’s not just about getting skinny,” she said, “it’s about being strong, psychically, physically, emotional and in every which way, and the show is a reflection of that experience.”

She added: “This is the privilege of my career … to have a national platform for television shows you’re creating, but to be able to have an impact beyond just the making of the show. I’m very mindful that we make television to impact the culture.”

FROM ART THERAPY TO TELEVISION

Jacobs really believes in the transformative power of television — even though a career in TV was not her first choice.

Growing up in New York, “painting was my world,” said Jacobs . Having earned her master’s degree from New York University, she got her first job as an art therapist at Florence Nightingale, a nursing home in New York City.

“When I was there,” she said, “I was so moved by the elders that I was working with. They had incredible stories and I thought, I’m going to make a documentary film for no other reason except that I thought I would do it to maybe make a film to show other graduate students at New York University: Here’s what happens when you’re an art therapist. Here’s what the work looks like.”

The film, Forget Me Not, was showcased at festivals and won awards — and Jacobs went on to more independent documentary filmmaking, eventually landing a job at the now-defunct New York City documentary house CEL Communications , where she worked on series for A&E, Disney Channel and others before moving into network TV.

“So that was really the switch,” she said. “When I talk to people about the journey of my career, it seems like a strange beginning. But the journey has made sense all the way through. I’m a visual person and I’m a storyteller, and I ended up working on everything from Oprah’s first primetime special, to producing daytime talk for Sally Jessy [Raphael ] and then seguing into the executive life.”

It was around then that she met Zack Van Amburg, now president of U.S. programming and production for Sony Pictures Television and her boss — although, at one time, she almost became his boss.

“I was in syndication here at Sony and she was running syndication and daytime stuff over at Buena Vista,” he said. “She called me one day, and we’d had a series of meetings and said, ‘Let’s make amazing television together.’ It was at a moment in time where Sony was expanding and I had an opportunity to launch a cable division, so I didn’t take the leap to work with Holly and I always regretted it. So the minute we had a chance to relaunch what nonscripted television was going to be at Sony, I came calling and begging and pleading and thank goodness, Holly decided to come over. She’s done a tremendous job since she’s been here.”

One of Jacobs’s goals this year is to do more to help bring more women into the executive suite — and part of why she signed up to mentor a 16-year-old girl through The Hollywood Reporter’s Big Sister program.

“I never take for granted the opportunities that have been presented to me,” she said. “They are beyond my wildest imagination, and I want to be able, in every which way that I can, pay it forward.”

PATRICIA BETRON

TITLE: Senior VP, Multimedia Sales, ESPN

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Joined ESPN as a director in customer marketing and sales in 1999, becoming the unit’s first female senior VP in 2005. Spent 10 years at ABC, in national sales and at local and regional sales positions, after working in research at NBC.

QUOTE: “I think we’ve done a better job of multiculturally hiring people in front of the camera and behind the camera that reflect our audience. It has been a really big focus and we see it paying off.”

— Patricia Betron

Patricia Betron wanted to be a broadcast journalist, so she enrolled at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications after graduating high school in her hometown of Stoughton, Mass.

Attending classes with the likes of talented future pro Mike Tirico — the Monday Night Football announcer who’s now her colleague at ESPN — helped persuade her to follow a different interest, in the business side of television.

That was a smart move, as was her later decision, while working at the ABC-owned WLS-TV in Chicago, to switch from research to sales. A sales manager at the station thought the passion and knowledge she shared while on sales calls appealed to clients and were bringing in business.

Betron also shrewdly became an advocate for ESPN’s efforts to make programming, hiring and marketing efforts aimed at Hispanic and multicultural audiences. She served on the Hispanic Priority Committee for ESPN as part of a Walt Disney Co.-wide initiative.

She helped develop an insights study on “The Bi- Cultural Hispanic Sports Fan Media Behaviors” and worked with National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver and the NBA to administer the NBA/ESPN Hispanic Priority Summit in 2013. Disney CEO Robert Iger has recognized her as a “Top 10 Diversity Change Agent” at the company.

Betron said multicultural outreach was an easy priority to support, because so many clients wanted help reaching those audiences. When speaking with chief marketing officers, she said, “it was one of the top things they brought up right out of the gate.”

FINDING THE RIGHT SOLUTIONS

Helping customers solve problems is what appeals to Betron most about sales.

Wendy’s, the fast-food chain, had if not a problem at least a desire to leverage its spending with ESPN more effectively than had been the case before Tim Sullivan became vice president of media there in 2010.

“That became a challenge to Trish and her team to come back to us with something that they believed was more in tune with what we were solving for,” Sullivan said.

Betron’s team’s solution was for Wendy’s to back the John R. Wooden Award, presented annually to college basketball’s best player. It has become “probably the single largest partnership Wendy’s has, from a media standpoint,” Sullivan said, and has given Wendy’s the kind of visibility it’s wanted since getting on board for the 2012-13 season.

Wendy’s found in the Wooden Award a prestigious prize that still has a ways to go before it has the prominence of the Heisman Award for college football’s best player, Sullivan said.

And ESPN astutely pointed out similarities between the legendary UCLA coach for whom the award is named and Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, who’s known for introducing new products, for leadership and for emphasizing quality, he said.

“They really solved for our needs in a creative way,” said Sullivan, who counts Betron as a friend.

COUNSELING HER COLLEAGUES

In 2005, Betron became the first female senior vice president in ESPN’s Customer Marketing and Sales organizations, and she has steadily added responsibilities there. She oversees multimedia sales teams in Detroit, Chicago and New York. She also leads ESPN CMS’s Sales Communications team, positioning ESPN’s collection of audiences, rather than just sports properties.

Ed Erhardt, the president of ESPN’s global CMS operation, said she’s widely admired for the support and counsel she’s given to so many at the company — men and women alike — who ask for advice on how to excel in the business while also finding that ever-elusive balance of work and home life.

