Lessons from Hollywood’s Most Powerful Woman—And How They Can Help You (with Donna Langley)

If you’ve ever walked into a room and felt the weight of being the only one like you, questioned whether you could take bold risks without losing yourself, or wondered how to build a career on your own terms, this is your episode. We dive into the mindset shifts that helped Donna Langley rise from a small town childhood on the isolated Isle of Wight in England with no Hollywood connections to becoming one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. She opens up about the moments of doubt, the gut instincts that overrode the data, and the unpopular decisions that ultimately paid off. She worked on billion-dollar blockbusters like Oppenheimer, Fast & Furious, and Mamma Mia and built her career on resilience, decency as a superpower, and finding your voice in rooms where you’re outnumbered. In her first-ever podcast interview, Donna shares the leadership lessons that helped her champion underdog stories, turn unlikely ideas into global hits, and lead with integrity in an industry famous for chaos. Donna Langley is proof that you can start from anywhere, trust your instincts, and build the career—and the life—you want.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:10Emma Grede?

  Today on the Aspire Podcast, in her first ever podcast interview, Dame Donna Langley, chairman of NBC Universal Entertainment, opens up about the decisions, risks and resilience behind her unprecedented Hollywood journey. From modest roots in England to shaping blockbuster hits like Oppenheimer, Wicked and Get Out, Donna shares the lessons behind her extraordinary rise.

• 0:37Emma Grede?

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• 2:45Emma Grede?

  Donna Langley, I'm so happy to have you here today. Thank you.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Thank you. I'm very honored to be here.

• 2:52Emma Grede?

  Well, I'm especially honored because I heard that this could well be your first podcast interview.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  It is my first podcast.

• 2:58Emma Grede?

  Thank you for saving it for me.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Yes, so thank you for bringing me into, you know, the new millennium.

• 3:04Emma Grede?

  As if you needed to. I mean, I have to say, I have been so excited to speak to you because the whole point of this podcast is for me to speak to people that I really aspire to. And your career is, I mean, it's almost the stuff of a movie. And I really want to make sure that we cover everything because when I've been doing my research on you, there's kind of nothing in your, you know, past that says that you would end up being where you are today. You didn't study at film school. You don't have a family that's in entertainment. And in fact, I like to think of you as like queen of Hollywood, most powerful woman in Hollywood. But you were born in London and raised in the Isle of Wight. And so you have to take me back to the very, very beginning so we can all understand where you came from.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Well, I think I am the girl least likely to succeed, for sure. Yeah, going all the way back to the beginning. So like you said, I grew up on the Isle of Wight.

• 3:57Emma Grede?

  Which for those that don't know, I mean, the Isle of Wight is this speck at the bottom of England.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  It broke off from the rest of England.

• 4:04Emma Grede?

  It broke off. It's all on its own. It's a pretty isolated place. I mean, I grew up knowing the Isle of Wight because when you get to the end of elementary school or junior school, as we say in England, the big fifth grade trip was to the Isle of Wight. We were always trying to work to get to the The Isle of Wight, but we might be the only people that were working together.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Without question. So my parents moved us to the Isle of Wight when I was seven. My dad worked in London. And my mom was a little bit of a hippie, a little bit ahead of her time. And so I I grew up in a fairly unconventional household. She was a vegetarian before anyone was vegetarian. We were organic and macrobiotic before anybody else was.

• 4:43Emma Grede?

  Back in those days.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Back in those days, yes. Brown bread sandwiches at school. And I think I built up a lot of resilience during those years. Because I was teased a lot, you know, again, we sort of went against the grain. But my grandparents were artists. And so I grew up around the arts and with a real appreciation for them. I grew up reading. I was a dancer. So I grew up a little bit, not so much with my head in the clouds, but certainly with a very active imagination. And I think having the freedom of growing up in a really small environment where everything was safe. You didn't lock your doors. You could walk from one end of the island to the other practically. Everyone knew everyone.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  You know, I remember one day the bus didn't come and I was crying at the bus stop and a lady stopped and I got in a car and she took me home. You know.

• 5:32Emma Grede?

  Those are the days.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Those were the days.

• 5:33Emma Grede?

  Good old days.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Good old days. But I think I think that environment really did foster in me this kind of love of storytelling and and um. And also resilience, I think, because again, we we were we were a bit odd man out, I would say, as a family.

• 5:47Emma Grede?

  So talk to me about where did you go from the Isle of Wight? At some point, you ended up in London, right?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes, yes, yes. So I did the big move. I did the big move. I had a boyfriend I met on the Isle of Wight that was working in London. Exactly, always, right? It's always that that a love interest involved in the story. I went to college in Kent and after college I went to London. It was sort of, it was always inevitable that I was going to leave the island. There was never a plan to stay. It was, it it, in fact, my. Whole childhood, I think, was plotting for the day that I would leave. And I left when I was seventeen and I never went back.

• 6:19Emma Grede?

  Are your parents still there?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  And my mum passed away a year and a half ago. That's okay, but my dad is there and my sister's there.

• 6:26Emma Grede?

  No, so you do actually go back to the I Y.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  I do, I do, and I take my kids, which is really incredible because so many of the things, my old stomping grounds are still there and I'm able to show my kids.

• 6:37Emma Grede?

  It is a place that's frozen in time, I have to say. It really, in, in the most lovely way, you know, it feels, it's beautiful. And it's just, you must have so many memories that come back to you when you take your kids there.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  I do, it's, it is a beautiful place and it was very grounding, you know, as well to grow up somewhere like that.

• 6:53Emma Grede?

  So you get to London and then what happens?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Well.

• 6:57Emma Grede?

  Did you just toss around London and go to all the clubs? Please tell me that's what you were doing.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  You know, I, I lived, I lived in northwest London, so I was all part of that Camden Crew and, uh, you know, going to, going to all of those great live music venues and, um, ha- having a really great time. But it, to cut a long story short, cause this could take, you know, this could be a whole series of podcasts if I told you the whole story. But met my best friend, who is still my best friend, who lives here in, in L A.

• 7:27Emma Grede?

  Is she really?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  She's still, yeah, we moved here together. So she had been living in Los Angeles on and off since she was seventeen.

• 7:34Emma Grede?

  Right.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  She was the girlfriend of a very prominent music manager. One day she plopped on my bed and said, I think we should go to L A.

• 7:41Emma Grede?

  And you said?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  And I said, okay, let's go.

• 7:43Emma Grede?

  Why?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:44Emma Grede?

  And had you dreamed of moving to America?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Not at all.

• 7:47Emma Grede?

  You just thought, why not?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  I just knew that I wasn't on the right path. I was working in the health industry at that point in a health club. And I could have had a really good career doing that. I was actually being offered a junior manager job. And when I quit, my then boss was very upset with me that I wasn't continuing on that journey. I remember the speech he gave me, you have a great career path ahead of you. Why are you throwing it all away? And I kind of said, I don't know, but I have to, I have to do this.

• 8:17Emma Grede?

  I've got to figure it out. How old are you at this point?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Twenty two.

• 8:20Emma Grede?

  So at twenty two, you take yourself with just, you know, you've just, you've come out of college and you take yourself to Los Angeles and just paint the picture for me, like, what is L A at that point in time?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Oh my goodness. Well, again.