“I think Tricia is seen as a role model for women who work at ESPN,” Erhardt said.

Betron — who, after stints at NBC and ABC, joined ESPN in 1999 in a sales unit that targeted new business opportunities — and her husband, Cliff , have a son, Zachary, age 13, and a daughter, Hannah, who’s 12. Cliff is a stay-at-home dad. “Our family is very fortunate Cliff has taken on that role,” she said. “He is a great partner and wonderful father.”

But Betron has always tried to either be home for tuckins or, if traveling, to call at a predictable time, as such rituals are important. She also was able to take Hannah to the espnW Summit in California, which gave Hannah a different perspective on what her mom is like on the job.

‘NEVER A BORING DAY’

Betron’s mom was a single mother, she said, role-modeling for her four kids (Patricia is second oldest) how to be responsible and “striving.”

Among important business mentors, Betron cites Erhardt and ESPN executive vice president Eric Johnson, her direct boss, in addition to ESPN chief financial officer Christine Driessen, who’s “hugely supportive of women at ESPN and me in particular.”

Asked about how ESPN’s recent news — in which acknowledgement of subscriber losses helped prompt a selloff in media stocks — had affected her work, Betron said: “I’d rather be here than in any other place. The changes that are happening in the industry are exhilarating. What a time to be part of a company that is thinking ahead and has been planning ahead and has such great assets and brands that, no matter what happens, they’re always going to appeal to consumers and to businesses.

“It keeps it interesting, that’s for sure. There’s never a boring day.”

SAVALLE SIMS

TITLE: Executive VP, Deputy General Counsel, Discovery Communications

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Sims oversees Discovery’s global litigation, intellectual property, compliance and securities matters, which she initially handled as outside counsel at D.C. law firm Arent Fox.

QUOTE: “Working for [District Court] Judge Lee was my first opportunity to encounter litigation in a real-world environment, and I just loved it.”

— Savalle Sims

Flexibility marks much of the education and career of Wonder Woman Savalle Sims, executive vice president and deputy general counsel for Discovery Communications.

For example, Sims wanted to be a physician from a very young age, but let’s just say math and science weren’t her best subjects in high school in Maryland.

As an undergraduate at Syracuse University, she thought she might pursue a career in finance, but switched to a double major of marketing, as well as transportation and logistics.

Sims’s father, a general manager of a major insurance company, wasn’t too keen on his daughter working in marketing, which he considered “soft.” But he supported her decision to become a lawyer, and she went to Notre Dame University’s law school right after graduating from Syracuse.

Once a lawyer, Sims originally thought she’d go into mergers and acquisitions work, but switched her focus to regulatory and interned at the Food & Drug Administration after her first year of law school. It was a busy summer; she split her time between the FDA and working for a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge, for whom she clerked two years after graduating law school.

Her next job opportunity presented itself at downtown Washington, D.C., firm Feldesman Tucker, where she came under the wing of partner and divorce law specialist Rita Bank, a principal and co-founder of Ain & Bank. “Although I didn’t start out to be a domestic relations practitioner, it was a wonderful experience for me,” Sims said.

“Savalle worked harder than just about anyone else,” Bank recalled. “Even as a new attorney, Savalle provided invaluable assistance because she stuck with every assignment until she understood the issues completely and then applied that knowledge to the next case. It was clear from the start that Savalle was going to be a star at whatever she chose to do. She was tenacious, inquisitive and thoughtful.”

HARD WORK REWARDED

After practicing at Feldesman Tucker for three years, Sims had a yearning for commercial litigation and it was time to make the transition “because I was becoming more senior.” She joined Arent Fox as an associate, and later became a partner in its commercial litigation group.

Most of her Arent Fox cases initially were employment disputes. She typically represented companies and educational institutions against discrimination claims. She then handled breach of contract disputes in fashion, manufacturing and media, most notably a few cases for Discovery.

Sims was recognized among the “40 Top Lawyers Under 40” by Washingtonian magazine and in Washington Business Journal’s “Young Guns.”

A search to bolster Discovery’s in-house legal team identified Sims as a strong candidate after her work for the company and several Discovery executives. “The feedback across the board was that she was a top-notch litigator,” said Bruce Campbell, Discovery’s chief development, distribution and legal officer. “It was immediately apparent to me that she was an absolute professional and terrific [legal] partner for me.”

Campbell noted that Arent Fox still handles most of Discovery’s intellectual property protection work, so it wasn’t an awkward transition.

“At a law firm it always goes down a little easier when one of your partners transitions to working for one of your beloved clients than going from one law firm to another,” Sims agreed.

Working in-house, Sims learned “you have to have a deeper understanding of how the business works, the challenges, the industry. There’s also a greater need for practical legal advice that works in the real-world commercial environment.”

She said she also appreciates the international challenges her current job brings, considering Discovery’s global reach.

MENTORING THE NEXT GENERATION

Most of Discovery’s lawyers are women, according to Campbell, and Sims serves as an adviser to Discovery Women’s Leadership Network, an employee resource group dedicated to professional development and fostering female leadership. She also mentors a multiethnic group of attorneys within Discovery and throughout the cable industry.

“From my perspective, diversity and inclusion are very important in problem solving,” she said. “As a lawyer and a professional it’s important to have an environment that prides itself in being diverse and inclusive.”

Sims also places importance in balancing her professional and personal lives, especially raising three children with her husband Turnell Sims, an assistant principal at a middle school. They met at Syracuse, and married after her second year of law school; they will celebrate their 22nd wedding anniversary this July.

“I live vicariously through my kids (Justin, 11; Caitlin, 9; and Ryan, 7). It’s exciting to see them play sports and excel in areas that I never could,” Sims said.

Sims said she doesn’t have a problem working late or early during the week, but she devotes her weekends to the family “so I could be a more engaged and present parent. Weekends are precious to me.”