• 8:35Emma Grede?

  Wild West is what I'm imagining.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  The Wild West. I'd never been to America before. I'd only travelled in Europe a little bit at that point in my life. And so I got here and I couldn't believe how big everything was. The roads, the food portions.

• 8:51Emma Grede?

  Isn't that the biggest thing for English people? You get a plate and you're like, is this four people's dinner or is it just mine?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Why is a sandwich so big?

• 8:58Emma Grede?

  Yeah, why is a sandwich so big?

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Why are there four slices of bread instead of two?

• 9:01Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and why are there five lanes on the freeway instead of three? You're like, what is happening here?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Exactly. I remember driving from the airport into West Hollywood where we were staying and driving past the doughnut shop that's got the big giant plastic doughnut on the top. And again, like, wow, okay, they like doughnuts here in America. And why is there a big giant plastic doughnut on the top of that roof? It was definitely, you know, I'm not in Kansas anymore.

• 9:27Emma Grede?

  You're not in Kansas anymore.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  But I had a wonderful time and and I was very fortunate in that my friend was able to introduce me to some people who were in the industry. And very quickly, I caught the bug. I went home and, you know, had to go backwards and forwards a little bit until I was able to figure out how I could actually train and work here. And my first job was an unpaid internship for a producer.

• 9:50Emma Grede?

  Where did you meet the producer?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  She was a friend of my my friend.

• 9:54Emma Grede?

  Amazing.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Yes. And she offered me an unpaid internship role, but it was really great. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

• 10:01Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Just stepping into an industry and she was tough. She taught me so much. Again, that word resilience is going to come up a lot.

• 10:11Emma Grede?

  Well, because people were tough in a different way back in those days, right? There was so much more room for for you to just be tough and you had to take it.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. But I learned as well as, you know, how to deal with that and with a personality like that. I also, she taught me the rolodex. She taught me everybody who was somebody in town.

• 10:31Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  My industry is a people industry and it is very much a who do you know?

• 10:36Emma Grede?

  Yeah. And I learned that very, very early coming to L A. My first business failed miserably in L A. And years Later, when I did the post-mortem, I realised that I completely misunderstood the idea of community in L A and that everything is done via this community that either comes like because you were born here and you, you know, you went to school and all your people are here.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:58Emma Grede?

  Or you forged this community. And I was somewhat on the outskirts of it and thinking, well, why am I failing? It was like, that's what you missed, Emma. L A more than anything, the business is done all based on the community.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Very much so. Yes, it is. It's a relationship.

• 11:11Emma Grede?

  Still today.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Still today is a relationship.

• 11:13Emma Grede?

  Of which you are right at the epicentre of. So we'll get there. So you take this job as an intern and you're working like as a production assistant?

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:21Emma Grede?

  So what did that entail at the time?

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Oh, good lord.

• 11:25Emma Grede?

  Or I should say, what didn't that entail at the time?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, back then, it was really funny. I mean, you know, your listeners will really laugh at this because she had a really bad word processor. It wasn't a Mac. You know, it was just that really complicated Microsoft thing with all the things. And I'd been working on typewriter up until that point. I hadn't even graduated into a word processor. So I had to learn that.

• 11:50Emma Grede?

  What year is this roughly?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  This would have been ninety two, I think, ninety two or ninety three.

• 11:55Emma Grede?

  Okay.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  So back then, people would dictate their to-do list and leave it on the voicemail. I mean, could you imagine?

• 12:04Emma Grede?

  No, like so convoluted. Yeah, that's exactly what was happening.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  So you had to get up at the crack of dawn to be able to transcribe the to-do list, which was about five miles long.

• 12:14Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  And then before you had a chance to do that, she was already on the phone calling, have you done this? Have you done that? You haven't done this yet. You haven't done that yet. Get this person on the phone. Get that person on the phone. So this idea of you you had to be twenty steps ahead, which basically many had to get up at five in the morning.

• 12:32Emma Grede?

  And you did that. You were, but were you happily getting up at five in the morning and happily attacking these assholes?

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:38Emma Grede?

  Get me out of here.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I wanted to. I wanted to crack the code. I really wanted to figure it out.

• 12:42Emma Grede?

  That's incredible. I mean, it really is incredible. So how long do you stay interning and working like assistant jobs essentially?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Well, from there, I got a paid assistant job and one thing led to another.

• 12:54Emma Grede?

  And didn't you work at a nightclub at some point?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  I worked at the Roxbury.

• 12:57Emma Grede?

  I worked. Which is like a legendary.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Legendary. Back in those days.

• 13:00Emma Grede?

  Legendary nightclub.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Everybody who is anybody came to the Roxbury. I think they made a film about it called Night at the Roxbury. I was a hostess in the restaurant, which was hands down the best job because it meant, you know, it was a fairly short shift. The restaurant closed at midnight and everybody wanted a table. So everyone had to be nice.

• 13:19Emma Grede?

  You were the keys to the kingdom. I love it. I love it. That's the power in L A. Straight out the gate.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  A lot of fun.

• 13:25Emma Grede?

  Yeah. So you did that like at night, when then you would work your production job during the day?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:30Emma Grede?

  Okay. And then like first big break, where does it all start falling into place and making sense?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  First big break is I went to work at a studio called New Line Cinema.

• 13:38Emma Grede?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Which still exists. It's part of Warner Brothers, but I'd actually met the guy who was at the time, the president of production. He was the youngest president of production, I think, ever in the history of the movie industry. So he didn't know anything. And we met at the restaurant I was working at and he offered me a job.

• 13:56Emma Grede?

  What did he see in you? Like, what, what was it, do you think?

• 13:59Speaker 02

  I, I think he saw in me and my friend that, that we were just, we were just ballsy.

• 14:05Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  We were just ballsy. We had nothing to lose, really. And we were, you know, we were slightly idiotic and naive. We thought we were fabulous.

• 14:14Emma Grede?

  Naivety is a superpower.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  It really is. It, it is.

• 14:17Emma Grede?

  But I think there's a lot to be said of making moves in your twenties because you don't have anything to lose. And, you know, I remember working so hard in my twenties, working ridiculous hours. And my mom and certain family members would say to me, Emma, like, why are you doing this? Why are you killing yourself? And I would say, well, why not? Like, I have nothing else to do. And this is the time in my life. I don't have a mortgage. I don't have any kids. I have no responsibilities. Like, I might as well.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:44Emma Grede?

  But I feel like you could separate my friends. You know, I always say this, like, those that killed themselves in their twenties and those that like maybe partied a bit too much.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:52Emma Grede?

  And now that we're in our forties, like, there's two very distinct groups. There's a time and a place to kill, to kill yourself and go hard.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. One of the things I loved about the community that I met, I ended up sort of running around with when I moved here, was that we all had the shared work ethic. We all wanted the same thing. And I'm still friends to this day with many people that I worked with back in those days.

• 15:16Emma Grede?

  Yeah. And what did that work ethic look like back then? Cause I always feel like people just worked in a different way.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Well, I think it was driven by the power base of the industry was, you know, the studio heads and the agents. And if you were in that periphery, you had to work hard because if you didn't, you would lose your job and somebody else would be there to take it from you. Right? So it was hyper competitive. And it was a little like my first job, unpaid internship, you were just prepared to do whatever you needed to do to get the job done. I mean, within reason, obviously, but you know, but you did it. And if it meant having to drive all over town to deliver scripts to executives at 10 o'clock at night, that's, that's what you did.

• 16:03Emma Grede?

  You just did it.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:04Emma Grede?

  You just did it. Did you have an end goal in mind? Were you like, one day I'll be?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Well, it wasn't what I do now. That's for sure. I actually remember I was still working at New Line and a bunch of us were there in our twenties and we were all going around the circle like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I think three out of the five of us said studio head. I think two of them became studio heads.

• 16:27Emma Grede?

  No.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Or thereabouts, you know? And then I was just the one who was like, no, I'm not sure I'm going to do that. I think I want to make independent films. I think after I do this, I might like to make a documentary. I was, I wasn't a dreamer, but I was always looking to take the path that was the one less traveled.

• 16:45Emma Grede?

  Yes. But that is a through line in your career. And I really want to talk about that a lot because I think it's one of the things that has made you not just so successful, but so interesting within your success. But before I go there, so you're at New Line at this point, and you are working, like you've got your first big break. And just talk me through like, what happens over the next kind of few years for you?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you know, the goal when you're in our industry, at that time of your career, when you're very early, when you're making the transition from an assistant desk to a junior executive, the goal is to have a film picked for green light to be made, that you had something to do with, that you were an advocate of. And the first one I was involved with that that happened was Austin Powers.

• 17:33Emma Grede?

  Oh, wow.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  And that was my first big break. And I was a junior executive on the first movie and on the second movie I jumped up to be the senior executive and I ran that whole project.

• 17:44Emma Grede?

  I have to say, that's a little bit shocking, Austin Powers. Why were you so passionate about Austin Powers?

• 17:48Speaker 02

  I know, it's hilarious. Well, I love comedy. I do love comedy. And I think my English roots helped me understand what was really funny about that. You know, a lot of Mike Myers, he's the star of the film and the producer and the real brains behind it. You know, he is Canadian English and so a lot of his references in that were actually English. Peter Sellers, James Bond.

• 18:11Emma Grede?

  So you just got it. You had an intrinsic understanding of the funny bits.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  And it was a difficult film. Every studio passed on it and except for ours. Because that's who we were at that time. We were making things that other people weren't making, which made it a lot of fun. But yeah, I think we all saw something in it that other people missed.

• 18:28Emma Grede?

  Did you have a significant mentor or somebody that was championing you at that time?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Not really. I was having this conversation with somebody yesterday. I think one of the reasons why I'm so focused on mentorship is something I can use my platform to do is because I didn't have a mentor.

• 18:47Emma Grede?

  Same.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  There was certainly people in my life who were helpful at certain periods of time. But I didn't know that that role existed. So you didn't have that either.

• 18:57Emma Grede?

  No, and it's so interesting because I feel very much the same as you that now that I understand it and I know the power of it. I really, I want to be able to help as many people as possible. It was one of the reasons to start this podcast and I said to you, you know, I want to scale mentorship. And that's why in speaking to you and understanding your career and the moves that you've made and what you do. It's so important because you can't be what you don't see. And if you don't know, you know, the path to being a studio head or how you get those jobs or what the critical points in your career are, then how would you ever figure that stuff out?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, it takes a lot longer, doesn't it? Because you have to learn by trial and error.

• 19:35Emma Grede?

  And so how long do you stay at New Line? Because your career has been a series of incredible moves and incredible companies. But you've obviously, you had to move and figure out like what you were going to do next.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was at New Line for eight years and it ran its course. It got to a point where, you know, in the corporate world and New Line was a scrappy mini-major studio. We were doing great things, but inevitably they're all. Part of big corporations and the the inevitability, I believe, in big corporations is is change.

• 20:12Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Things happen, people come, people go, leadership changes, the times change, it's very cyclical. And so New Line became a very different kind of company and I left right before it got bought by Warner Media. And A T and T, I think at that time, I can't even remember honestly, but I was really glad that I kind of got out. I got out at the right time. I had a great time there. I learned a lot. It was really like an apprenticeship for me. But I was ready to go and work at a bigger studio and have a different experience. And that's what I did and I went to Universal.

• 20:45Emma Grede?

  Were you poached out of that job or did you you were?

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:48Emma Grede?

  That's so incredible. Okay, I have to read this part because there's just, I don't want to mess it up. So you are very, very clearly one of the most influential and powerful executives in the entertainment industry. Just some of your projects, Oppenheimer, Get Out, Straight Out of Compton, Wicked. Before that, you oversaw franchises like Fast and Furious, Despicable Me, my kids' favorite, thank you. Jurassic World, my bigger kids' favorite and Born, actually you're like my family favorite, my husband loves that. But you were also named one of Fortune's most powerful women very recently. And under your leadership, which I think is like the most incredible part, Universal has had the biggest success in its century-long history. So some people might say you have the Midas touch,

• 21:31Emma Grede?

  but I wonder how you think about that when you hear all of that.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Hmm. Oh, my goodness. Well.

• 21:37Emma Grede?

  Don't be too British.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  I won't be, I won't be. You'll make sure I'm not.

• 21:42Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I'm gonna hold you.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  No, look, it is really good to reflect back and it's it is fun to hear all of those titles read aloud. And of course, it does take a village. There's been many people I've collaborated with and I have an incredible team. So we should talk about that too. It has been a great run. We have had a

• 22:00Emma Grede?

  I mean, that's an understatement.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:02Emma Grede?

  It's been like a run like no one else.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, for more than a decade, which is quite unheard of. I'm just in the middle of reading Barry Diller's book and

• 22:11Emma Grede?

  Isn't it good?

• 22:12Speaker 02

  It's so great.

• 22:12Emma Grede?

  It's so good.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  I highly recommend it. Wouldn't you recommend it?

• 22:16Emma Grede?

  I'm really, I'm a couple of chapters in, but I mean, I personally think Barry's incredible.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  It gets better and better.

• 22:22Emma Grede?

  I'm a

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a really great how to, you know, I do think looking back, reflecting to be able to understand kind of the path forward and the path ahead is sometimes a really good tool.

• 22:33Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  But just listening to him talking about his run at Paramount, it actually reminds me very similarly of what we've been up to. You know, the technology changes are happening. We've gone through the pandemic. We've gone through all of this change and disruption in our industry. And we've been able to not just survive, but thrive throughout all of that. And so reflecting on how we've done that and what's made that possible, it's a good thing to do.

• 22:59Emma Grede?

  It's a hugely good thing. I mean, what I would say to you, just to blow your trumpet a little bit for you, is that pretty much everyone else is a man and you are a British woman. Like, but you know, to me, that is so huge. And I wonder when you look at your career now, how much of your success you can attribute to being a woman, because I imagine that your approach, not just to leadership, but to how you run a company, run a division, how you manage a board, like all of the things that you've been through, women approach that very, very differently. And so is there any of your success that you can directly attribute to being a woman?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's a couple of different ways to look at that. One is certainly the things that I've advocated for, the movies that I've wanted us to be involved with. So I think about Mamma Mia.