Her favorite TV show is Law & Order. “I watch a lot of [Discovery’s] ID,” she said, adding she’s a big fan of its show A Crime to Remember. Whereas her two younger kids and husband prefer to watch programming on mobile devices or laptops, Sims and Justin prefer viewing on the box.

When she first told her kids she was leaving Arent Fox for Discovery, “Justin asked, ‘So you’re not going to be a real lawyer anymore?’”

But when Justin realized Discovery owned the Military Channel (now known as American Heroes Channel), for which he wanted to narrate a show after he watched a program on the Civil War, he approved of his mom’s new job.

“Justin is a big fan of [The Discovery Channel’s] Alaskan Bush People.”

KAREN GRINTHAL

TITLE: Senior VP, National Ad Sales, Scripps Networks Interactive

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Spearheaded growth of Food Network, helped launch Cooking Channel, senior VP of marketing and communications for Turner Broadcasting Sales

QUOTE: “No one ever put a boundary in front of me and said, ‘This is your world, you’re ad sales.’ My ideas were always welcome.”

— Karen Grinthal

Karen Grinthal made a huge leap of faith nearly 19 years ago when she left a job at an established cable-programming giant to work for a fledgling programmer called Food Network.

At the time, Grinthal said that she held a prestigious position, as a senior vice president of marketing and communications at Turner Broadcasting Sales, where she had been for eight years. But she was looking for a smaller venue where she could make a real difference, a place that had the entrepreneurial spirit of a startup. Food Network fit the bill, although the career move raised eyebrows among her peers.

“I took a job that nobody could understand, because I went from being [a senior vice president] to being a sales manager, from a multi-hundred-million-dollar responsibility to a brand that had no revenue and no ratings,” said Grinthal, now senior vice president of national ad sales for Scripps Networks Interactive.

“It’s very tempting to go for the title, go for the most money, go for whatever will give you the most prestige,” she said. “And so basically, it was a question of making a decision to totally relinquish prestige and go for what I felt in my gut would make sense for me.”

TURNING FOOD INTO A POWERHOUSE

Her gamble paid off. This year Grinthal will celebrate almost two decades at Food Network. During her tenure, Food Network has evolved from a network with less than $15 million in ad revenue to one with more than $700 million in national ad billings.

The channel made celebrities of chefs — such as Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentiis — and turned food into a pop-culture programming genre.

“We have a star-making machine,” said Grinthal, who is credited with being smart, creative, passionate and ever-calm.

She pioneered innovative ways to integrate advertisers into Food Network programming, a change in strategy. And sponsors are offered cross-platform opportunities across TV, digital and print, via Food Network Magazine.

“I don’t know of any other ad sales executive who has meant more to a channel’s growth and success than what Karen Grinthal has meant to Food Network,” Jon Steinlauf, president of ad sales and marketing for Scripps Networks Interactive said, noting her tenure at Food began even before Scripps bought the network from Belo in 1997. “Karen’s passion, dedication, loyalty and tenure to a single TV network are unsurpassed in the annals of cable. She has literally built our ad sales business from its humble beginnings into a power brand in the ad market.”

Steinlauf said he has worked with Grinthal “side by side” for 24 years, first at Turner and then at Scripps. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Grinthal joined Turner in 1988 as an account executive and rose through the ranks to become a senior vice president of ad sales for its entertainment division. She began her career as a media planner at Doyle Dane Bernbach and then spent several years in radio sales.

BUILDING THE RECIPE FOR COOKING CHANNEL

Grinthal’s career achievements aren’t limited to Food Network. She was also instrumental in the successful 2010 relaunch of Fine Living as the Cooking Channel, a flanker brand to Food Network. Steinlauf credited Grinthal with being part of a core Scripps management team, adding that her input is sought not only on advertising but programming and company strategy, such as Cooking Channel’s creation, as well.

“We sat in a room and strategized about what it could be, and from the day that we strategized about it until we put it on the air as a full-blown network was six months,” Grinthal said. “Quite amazing.”

Her long tenure at Scripps is also an amazing feat in the TV industry. Grinthal said she and her ad-sales team — where there is little turnover — don’t get stale at the company because of the constant demand to adapt to the changing media landscape.

“The biggest challenge has been the constant reinvention and refreshment of what the brand means to advertisers,” she said.

For example, for years Food Network had a policy of zero product integration in its programming. Grinthal said she walked away from “advertisers waving money in our faces” rather than risk tarnishing the brand in its early days. Now Food Network is doing innovative partnerships and brand integrations using the filter of whether it makes sense for the advertiser and the network, and whether it makes a show better, according to Grinthal.

LANDING PRODUCT PARTNERSHIPS

One of the greatest partnerships that Food Network ever did was about eight years ago with Red Lobster, engineered by Grinthal, according to Steinlauf. During an episode of Food Network Star, contestants competed in a challenge to create a seafood dish that would be served at Red Lobster restaurants across the country as a special the very next day. The winning recipe for white chocolate tilapia was on the menu.

Back then, Karen Chester was at Red Lobster and worked with Grinthal on that product integration, which she deemed a success. Chester is now vice president of media services for Bloomin’ Brands, whose restaurants include Outback Steakhouse. That chain’s projects with Food Network have included its executive chef serving as a judge on Chopped, Chester said.

Grinthal’s willingness to be open to new ideas, and come up with ideas, “makes it a partnership that works year after year, not one and done,” with Outback enjoying “a halo effect” through its alignment with Food Network, Chester said.

The network’s explosive success has given Grinthal great satisfaction.

“It has grown exponentially from a little tiny thing to a culture-changing icon,” she said. “So that’s one element of what’s kept me here.”

MICHELLE RICE

TITLE: Executive VP, Content Distribution and Marketing, TV One

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Led TV One from 18 million subscribers to nearly 60 million. Launched TV One High Def in 2009 in 15 million households. Graduate of WICT Betsy Magness Leadership Institute.

QUOTE: “Women always think that they need to know everything before they get to the next level. If you take a job and day one you know everything, it’s not the right job. You should always be challenging yourself.’’

— Michelle Rice

Michelle Rice grew up knowing she wanted to be in TV news. When she graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree, she got her wish — and hated it.

Working in the “news pit” of a local television station, she was stressed and poorly paid. Nobody seemed to have a life outside of work. The news director was 30 years old with an ulcer. One day, Rice spotted a cheerful-looking man in a sharp suit walking through the newsroom en route to his own office. “He looks like he’s making good money, he’s happy,” Rice recalled. “I said, ‘What does he do?’”

He was the sales manager, and that was the day Rice decided to go over to the business side. On top of that, one of her college professors told her to check out “that new thing” called cable. 

It was a good tip: today Rice is the executive vice president of content distribution and marketing for African-American-targeted TV One, the chair of the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications, and an executive board member of Women in Cable Telecommunications.

BUILDING A POWERHOUSE

Not only did she help build TV One’s distribution from 18 million homes on two cable providers to nearly 60 million subscribers, but she has now successfully completed a second round of distribution agreements for the 12-year-old network.

“I’m very proud of that,” Rice said. “Initially people said, ‘Hey we really want you guys to be successful, we believe in the mission, we’re going to help you get off to a good start.’ Round two, people are worried about their margins and we have to prove that we’ve done the things we said we were going to do.”

Although BET, with 90 million subscribers, still outpaces TV One, African-American viewers want choice, Rice said. “We are not a monolithic group of people. We want different experiences, we have a lot of interests,” she said. “There can be more than one or two networks targeting the audience. We’ve done it with class and with quality and I think we’ve proved we belong on cable networks. 

Rice entered the cable industry armed with a master’s degree in communications management from the University of Southern California and a Walter Kaitz Foundation fellowship. She started as a manager of special markets for BET, then went to NBC Cable Networks as director of affiliate sales/special markets. There, she was responsible for distribution of CNBC, MSNBC and ShopNBC (now Evine Live) to accounts including satellite-TV providers DirecTV and Dish Network.

Back then, Rice said, “Nobody thought this little pizza piesized dish was going to mean anything. They said, ‘Hey give the new girl that stuff.’”

After five years at NBC, Rice hopped to pay-per-view packager In Demand to “get my VP stripes.” In 2004, her husband got a job in Washington, D.C. The couple had an agreement that it was his turn to move the family for his career, so Rice prepared to move. Then he handed her a newspaper story on Comcast’s decision to launch TV One. That was all it took.

“I love the mission of the network,” Rice said. “I remember growing up in the Cosby Show generation. … I was excited to see my experience on the screen. I was so excited to be a part of TV One because it has definitely shown African-Americans in a very diverse way, with all our interests and our culture, and the representation is high quality. What I love is that I feel I’ve been a part of that mission and breaking down those stereo types about the audience.”

WATCHING OUT FOR CABLE’S DIVERSITY

At NAMIC, Rice’s focus is on preserving diversity in the cable industry in the wake of job cuts due to merger-related consolidations. The major cable systems are already on notice, she said. “They take it very seriously and they are really looking at how this issue of consolidation is affecting their diversity numbers,” Rice said. After meeting with organizations including NAMIC and the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Charter Communications said on Jan. 15 that it had promised to ensure diversity in its boardroom if its merger with Time Warner Cable is approved by the FCC.

“I do think NAMIC is going to have a very big job ahead to make sure that as our numbers decline we are supporting folks getting back to work … and making sure that the industry stays accountable for being diverse,” Rice said. “I think it’s going to be a big issue. But I feel people are talking about it.”

In July, Rice was named to the executive committee of Women in Cable Telecommunications, where she has served on the board since 2012.

“She’s bubbly, she’s inclusive, she’s kind; I think she’s gentle in one-on-one conversations, but certainly holds her own when there’s a business topic being addressed,” said Martha Soehren, chair of WICT and chief talent development officer at Comcast. “People at our levels need to know when to step back and not show up like you’re leading the board discussion” and when to bring the fi repower. “She can do both of those.”

Rice and her husband, a consultant for Booz Allen, are the parents of a 16-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son — so her rare free time is spent “relaxing,” reading, attending her kids’ sports events and working with community organizations including the Northern Virginia Urban League, where she is on the board of directors. Part of the reason she’s so busy is that she still has plenty of goals to achieve: she wants to launch a new business for TV One. Not to mention write a book, travel with her kids and start a nonprofit to help homeless women.

“I definitely see myself starting something on my own and really focusing on helping women get out of shelters and get back to work,” she said. “That’s my passion.”

CINDI HOOK

TITLE: Senior VP, General Auditor and Global Risk Officer, Comcast

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Transforming Comcast’s audit team; bringing experiences from HP and Dell to the media and technology industry.

QUOTE: “Don’t underestimate what you’re capable of and how much energy you really have.”

— Cindi Hook

Cindi Hook says the best advice she ever got came from her father, a football coach at the high school she attended. “A ship in the harbor is safe,” he would say, “but that’s not what ships are built for. “

Hook has taken that advice into her role where she transformed the Comcast internal audit team, including helping to build the NBCUniversal financial audit team after Comcast merged with the company in 2011. As senior vice president, general auditor and global risk officer, she now heads an internal audit team that assesses the financial, operational and regulatory risks of all of Comcast’s new and potentially future businesses, including the cybersecurity risks.

“We have 120 people around the world that engage in all parts of the business to make sure that we are identifying and managing the risks of the operation, the financial piece, the regulatory piece,” she said.

Hook said of joining Comcast in 2010: “We had to build the whole NBCUniversal practice because when we acquired NBCUniversal we did not get any of the audit staff, so we literally had to build the practice from scratch.”