• 23:47Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  You know,

• 23:48Emma Grede?

  What a hit.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:50Emma Grede?

  What a hit.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  What a hit. And first of all, that was driven by my deep love of ABBA. I love ABBA so much and I have loved ABBA since I was tiny. But also, it was being able to look out there in the marketplace and see there was a white space. Women were being underserved in the marketplace. And I think I uniquely understood that because I am one.

• 24:10Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Same thing with Girls Trip, when we made Girls Trip with Will Packer.

• 24:15Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  It was a good one.

• 24:16Emma Grede?

  It felt like a first of its kind female comedy, right?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Because it was a first of its kind, you know? And people had attempted things before, but not like that.

• 24:25Emma Grede?

  But it feels to me like you made a career out of the niches. Like you've been able to see like where these like niche audiences might be and yet exploit them in a different way because they're not niche at all.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And again, it's about seeing that white space. Where is there a gap? Where is there a need for something to be? I always say it's really fun to give the audience something that they had no idea that they were waiting for. And again, Girls Trip was a really good example of that. Same with Bridesmaids.

• 24:54Emma Grede?

  Yeah, we did. If you'd have asked, if you asked me, Emma, do you want to go and see like a female comedy? I'd be like, no. But then when I saw it, I was like, I can't get enough of this. This is amazing.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Exactly. So then that goes to who you collaborate with, who you choose to go and make something like that.

• 25:10Emma Grede?

  Well, because you're seen as someone who's very much like the friend or the champion of the creative. So how, what is it about you and your taste level or your relationships that makes you so good at what you do?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Well, I love experts in the field, right? When I look at animation and you mentioned Despicable Me, so Chris Maldondri is an absolute expert in the field of animation. Now, I'm not responsible for him being at Universal, it happened before me, but we've worked together very closely for 15 years. I mean, if you think about it, 15 years ago, there was no such thing as a minion, it didn't exist.

• 25:45Emma Grede?

  I don't remember the time before minions.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  You probably don't. If you have children, you do not remember the time before minions existed. And what he's done in the animation space, and he rivals now, you know, both Disney and Pixar, which were the two dominant brands, and we also own DreamWorks Animation, Shrek. Puss in Boots and things like that, but you know, picking collaborators who are really good at what they do, not just really good, they're actually the best at what they do. Same with Jason Blum in the horror space. He's an incredible horror producer filmmaker. And I don't like horror movies. I don't like watching them. And I don't even like watching the trailers. So, you know, going and finding somebody who loves all of that and excels

• 26:28Speaker 02

  at it and, you know, bringing them into the, into the company to do their best work with us. Again, it's a sort of another pillar and I think another way that we've managed to be very successful.

• 26:37Emma Grede?

  But it is a huge part of what you do. You know, I read about Christopher Nolan coming over to Universal from another studio to do Oppenheimer. And I wonder what your secret is to making big name talent want to work with you?

• 26:50Speaker 02

  It's a lot to do with stability, right? If you think about making a movie or making a TV show, making anything, you want to do it with and for people who know what they're doing. You can look at the organization and see real stability.

• 27:04Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  You can sort of look through it and, and if you ask yourself the question, you know, is this a decent group of people? Are these people who work with integrity? Do they work well together? Is there sort of minimal politics? That's the kind of environment that we've worked really hard to create and to foster and maintain.

• 27:22Emma Grede?

  It's not very Hollywood, is it? Because when I think about Hollywood, I think chaos, craziness, you know, not, not stable at all.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  And instability.

• 27:30Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think we've been able to maintain our stability with a really strong management team and a good culture. And culture does come from its top down, right?

• 27:40Emma Grede?

  Culture comes from the top, yes. I couldn't agree with you more. What is it that, what is the skill that you've cultivated to make people comfortable and make them be able to see that?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  I, I mean, look, I think so tenants of leadership are first and foremost, that decency is a superpower. It is not a weakness. And I think in certain industries, kindness, decency, these are words that are frowned upon, right? They are viewed as weaknesses. They're not. It is much harder to make the right decision than the wrong one. It's much harder to stand in your integrity and your truths and your authenticity than not.

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• 28:56Speaker 05

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• 28:57Speaker 06

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• 28:58Speaker 05

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• 29:01Speaker 06

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• 29:08Speaker 05

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• 29:19Speaker 06

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• 29:30Speaker 06

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• 29:48Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and I feel like that's part of the reason you're standing in your integrity, that you can champion creatives and that you get to kind of play in these kind of niche lanes where popular wisdom might tell you that that's not going to be a hit, or it's not going to be great. Can you give me an example of when you've had like real conviction about something that everyone else has been like, this ain't a hit?

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Mamma mia was that. And, you know, look, it's one of the inevitabilities of leadership. As you well know, sometimes you have to make an unpopular decision. I remember during the pandemic, do you remember when everyone was talking about it only lasting for two weeks?

• 30:26Emma Grede?

  Oh, yeah, I remember that.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Everyone left their coats.

• 30:29Emma Grede?

  Well, I'll see you in two weeks.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, leave your stuff. Everybody left all their crap all over their workspace, you know, because, oh, we'll be back in two weeks. And I was like, no, no, no, we're not going to be back in two weeks. It might be two years.

• 30:41Emma Grede?

  Did you understand that that was going to be the shutdown of your industry? Like, did you get that?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  I did. I did. I understood it. Yeah. I had enough. Wisdom and and just foresight and and also just speaking to people all over the world. We had an office in China and we were just, you know, just we could see it coming.

• 30:59Emma Grede?

  How do you even prepare for something like that? How do you get everybody? Because again, we're talking, you preside over, is it thousands of people? There's like so many people globally. So when you have to be the person that is delivering that message and yet there's such uncertainty, like what? What did you do?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Well, one of the things that I insisted that we did that was very unpopular is I started moving our films from the release calendar, right? So we always date our films a year or, you know, six months, years in advance. And we had, I remember it, having a conversation about Fast and Furious.

• 31:35Emma Grede?

  Right.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Fast and Furious was set to come out that summer, right? Remember, we all went home in March. It was a summer hit. I said, we're moving it. We are going to move it to the end of the year.

• 31:45Emma Grede?

  Thinking that you could then have a theater release.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  That's right. And we'll, we'll see how it goes. We'll get to the summer, we'll reassess. And it was, it was unpopular.

• 31:54Emma Grede?

  Did everyone go boo?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Oh, it was a big boo. It was a big, but it was, it was a big boo. And I, I walked out of that meeting and I went to the bottom. I had to literally give myself the talk in the mirror. I was that cliche.

• 32:06Emma Grede?

  So how do you get? Because of course, with a, with a film like that, you've got, you know, I'm sure all sorts of forecasts. You have an idea of how much that should generate if you were taking it to theater. So how do you balance that level of risk taking? Like, how do you get comfortable with taking really big risks? And how, more importantly, how do you get everyone else comfortable around you?

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, launching a film or, you know, a TV show, but a film in particular is, is like launching a new business every single time, right? You're bringing it to market, you're having to build your marketing campaign, your business model, your rationale, getting all your constituents on board with it. So there's a. Few different ways that you do it. I'm a big believer in building consensus along the way, if you can avoid it, not walking into the room with decisions already made, even if you already know in your head.