“Cindi has done an exceptional job transforming the company’s audit team while maintaining the strong financial controls and high operating standards required to run the business,” David Cohen, Comcast senior executive vice president and chief diversity officer, said.

FINDING ‘ASSURANCE’ AT COMCAST

Actually leaving her own safe harbor was part of the attraction of making the move to one of the nation’s largest cable companies.

“When I was first contacted by Comcast, the fact that they were doing the NBCUniversal deal made the opportunity more attractive,” she said.

Part of Hook’s job is “assurance,” which sounds touchy feely, but is instead another kind of hands-on operation.

“We have basic policies and procedures, whether they are internally mandated or externally mandated, and we go out as a team and assure management, to the degree that we can, that people are doing what they’re supposed to do to meet those requirements,” Hook said.

She concedes they “don’t always have the best news for people,” but added, “I think the general thought process here at Comcast is that we want to do everything we can to make the business better and that we would rather know where those opportunities are than not know about them.”

“Cindi is a terrific leader,” said Comcast chief financial officer Mike Cavanagh, calling the award “a tribute to her exceptional accomplishments.”

Most kids don’t grow up wanting to be a global risk and assurance officer and Hook was no exception.

STEPPING INTO ACCOUNTING

She is a classically trained ballet dancer and danced professionally in high school.

“Luckily, my parents said, ‘you have to get good grades because this ballet thing might not actually work out,’” she said, “so I went to college on a ballet and academic scholarship.” But when she suffered a “pretty serious injury” she “stumbled” — her word — into an accounting class. “I liked it and did really well at it and knew it was something where I would always be able to support myself,” Hook said.

She graduated from Brigham Young with a degree in accounting — she still dances, she said, but only in the kitchen.

She went the “typical route,” she said, joining accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

While, had things gone differently, she would have happily worn leotards to work — on her own terms — she said the “super-structured” accounting firm, where women had to wear pantyhose to work every day, “kind of bothered me.”

It was a time when computers were changing the world but the partners didn’t quite get it, she said. “I was getting my work done a lot faster and I was getting a lot of, ‘why aren’t you getting more billable hours?’”

Hook went back to school, got her MBA in finance, and moved to companies where they clearly got computers, Hewlett Packard (for eight and a half years) and then Dell (more than a dozen).

She said HP was a “really well-oiled machine,” so she could bring the discipline and process that Dell needed, but to an environment that was “high-growth and a lot of fun.”

She had 11 or 12 different jobs at Dell in all facets of the company, the last one in audit; she became known as a “fixer.”

Then Comcast called. “The product is really relatable and after meeting with Michael Angelakis, who was CFO at the time, and the rest of the management team, it was a pretty easy decision.”

About half of Hook’s leadership team are women. “We try to attract some of the best talent that we can either inside the company or from outside the company, develop them and then send them out to the business.

“So, I don’t look for women in particular, but I think what happens is that when you are a woman running an organization, you tend to attract women because they want that role model. They feel like they can work for somebody who, maybe, gets them, someone that they can relate to a little more closely.”

Asked who has helped her along the way, she points to a supportive husband, as well as Pedro Farah at Dell — now a top Walmart executive. “He pushed me really hard, like literally sometimes to tears. But I think that was an inflection point in my career. He opened my eyes to what I was really capable of.”

Angelakis is another. “He was really supportive, spent a lot of time with me and helped me navigate.”

Her father had another saying, one that works for a ballet dancer forced to move to another beat. “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” That, she said, is all about optimism and always looking for how you can make things better.

JILL RATNER

TITLE: Senior VP of Litigation, Fox Group

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Joined Fox in 2004 after working as litigation counsel for two other law firms, Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells) and Troop Meisinger (acquired by Akin Gump in late 2000).

QUOTE: “I learned that you can be tough, strong and aggressive but still be nice and even reasonable. I think that can be very powerful.”

— Jill Ratner

Jill Ratner knew from “a crazy young age” that she wanted to be an attorney. “I used to tell people, ‘I’m going to be a lawyer,’ which probably sounded silly, coming from a 6-year-old’s mouth,” Ratner recalled. No one in her family was an attorney, but she viewed it as an empowering profession.

Ratner used her passion for soccer to show that she was a power to be reckoned with in the legal world when she was still an undergraduate at the University of California at Los Angeles. During her years as a varsity athlete, she was instrumental in getting the university to comply with Title IX, which protects gender equality rights at educational institutions.

As a result, UCLA secured full NCAA Division 1 status for the women’s soccer team.

DEFENDING TELEVISION’S INTERESTS

That kind of moxie has carried through to her work as senior vice president of litigation at the Fox Group. “She has impeccable judgment and incredible courage,” said Rita Tuzon, Fox Networks Group’s executive vice president and general counsel, who was a Wonder Woman in 2010 and is one of Ratner’s mentors.

Tuzon noted that Ratner championed the legal fight against Aereo, playing an instrumental role advocating for the interests of the broadcast television business as a whole, in addition to Fox.

While lawyers at other networks certainly made important contributions, Ratner’s work was key to a victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014. The decision barred Aereo from transmitting over-the-air TV programming on the Internet without authority from the copyright owners.

“All of the plaintiff s had a voice, but it really was Jill and Fox that guided the strategy that took the Aereo case to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible. It’s rare that the Supreme Court grants review from the preliminary injunction decision,” Julie Shepard, a partner in the law firm Jenner & Block, which provides Fox with outside counsel , said.

THE TOUGHEST CHALLENGE

That early review was critical, Shepard said, because if the Supreme Court had delayed action for a few years, there could have been dire consequences for the networks’ business model.

Ratner’s work in protecting Fox’s content is far from done. In fact, she said it’s one of her toughest challenges moving forward.

“There’s no question our industry is in the midst of unprecedented evolution. It’s an absolutely critical time for us to protect our content,” Ratner said. “While the Aereo court victory was a very important step, we’re still fighting a lot of these battles.”