• 32:56Emma Grede?

  Donna, I'm gonna stop you there because I need you to explain that to people because this has been one of my biggest learnings. I remember, you know, when I was in my twenties, I'd walk into a board meeting and be like, da-da, surprise.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  No, people don't like that.

• 33:08Emma Grede?

  No, they don't, funnily enough. I was like, oh, why didn't that go down well? Building consensus along the way. Will you just talk a little bit about what that means, what that looks like in your business? But I think it's a huge lesson for people.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's applicable, right, in a bunch, everywhere, so many industries. So in our case, there's a big myth in our industry about greenlighting a film, that, you know, that's the decision to make it. How does a film get greenlit? Who has greenlight power? When does it happen? How does it happen? Well, the reality of it is, again, when you're getting ready to make a decision about a film, so a lot of different pieces that need to come into play. And it's an iterative process. It's a creative process, first and foremost, and that you have to then build a business model around. And so, in the case of a film, you need everybody from the people who, whose job it is to create the marketing campaign,

• 34:02Speaker 02

  whose job it is going to be to oversee that film and make sure it stays on budget, it stays within the creative vision that we've all decided upon. The people who are going to get it into the theatres, get it all around the world, be in charge of the dubbing. I mean, there's so many people who touch a film, you know, inside, inside the studio. And so, having an iterative process around that, so people can get used to it. If you have time, it doesn't always work out that way, but generally speaking, it does. And so, it's everything from just sort of getting them on board early with the idea of the script, you know, what, and, and what, what even is it? Who's going to be in it? Giving people a voice, you know. And again, it's not, at the end of the day, about making decisions by committee, because that's not helpful or healthy.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  And it's not a democracy. At the end of the day, there is one leader usually who is accountable, right, for making sure that everybody's got their salary paid.

• 34:58Emma Grede?

  It's not a democracy.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  It's not a democracy. But sharing in that process, in that journey to get to the outcome, is, I think it's, I think it's a very healthy thing to do for an organisation.

• 35:10Emma Grede?

  I think it's healthy and I think that it really, there's something really powerful about it. And I think that anybody that's listening to this today, you know, and it can be something as big as Greenlight in a whole movie, but if you boil that down to, I don't know, you have a big presentation in the office. The idea of, you know, you presenting that on the day and getting everybody that needs to buy in, bought in, in that moment is very unlikely. And so the idea of going around and bringing in the different departments or the different individuals and I guess like preceding some of your ideas and showing people and getting feedback and building consensus, like it's so powerful. And it took me a really long time to learn that, but it's probably one of the, the best

• 35:54Emma Grede?

  things that I've learned because people feel they've come along the journey, that they're not, you know, completely sidelined by what you're saying and that they've been part of that decision making. So it's a really important thing to learn.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  I think that's a great example as well, using that kind of presentational moment because, you know, we've all been there, right? And I think what this process really is all about is as a colleague, as an employee, as, as a leader or a boss, really it's about empathy and compassion. You're putting yourself in somebody else's shoes for a moment to say, I'm walking in with this idea. I want that person to buy into this idea. And if you don't go to the next point, which is, what is it going to take for that person to buy in, meaning what does it mean to them? What is going to put their ass on the line if they sign up to my idea?

• 36:46Emma Grede?

  And you having an understanding of that actually makes your idea better. Because you can solve for that issue before it's even an issue.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, absolutely. It might make you refine your idea a little bit, right? If you really can kind of go around the table and go, okay, what do they all need? And what are they all going to be? Because people, at the end of the day, really, we all do it, like. You know, it's my livelihood.

• 37:06Emma Grede?

  It's your livelihood.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Am I gonna be okay if I put myself on the line for this one?

• 37:10Emma Grede?

  How have you developed your leadership skills over the years? Do you like, do you have a coach? Or do you, has it all been trial and error? Because you have a very, I think what you're known for in your industry is that you have an extremely empathetic leadership style. You lead with creative, you're seen as a friend to the creatives. But people that work with you, under you, you know, at your colleagues, you are seen as a very elegant, sympathetic and empathetic leader. Where does that come from? Because your industry is not known for those people, I'm just saying. Your industry is known for the characters that were portrayed on Entourage, for example.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Exactly, or the studio more recently. Yeah, I, I, I mean, I, I think, I think going all the way back, my, my mom probably was, was my biggest coach.

• 38:01Emma Grede?

  Really?

• 38:02Speaker 02

  But yeah, yeah. But you know, I, I think, I think a lot of it has been trial and error. And I do believe that I learned the best lessons when I made a mistake and or when something went wrong. I, I mean, really adversity, I think is our greatest teacher, right? You know, I'm not, that's not an original thought. But there was a time in my career where I had a horrible boss. He was awful and I behaved badly. And you know, I, I tried to undermine him and it impacted our output. It, it, we weren't making good creative decisions. No one was happy. You know, my colleagues were miserable because everyone was sniping and bitching and complaining.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Once that situation was over, it resolved itself, having nothing to do with me. I had to do some soul searching because, you know, I wasn't happy with who I was behaving that way. I was not my best self. I wasn't bringing my best self to the table.

• 38:58Emma Grede?

  Were you just trying to do what you were seeing? Were you trying to be the same leader as you had?

• 39:03Speaker 02

  I was trying to survive and I thought I could beat him. And I thought the way to beat him was to undermine him. And it wasn't, you know, he, again, he, all things were revealed in the end. And even if I had prevailed, I wouldn't have felt good about it.

• 39:21Emma Grede?

  No.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  I, I, and I did not, I did, that's not how I was raised. That's not how I raised my kids. It was, it really went counter to my values. And so when I was faced with a similar situation. Another time, I behaved very differently.

• 39:35Emma Grede?

  You did?

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Yep, I did. I took the high road.

• 39:38Emma Grede?

  You did a Michelle Obama.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  I did. I mean, what would Michelle do is a, you know.

• 39:43Emma Grede?

  She always goes high.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Always go high. As somebody else recently said, take the high road, there's less traffic up there. Which I think is a really good one, isn't it?

• 39:53Emma Grede?

  Oh, I'm gonna remember that one. That's gonna come out like it was my own tomorrow.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  But that was a big lesson for me. It was before I had kids. It was in that moment, era of my career where I was just scrappy and I didn't know what I didn't know. And yeah, but it was a good, it was, it was a hard lesson to learn. Or it was a good lesson to learn a very hard way.

• 40:12Emma Grede?

  If I hear you right, you say that failures are completely inevitable. But how do you, how do you hold the failures without letting them eat at your confidence?

• 40:23Speaker 02

  A couple of different ways to do that, I think is, first of all, you, you have to go very deep on why did something fail? And

• 40:32Emma Grede?

  That can be hard, can't it?

• 40:33Speaker 02

  It can be really hard because you have to be very honest with yourself. You have to

• 40:36Emma Grede?

  Take accountability.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  You do. And what I have found in most times I've made a mistake, if I take that moment of reflection, however it works, whether it's that's in a group setting with colleagues or it's a long walk around a park, you know, or going and talking to somebody, it always comes down to, oh, boy, I did something against my intuition and my instinct.