For example, right now, Ratner and her Fox team are facing a legal fight with the billionaire Alki David and his Internet streaming company FilmOn over copyright issues.

STANDING OUT IN THE MEDIA WORLD

Those who know Ratner well say that she stands out in the ranks of media and entertainment lawyers not only because of what she’s accomplished, but how she’s succeeded.

“She never tries to act like the smartest person in the room, even though she may be. She’s not one of these people who likes to hear themselves talk,” said David Singer, another Jenner & Block partner.

“When she finds lawyers or business people who are competent, she’s able to delegate and trust. She’s willing to accept responsibility for the consequences,” Singer said.

“She’s a strategic litigator, and at the same time she can lead a group of people with grace and strength, without being in any way mean or arrogant or demeaning to them,” Shepard added.

Ratner also has a knowledge base that is far wider than her area of expertise. “She knows as much about our business as any business executive,” Fox’s Tuzon said. “That is the key to her success and her value to us.”

Because of that all-encompassing vantage point, Ratner is able to see how a particular legal stance might be beneficial to one Fox division but harmful to another, Singer explained.

Ratner said that one of the most important pieces of advice she’s received over the years came from Tuzon, and she tries to impart it to other people rising up through the ranks: “Particularly as a woman, it’s important to find a seat at the table, literally and figuratively. You have to earn it through hard work and by gaining the trust of your colleagues and bosses. But once you’ve done the work, it’s important to get that seat at the table so your voice can be heard.”

WORKING HARD FOR THE COMMUNITY

Both Singer and Shepard note that Ratner is a very hard worker, but she’s also devoted to her family, which includes two daughters, Michaela and Talia, and her husband, Elon, who works in the construction industry.

Ratner has also been active as a community leader. She served on the board of the California Women’s Law Center for many years.

In 2014 she joined the board of the Anti-Defamation League, which focuses on justice and fair treatment for all.

“The impetus was having children,” she said of her most recent community work. “My daughters are 5 and 8, and I really want for them the ideals that the ADL strives for.”

NICOLE BUIE

TITLE: VP, Marketing, Cox Media

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Buie led an initiative that streamlined Cox Media’s operations and made the unit more efficient; Buie has held 10 positions at Cox with all but two created to specifically solve a business problem or address evolving needs within the company.

QUOTE: “‘How’ you work is more important than the ‘what.’ In other words, accomplishing things on your checklist is an important part to achieving goals. … ‘How’ you do the work is what will set you apart and make you successful.”

— Nicole Buie

Nicole Buie is a triathlete, which means she must be proficient in several sporting disciplines to be successful. Most athletes focus on doing one thing well: they’re strong swimmers or cyclists or they can run for miles without bonking. Triathletes have to be good at all three of those things — at the same time. Buie’s professional career and acumen in the office are similar.

Officially, Buie serves as Cox Media’s vice president of marketing and was recently tapped to serve as an officer of Cox Communications. Unofficially, Cox Media staffers consider Buie to be the company’s “chief culture officer” because of her emphasis on the health and wellness (physically and mentally) of employees. Seven years ago, she implemented Cox Media’s Zen room — a place to think without distraction during hectic days. Today, Cox regularly hosts yoga and mindfulness classes enterprise-wide.

Buie’s team regularly holds meetings in the “Inspiration Bunker,” an office-turned-collaborative work space that she created. It encourages free thinking, creative brainstorming and offers an opportunity to find a new perspective while tackling difficult tasks.

Buie’s emphasis on culture and diversity extends beyond just the space in which her team works. She’s known for energizing her team at all levels through a variety of tactics designed to inspire them personally and professionally. For instance, she’s been intentional about the role of millennials at Cox Media and in the industry, ensuring their voices are heard.

A FORCE OF NATURE IN THE OFFICE

Buie has been named one of Multichannel News’s Wonder Women in 2016, but her co-workers have considered her a wunderkind for years. Billy Farina, senior vice president of advertising sales at Cox Media, was quick to scoop Buie up after parent company Cox Enterprises bought NewCity Communications in 1996.

“Nicole is a force of nature,” Farina said. “She is one of those people you want on your team when you go into battle. At the same time, you want her in your corner during times of calm. She truly is a Wonder Woman, both inside the office and out of it.”

Innovation and improving operations is something Buie has been doing since her first job working at an ad agency in Florida. Later, at NewCity Communications, she led the creation of a buyer’s guide that changed the way local media was purchased in Orlando. It was the first of its kind in Florida, and media sales executives in Orlando and other cities are still using it today.

If Buie’s career has an overriding theme, it would be invention and change. She has held 10 positions with Cox since joining the company 22 years ago and all but two were jobs that were specifically created based on evolving needs or to solve a business problem, she said. Buie has taken on a number of high-priority projects that have reshaped the company and reinforced its brand. For instance, Buie was integral in Cox Media’s “transformation,” launched in 2007, which reshaped the entire company. The multiyear initiative changed 90% of all positions at Cox Media in one way or another.

AGENT OF TRANSFORMATION

The process for Cox Media, the first company to undergo transformation at Cox, included centralizing the division’s traffic and billing systems. The task was arduous and painstaking given the fact that after years of adding legacy systems with every acquisition, each operating division was using different hardware and software. Farina likened the job to keeping an airplane in the air while changing out the engine.

“It was the wild, wild West of cable so standardizing all those systems took time,” Buie said. “The business wasn’t broken — yet. We saw the change happening in traditional media, and we wanted to be ahead of the curve.”

In the end, the reorganization resulted in a more efficient and effective business. But it also meant a reduction in staff. With its well-known family-like atmosphere — the Cox family has long owned the company — staffers tend to stick around for decades. So when it came time to reduce head count, Cox Media gave workers more than a year’s notice. It provided stay bonuses to employees who were asked to support the transition. The reductions were hard, but according to Farina, Buie is not afraid of taking on difficult tasks herself and leading teams through the change.