• 41:02Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  It always comes back to that.

• 41:03Emma Grede?

  Yeah. Are you somebody that leads with gut instincts or are you like looking at data constantly and dissecting?

• 41:09Speaker 02

  No, it's gut instinct first and then the data needs to conform to my instinct.

• 41:13Emma Grede?

  Right, right. Do you ever go against the data?

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Numbers are just a different way of telling a story.

• 41:18Emma Grede?

  Yes, yeah. But you've learned to embrace the numbers.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:22Emma Grede?

  Did you ever, have you ever got it completely wrong?

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Oh, God, absolutely. Yeah. Not too many times, you know, it's better to be right more than you're wrong in my business.

• 41:33Emma Grede?

  Because they're such huge bets.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:35Emma Grede?

  They're such huge bets. When did you get comfortable in your life, like taking? Because what you do, I mean, it's so big and there's so many people on the line and such a huge amount of money and credibility and all the things. So how have you managed to get to the point where you're comfortable just to make those decisions? And to have the failures?

• 41:56Speaker 02

  I think I've never looked at them at risk as risks. There's lots of things written about our studio about, you know, whether it was Oppenheimer or, you know, a number of different decisions that we've made as being risky. And I, I think part of it is I don't see them as risks going in. And it might just be, I see them differently. And I, I haven't been surprised too often in the wrong direction. And so it's validating, right? If you follow that gut instinct and you, again, you, you bet on, you bet on brilliance every time, you know? And also I think the other thing is when we have failed

• 42:38Speaker 02

  on something, on a project, but the integrity was there. We did follow our instincts. We did everything right, but the, you know, the movie gods didn't align as they sometimes don't. I can feel okay about that. I can, you know, no, nobody ever likes to lose money for their parent company or anything like that, but I, I can, I can.

• 42:57Emma Grede?

  You can reconcile it.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  I can reconcile it.

• 42:58Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:59Emma Grede?

  Yeah. Cause not all great bets come off. Like sometimes they can still be, you know, a good idea or a great story to have told, but it's not commercially viable.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Not all the timing was wrong or, you know, there was some, there was some factor that you couldn't control.

• 43:14Emma Grede?

  But you seem to have like a balance of assertiveness in your leadership style, but with the elegance as well. And that's what I keep coming back to because I just don't think that you see that so much in your industry. So you must, do you consider yourself a bit of an outlier?

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Very much so.

• 43:29Emma Grede?

  Yeah. Yeah. And longevity at companies so rare today.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:35Emma Grede?

  It really is, isn't it? Nobody seems to stay anywhere. It's like I get resumes constantly like two years here, three years there, two years here, three years there. And how do you continue? If that's a choice that you've made, how do you make sure that you continue to grow and you continue to thrive?

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I could get bored very easily. And so the fact I've been at my company as long as I have me really is, you know, testament, I am never bored. Yeah, there's always some really fun thing to do. And I I thrive so much on the creative process and working with creative people. So each movie feels different, each filmmaker is different, and it's a different set of challenges and opportunities. But my company has also been bought and sold many times over. And so it has felt like I've worked for a bunch of different companies, even though it's all within the same one. We've been owned by the same company now for a number of years and and that stability is really is really nice and good. And um, yeah, I mean, I'm sure if I was coming up today, I wouldn't have the same career path.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  I would bounce around a little bit more and probably go between traditional media and tech and do all those things. It would be very different, but I have enjoyed working with a management team as long as I've worked with the majority of my team, because we've built up, you know, some core competencies that make it really satisfying to go to work every day.

• 44:56Emma Grede?

  I bet. Do you think that there, or I should ask you, what are the specific traits that you have as a leader, as an executive, that have helped you remain effective and resilient?

• 45:08Speaker 02

  I'm I'm not fear based, right?

• 45:11Emma Grede?

  Because I just feel like the last few, like it's been extremely challenging circumstances in your business, right? But you have remained who you are and you've remained very successful, but you've remained like at the core of who you are.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  I have lots of cliches that I bandy around a lot, you know, and and one of them is you can only control what you can control. Right? And so while all of this swirl is happening around us, whether it is the pandemic or You know, the disruption, the innovation that's happening with AI coming in. I mean, it must be crazy for your industry. Yeah, yeah. And we don't know yet what it's going to bring us. But, you know, our job is to be kind of eyes wide open, look around all the corners, don't put your head in the sand, know that it's coming, meet it head on, but look at it as an opportunity, right? So I think it's just, it's that, it's also, I have another fun saying where I say to my team all the

• 46:10Speaker 02

  time, the cavalry is not coming. We are the cavalry. So we need to just get on with it. We just need to get on with it. It's down to us. Yeah. It's like, no one's coming to save you. Yeah, no one's coming, no one's coming to say, exactly. No, this is it. This is it. It's us. It's us. So let's get on with it. Let's get on that horse and go for a ride. That feels, it feels like a very British mentality. It does, doesn't it? Very stiff upper lip. Yeah. Keep calm, carry on. Keep calm and carry on. But it kind of works because, you know, I think if you let all the noise in, then you get off your, your sort of your axis, you know? And I think when, as you well know, when you're working with creative people in a creative endeavor,

• 46:55Speaker 02

  it is really important to stay very centered. Yes. And not allow distraction into the process, you know? You've got to keep really focused on what it is, what's the vision, what are you trying to accomplish? What should this mean to the audience? What do we want to convey? You know, and how do we get there? Denial is probably pretty healthy. A little bit, a little bit healthy, yeah. Denial.

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• 48:29Emma Grede?

  Like reflecting more broadly, do you think that your journey would be possible anywhere else other than in America?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  It's such a great question and I do ask it a lot. I'm not, I don't think I would have been able to do what I have done in the UK. I, I don't sadly.

• 48:46Emma Grede?

  No.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:47Emma Grede?

  It's true, isn't it?

• 48:47Speaker 02

  I think it is quintessentially American.

• 48:50Emma Grede?

  Yeah. Yeah, the journey specifically, like that journey is just something that can only happen. I know it's, it's so interesting because I think in a moment where so many people are down on this country, I think that there's so many great things about this place. But one of them is that the American dream is still alive and kicking in so many, in so many ways.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  I always used to say, and this is not a knock on our country, but I always used to say in the UK, you would have a big idea and somebody, and the answer would be, response would be, what do you want to do that for? Why would you want to do that?

• 49:23Emma Grede?

  Knock down, straight away.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  You come here and you have that same idea. How can I help? What can I do? Let me, you know, let me be a part of that.

• 49:31Emma Grede?

  But you, in, in our wonderful country, you have been recognised as a dame.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:36Emma Grede?

  You're Dame Donna Langley. I should like have cut it or something when you come in. Does that honour mean something to you?

• 49:43Speaker 02

  It, you know, it does, it does. I remember the year I got it, which was right before the pandemic, actually, so I didn't collect it until afterwards.

• 49:50Emma Grede?

  Oh, really?

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, I know, it was a dream delayed.

• 49:53Emma Grede?

  I saw the photo, that's why I'm wearing polka dots today, by the way.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 49:57Emma Grede?

  Because I saw the picture of you and King Charles, so you did get to go and get it in person.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Eventually, yeah, I did, yeah.

• 50:03Emma Grede?

  So upset.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  It was fun, but I remember my, my son, he was nine at the time and he, I was, you know, looking at the thing, the letter that I'd received and he said, Mum, is this something that you wanted since you were a little girl? And I said, God, no, absolutely not. You know, you sort of thought it was something that other people had and sort of older people maybe.

• 50:24Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  So it was an interesting one when I, when I got it, but it was really wonderful and, and the guy, I love my country and I do identify very strongly with, you know, with a lot of cultural aspects of, of being English. And so, yeah, to be recognised for the contributions that I've made to our industry and, and other things and, and in such a very specific and beautiful way. It did, it did, it meant more to me than I thought it was going to, I have to say, I'm very proud of it.

• 50:53Emma Grede?

  I can't imagine, you should be so proud and you are such a one of one. And again, I think it's so important for British people to see, like the idea that you could be born in the Isle of Wight and climb the ranks and be in this position in Hollywood. I mean, it's pretty major. Um, one of the things that I really wanted to touch on with you is that you were such a figurehead during that moment of Me Too. And I think everybody, certainly everybody listens to this podcast knows what that was about, but I wanted to ask you now, being reflective and in hindsight, looking back, did it work? Did it actually change your industry?

• 51:28Speaker 02

  So what I would say is I think it did change the industry. I think we made progress. And what I learned very early on in those days was we, our job was to make as much progress as we could and understand that the door would probably shut behind us. At a certain point.

• 51:47Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  In fact, Gloria Steinem came to speak to us and she said a version of that. You know, movements are not linear. They kind of meander around you. Exactly. It's like, you know, you look at any movement and you make real progress, usually in the face of crisis.

• 52:02Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  And then, for whatever reason, the door gets shut behind you.

• 52:06Emma Grede?

  And oftentimes, you can go a little bit backwards before you go forward. Because it's like a pendulum swing, right?

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 52:13Emma Grede?

  We're waiting for the overcorrection. That's this, we want to go like this.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And I, and I do think it was a, you know, it's been an interesting few years, but I know in my own organization, we made a ton of progress. And I know in the industry, we made a ton of progress. One of the things that came out of it, which I really appreciate that I experienced and benefit from is a lot of women came together as a community that had not happened before.

• 52:37Emma Grede?

  Very true.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  You know, I think we had all been raised up in the industry, thinking, you know what? We had to be a little bit circumspect. We were put in competition with each other. There were so few opportunities for us. We were there in service of the guys. And that all kind of went away. And I think we broke down a lot of barriers there, which was really good.

• 52:55Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I mean, I think I could see that at the dinner you hosted for Vital Voices the other day. Not that the two things were linked in any way, but the, the group of people that you put together in some, I guess, in some conversations would be considered competition. This is a bunch of very high powered women in your industry that have come together.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:13Emma Grede?

  Because of that. And so I think that that was a hugely beneficial.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Around common goals. And that can't be taken away from us, right?

• 53:19Emma Grede?

  No, no, no, you have, that's there now.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  We can shut down programs and we can do all the things we need to do to conform to what the government needs us to do. But you, you can't, you, you know, you can't undo what's been done. So what I would say is, you know, the work is not done. It's not over. There'll be another moment when, you know, we have the opportunity to really forge ahead. But in the meantime, just keep at it. And I, I think this is something that everyone can do. I always say it doesn't really, it doesn't have to be a big thing. It doesn't have to be a big program or a big gesture or something. Small things help, small things matter. It, it doesn't matter if you're an assistant. There's going to be somebody else around you. In your place of work, in your friend group or wherever, you kind of needs that helping hand. It can make all the difference.

• 54:03Emma Grede?

  It can make all the, and that is in any industry.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  In any industry.

• 54:06Emma Grede?

  If you're in film, if you're in fashion, if you work a more traditional corporate job. I think that that movement helped move the curtain on so many of our industries. And we all started to think about doing things differently and we operate differently as a result of that time.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:22Emma Grede?

  Often, I guess that you are the only woman in like a very influential space. And I wonder how you find your voice and your confidence. Like, is there something that you call on or a ritual that you have? Or have you just trained your mindset at this point?

• 54:37Speaker 02

  I think at this point, I've trained my mindset. It's not, it's not intimidating to me anymore.

• 54:42Emma Grede?

  And never, you never get intimidated?

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I get intimidated by probably the silliest things, but you know, but being in a, in a room with a lot of men or, you know, being a minority in a room is, is, I have learned to be okay with that. I, I think earlier on in my career, the ways that I would cope is, somebody gave me really a good advice once, actually. They just said, you don't need to be the loudest person in the room. You don't need to speak until you really have something to say. And I think I operate very much that way. I'm a listener. I really, I, you learn so much by, by listening.

• 55:19Emma Grede?

  It's a fantastic skill to have.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  It's a really good skill to have and not many people have it.

• 55:24Emma Grede?

  It's true. It took me a long time to learn to listen. I'm still learning.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  You're a great listener. That is, don't sell yourself short.

• 55:30Emma Grede?

  No, but it's one of those things that if you are, you know, I'm, I'm trained or I'm hardwired to fill in the gaps because it would make me feel uncomfortable to be in silence. And sometimes you just need to take that moment and take it all in and just listen. And it is a, it's a really underrated skill to be a great listener.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  And of course, when you're coming up in your career, you, you can, you can feel insecure if you don't speak up. You think if you don't, you know, if you're, if you're not heard and you're not seen. And I don't think it's the case. I think you can really hold yourself in your power and you can wait for the right moment. I always say also, never go into a room unprepared. You know, the more prepared you are, the more confidence you're going to have. And the greater ability, you're gonna have to find your moment to speak up and say something that, you know, can be said in one sentence as opposed to an hour-long conversation of people talking over each other.

• 56:23Emma Grede?

  What other advice would you offer to anyone that feels isolated in their professional environment, you know, either because they're a woman or they're minority? Do you have specific advice that you offer to your teams?

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's about finding community, you know, and, and again, just knowing that when you're coming up in your career as a woman, as a woman of colour, or, you know, and anyone who is a minority, honestly, in any way, it is inevitable that you're going to be in spaces where you are one of one, where you feel other and you are othered. It's going to happen and so building resilience on the out, on the outside. Where do you find community? And where, how, and then just bringing that strength into that room with you.

• 57:13Emma Grede?

  And you are married and a mother of two.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:16Emma Grede?

  And I've read somewhere that you didn't take much of a maternity leave, which neither did I, actually. And while I love that I offer very good and generous maternity policies here, it's an interesting thing that I think so many successful women at some point felt that they had to return. Do you think that you would be where you are now? A, had you had children at a different time in your life? And B, had you taken much longer time off afterward?

• 57:43Speaker 02

  I think to answer the second question first, it, it would not have mattered to my career if I'd taken more time.

• 57:49Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love that, really?

• 57:51Speaker 02

  If I had been boundaried, if I had been strong enough to hold my boundaries and say, nope, I'm not coming back, I'm gonna take another month.

• 57:58Emma Grede?