Buie is proud of the confidence her leaders and peers have in her. “After my pursuit of a promotion to VP, my boss suggested I move out of the research and marketing function and into operations. I thought he was completely crazy,” she said. “I didn’t know the first thing about traffic and billing, or insertion gear, or encoding commercials. But he said I was a strong, effective people leader — and that was enough for him. This is when I learned how important it was to have good people around you, ask good questions … then work your butt off to identify, understand and solve company problems.”

Buie isn’t the kind of executive who stands in front of a room and pitches “her” ideas, according to colleagues. Instead, she empowers her team to come up with ideas and solutions and she will create opportunities for them to explore growth. That doesn’t mean she won’t push staffers to go beyond their comfort zones. She has high expectations. But she also cares about how they’re doing and what they’re doing to expand their professional horizons.

“Nicole has the ability to make everyone around her better at what they do and everyone around wants to be better,” Farina said. “She is constantly finding ways to get more done and at the same time knows exactly when to step back and let those she leads achieve new highs in their own performance.”

ELLEN STONE

TITLE: Executive VP, Marketing, Oxygen and Bravo Media

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Learned the trade at ad agencies including Bozell Worldwide, where she collaborated on the Dairy Management Milk Board’s long-running “milk mustache” campaign. Was director of consumer marketing for Lifetime before joining Bravo in 2006.

QUOTE: “When you work in collaboration and everybody’s a team, you always get a great result. We really don’t care who the ideas come from, we just want great ideas.”

— Ellen Stone

Over the past year, Ellen Stone has moved from the Multichannel News Woman to Watch list to a Wonder Woman honoree. For the previous accolade, Stone, executive vice president of marketing for Oxygen and Bravo Media, had just helped Oxygen launch its 2014 effort to bring a fresh, new look to the brand without losing its core fan base.

What put her on top this year?

“They watched me,” Stone said with a laugh. “The Oxygen rebranding has really settled in, and I think Bravo continues to create its own way in a very crowded television space. It’s such a strong brand and the marketing is a big part of it. So I have two amazing brands that have enabled me to do some great stuff in the cable universe. And I have to tell you, [the honor] is pretty exciting.”

Stone has brought a lot of excitement to Oxygen in the past year. She led the launch of the network’s new series, The Prancing Elites Project, which debuted in the spring. The series premiere of the docuseries about a troupe of black, gay, male dancers in Mobile, Ala., broke records, giving Oxygen its highest-rated series premiere among all key demos since its rebrand. Its sophomore season started Jan. 19.

Stone and her team also championed the second-season launch of hit docuseries Sisterhood of Hip Hop, securing a partnership with entertainment news site Bossip for a prelinear premiere — the first partnership of its kind, giving the channel its distinction of being the youngest-skewing women’s network in primetime.

BETTER LIVING THROUGH MARKETING

Stone was also the driving force behind the success of Bravo’s first scripted series, Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce. For its December 2014 premiere, Stone and her team executed a series of traditional and non-traditional initiatives timed to launch, included a much-talked-about ad campaign featuring lead actress Lisa Edelstein — seen holding up her ring finger without a wedding ring, touting the slogan, “Go Find Yourself” — banned by New York and Los Angeles transit authorities for being inappropriate.

Promotions for Girlfriends’ Guide also included a scorned-lover’s car stunt — with luxury cars battered and paraded around Manhattan — and shirtless men strutting around Los Angeles on Black Friday, donning positive affirmations and promoting Bravo’s partnership with the app Manservant.

“I have to say that’s one of my favorite campaigns of anything I’ve done, even when the MTA wouldn’t post our creative because they found it to be too offensive,” Stone said from her New York City office. “A lot of people had an issue with that, which gave us a lot more play and a lot more buzz.”

Being buzzy, she said, is exactly what Bravo’s advertising is about. “We always were ones that created new platforms, from the docudrama with the Housewives to the competition realities with Project Runway and Top Chef. We’re about creating content that’s innovative and talk-worthy, which applies to both the actual shows but also the marketing.”

ROLLING ON THE POTOMAC

For Bravo’s just-launched Real Housewives of Potomac, Stone “decided to take a very ironic, very funny angle with the promos that are along the lines of ‘Where’s Potomac?’ ” Frances Berwick, president, lifestyle networks for NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, said of the viral campaign Stone launched to encourage viewers check out the new show and the new Maryland locale that few know about.

“And then they find out that it is the richest town per capita in the entire nation,” Berwick added. “But it’s sort of like taking that angle and twisting it and pushing out these great trailers on Facebook and every other platform. Her approach is always fun and very accessible. I think that’s what warms people to her and, frankly, I think that’s helped us get some of the partnerships we have. She has an intense expertise in her area, but people want to spend time with her and want to work with her.”

Jason Klarman, the former executive vice president of marketing and digital at Bravo, brought Stone into the company in 2006 to be vice president of consumer marketing.

“Ellen has a great facility for being creative and strategic and she combines both of those and just executes everything flawlessly,” said Klarman, now chief marketing officer at Fullscreen. “She is a great combination of being always curious while at the same time a very high-level thinker. She’s always looking for the next best thing, she’s open to new ideas and she is a really brilliant translator of complex ideas into very simple messages.”

Stone’s love affair with marketing began early. As a kid, she was watching Super Bowl commercials before it was cool, and analyzed promotional campaigns on television and in magazines. By the time she got to high school and college, she was actively looking for sales jobs. “The idea of behavior and fun product was phenomenal to me,” she said.

Still, after getting her bachelor’s in marketing from Lehigh University School of Business (she also later completed the CTAM Cable Executive Management program at Harvard Business School), Stone was stumped as to what do next.

“I was always someone who had a pretty focused path,” she said, “but in terms of the type of marketing, I was never automatic to television. I literally had no idea what to do. As a matter of fact, my father looked at me at one point and said, ‘You have to get an interview or I’m going to kick you out of the house.’ That’s how I got my first job.”

A headhunter turned her on to a media buying agency. “I got the job and started working there and it was kind of a love that I never got tired of and just kept going,” she said.

PAM KAUFMAN

TITLE: CMO, President of Consumer Products, Nickelodeon

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Spearheaded marketing and consumer product plans for more than 20 Nick shows including Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Has led Nick’s marketing efforts in digital, mobile and social media as well as merchandise, events and theme parks.

QUOTE: “I always tell people to try and be open to new opportunities. You want to be the person that says yes to anything people are asking for. You want to be the person who raises your hand, volunteers, shows up with energy.”

— Pam Kaufman

Pam Kaufman has learned plenty during her 18-year rise to the chief marketing officer job at Nickelodeon — but one of her most enduring lessons happened long before she arrived in an executive suite. It occurred in high school, in fact, in the Nanuet, N.Y., mall where Kaufman worked as a waitress — “probably the most important job I ever had” — and discovered her gift for sales.

“I can sell anybody an extra piece of cake,” Kaufman said.

That sales talent has propelled Kaufman from her first job on an ad-agency liquor account to her current portfolio as chief marketing officer and president of consumer products for Nickelodeon, the 36-year-old Viacom-owned children’s network. That puts Kaufman in charge of the powerhouse array of properties driving Nickelodeon’s billion- dollar consumer products business, including Dora the Explorer , SpongeBob SquarePants and the resurgent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She oversees licensing programs with toy giants Mattel, Fisher- Price, Playmates and Crayola, and handles partnerships with retailing behemoths Walmart, Kmart, Target and Toys ‘R’ Us.

“Pam has kept her foot on the pedal by constantly imagining new experiences for the fans and by bringing in out-of-the-box partners to create everything from high-end fashion with Moschino and Jeremy Scott, to sold-out SpongeBob fan conventions and best-selling Band-Aids,” Nickelodeon Group president Cyma Zarghami said. “Pam’s greatest achievement has to be her unflagging ability to create thriving partnerships that really grow and extend the reach of our beloved characters and shows.”

GOING BEYOND STUFFED ANIMALS

Kaufman has spearheaded consumer product and marketing efforts that go far beyond stuffed animals and branded lunchboxes to include the Nick Universe theme park at Minnesota’s Mall of America, the Kids’ Choice and HALO awards, a partnership with Norwegian Cruise Lines, and digital initiatives such as the Nick mobile app introduced in 2013. Her portfolio also includes Nickelodeon’s newer popular shows such as Blaze and the Monster Machines, PAW Patrol and Bubble Guppies.

“It’s my job to set the vision and make sure everybody knows what the priorities are,” Kaufman said, as she extended credit to her “extraordinary team of very seasoned leaders.”

Raised in Nanuet and educated at American University in Washington, D.C., Kaufman started out as an account executive at Grey Advertising, where she worked on Chemical Bank and Gordon’s Gin. In 1993, her knack for being “persuasive” led to her creating the first promotions team for Turner Broadcasting System and its animated properties, including Scooby- Doo and The Flintstones.

STAYING IN THE FAMILY

In 1997, she came to Nickelodeon as vice president of promotions marketing. During her first week on the job, she attended a colleague’s 10th anniversary celebration. The new hire’s reaction: “No way” would she be at the network that long.

But the power of Nickelodeon’s properties kept her interested. “I have been really fortunate to have had an incredibly diverse career here,” with “new opportunities” offered regularly. Jumping at those opportunities is Kaufman’s trademark.

Her biggest job, Kaufman said, is to understand Nick’s audience — the 9-year-olds and their parents who are Nick’s viewers and buyers — and to keep them at the center of the network’s business. Kaufman insists that Nick do its own consumer research, so the network doesn’t “rely only on our partners to understand our consumers.” When Nick licenses merchandise, “we want to make sure that they understand who they are making a product for.”

That consumer insight helped Nick’s reboot of the 28-yearold Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which Viacom acquired in 2009.

“Millennial parents love to share their experience with their kids and kids want to share experiences with their parents,” Kaufman said. Parents who remembered watching the Turtles’ original TV series in 1980s and ’90s now wanted to introduce their kids to Nick’s version.

Her own experience as the mother of two children doesn’t come into her decision-making about Nick’s products and marketing — “we try not to use our own kids as the consumer ” — but it has strongly influenced her management style and her mentoring of women coming up in the cable industry .

Being a parent “gives me empathy,” she said. “Knowing what it’s like when [someone’s] kid is sick — it just makes you a better leader. It goes such a long way when your employees hear, ‘Listen, just go be with them, I understand.’”

That’s crucial because the cable industry still needs more women in top jobs, Kaufman said. “The industry’s in a good place, not a great place. I’d want to know why we’re losing a lot of women, why women aren’t staying in the workforce.”

MUSIC, TRAVEL AND THE ‘POSSE’

Kaufman extends her efforts for working women beyond cable: she is a board member of Bottomless Closet, a New York City-based nonprofit that helps women go from public assistance to the workforce. Her advice to working moms: “Stay in [your career]. I know it’s really hard, but in five years they’ll be in school and you’ll be really glad you have your job and your paycheck.”

“Kaufman loves to travel with her husband Scott Drath, a business consultant, and their college-aged son and daughter. Their most recent adventure was a safari in South Africa. Music festivals — the Foo Fighters or Pearl Jam — are another passion. But “priority No. 1,” she said, is “connecting to the posse”: keeping close touch with her core group of friends that date back to high school and college. After all, they’re the ones who knew her when she was learning how to pitch that extra dessert in a job where a bigger meal meant a bigger tip for the waitress.

“It was the cappuccino pie at Houlihan’s for $7.50 a slice,” Kaufman said. “You know what that does to your check? It’s unbelievable.”