  And you just weren't strong enough at the time?

• 58:00Speaker 02

  I wasn't strong enough to do it. I felt too vulnerable. I, I felt, yeah, too, too weak to do that. And I don't regret things in general, you know, I, I, I did it, I got through it, you know, I found other ways, you know, to sort of build, build back.

• 58:14Emma Grede?

  First of all, I love that you say out loud that you didn't have. You didn't have the strength to be able to, you know, say, no, I'm going to take a longer time, which I think is really important. The other part of my question, so it was, do you, do you feel like if you'd have come back earlier, that would have been any different? But the next part was when you choose to have children, because I feel like for so many women, you're like, it's just never a right time. I shouldn't do it in my twenties, that's too soon. Then I'm going to get to like my mid thirties and that's like too late. And so like, you know, I just wonder about your timing. Was it purposeful? Would you have done anything differently?

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Well, my journey to be a mother was a difficult one and I had an operation that went horribly wrong and it really delayed our ability to have kids. And so I had my third, my first son when I was forty one, almost, and my second when I was forty three.

• 59:06Emma Grede?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  So I am, I am a geriatric mother.

• 59:09Emma Grede?

  I hate the way they say that in this country.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  It's the official term.

• 59:13Emma Grede?

  It is the official term.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  It's the official term.

• 59:15Emma Grede?

  So demeaning.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  So.

• 59:17Emma Grede?

  They need to rebrand that. We need to rebrand for sure.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  We really do. Can you come up with something?

• 59:21Emma Grede?

  I will come up with something tomorrow.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Let's do it now.

• 59:23Emma Grede?

  Make a T-shirt and, you know.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Yes, let's strike that one from the record. And so what I would say is, I have loved being a slightly older mother and bringing the perspective I have to the table of, you know, being, being, you know, a mother that, that I've experienced a lot. Also, I was at a point in my career, I certainly wasn't done, not by a long shot, but I felt like I could prioritize my kids and my family and my marriage and my career. And everything else was, would kind of go by the wayside. You know, my social life changed a lot. You know, I, I don't do that thing of going away with my husband on our own very often. You know, I wish I did.

• 1:00:02Emma Grede?

  Something, something's got to give.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Something's got to give, right? You can't do it all.

• 1:00:06Emma Grede?

  Not all at the same time.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  As you correctly say. So real pros and cons, having said all that, so it's really worked for me to have my kids at the age that I, that I've had them. And it really keeps you young. It keeps you on your toes. I've got two boys and, you know, they are relentless. And, you know, and it helps that my husband's five years younger than me.

• 1:00:24Emma Grede?

  There's that.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  There's that. That was, that was.

• 1:00:27Emma Grede?

  Smart.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Well played.

• 1:00:28Emma Grede?

  Strategic.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  Very strategic, very strategic. Um, and, and he's very sporty and does all the things with them. But I, I do recommend to a, a lot of young women I work with to, you know, if they're on that career path, take advantage of, you know, some of the health benefits that exist now. Go freeze your eggs, go do all that. Really get on your, you know, plan your, if you want to have a family, plan your family in the way that you plan your career or the way that you plan anything else, right? And I didn't do that.

• 1:00:56Emma Grede?

  Say more, Donna. Don't you think that we just need to be like having the conversations?

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Very intentional about it.

• 1:01:03Emma Grede?

  And not, just not like putting it under the table?

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  No, no, yeah. We do need to be having that conversation because it, it does get exponentially harder. The older you get, that's a very real thing.

• 1:01:13Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  And there's no shame in it and there's no taboo to it. You know, it's our body, we can do what we want. And, you know, if that's something that you really feel like you're, you know, you're going to want to do, it's just a backup system.

• 1:01:24Emma Grede?

  Yeah, it's just a backup system, but I love that you say plan it like you're planning your career moods. Because it is one of those things that requires thought and timing and planning. And there's no shame to you being planful around it. You just have to figure it out. And again, if it is something that you really, really want, then it needs to be part of a plan.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Yes, it, it.

• 1:01:44Emma Grede?

  It can't be an afterthought.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. I didn't have a plan. My husband and I were having so much fun.

• 1:01:50Emma Grede?

  I mean, I had a plan, but even the best plans didn't work out. So it's that too.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:01:56Emma Grede?

  You might, you might have a plan and it suddenly doesn't work. You know, I had my first two children naturally and it was so easy and so great. And you, you, you have this idea that you can choose your timing. And, you know, when I decided I'd like a third child, turns out I couldn't choose my timing.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:12Emma Grede?

  And that, you know, was a major setback to me. That was something that was so, such an upheaval and so. You know, it's like shakes you to the core because once you've had two children, naturally, you never imagine it's going to be any different. But I think it is, it's just about being honest with yourself about what you want and when you're going to be able to do that and being really forthright in your decisions.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I I agree. I I do, I I think so. And there isn't really enough out there. I don't think we talk about it enough.

• 1:02:43Emma Grede?

  You're not honest enough about it.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:02:46Emma Grede?

  That's what happens. And you know, it's so interesting because I think that I'm, you know, I talk about everything and, you know, all the sorts of things with my girlfriends. And even I hid for a little while that I was having IVF.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Emma Grede?

  There was something in my, you know, it's like, I can do it all, I'd do anything.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Emma Grede?

  And I was like, why?

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  There's a bit of shame associated with it, I think, in our culture.

• 1:03:06Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  Which there shouldn't be.

• 1:03:07Emma Grede?

  No, there just shouldn't be because once you do tell someone, I remember telling, and the three women I was with at the time were like, me too, me too, me too.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Oh, see, you have to find your community.

• 1:03:19Emma Grede?

  You find your community and you often find they're right next to you.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Emma Grede?

  Right there.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Emma Grede?

  Which is, which is very, very interesting.

• 1:03:30Speaker 08

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• 1:04:06Emma Grede?

  What would you say to someone who aspires to a career like yours? What would be the advice that you would give?

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  Oh my goodness. I mean, if they were just coming into the industry, I would say just just jump in two feet first, go work anywhere, you know, just learn as much as you can as fast as you can. Also be prepared that it could take you a couple of years. That transition, like I said earlier, from the the transition from a desk, an assistant desk to a a junior executive desk is a hard one. Once you do it, you're kind of off and running. I would also say be very fluid. You know, do you want to work for a tech company that's making content? Or do you want to work for a traditional media company? I had a great assistant Juliet

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  for a number of years and I hired her because when I said the cliched, I asked her the cliched question of where do you want to be five years from now? She said, the job I want hasn't been created.

• 1:05:06Emma Grede?

  Oh, what an answer.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:05:08Emma Grede?

  Juliet, yes.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Juliet for the win.

• 1:05:10Emma Grede?

  Yes, Juliet for the win.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  And she was right, by the way.

• 1:05:13Emma Grede?

  Come on in.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  She was right. And she

• 1:05:16Emma Grede?

  Because she's going to work in the future of your industry.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  That's right. But my follow up question was, why do you want to come and work at a traditional media company? Then why don't you go and work for Netflix or Amazon or Apple, wherever? And she said, because I want to learn the systems and processes that underpin this industry because I don't think they're going to be gone in five minutes.

• 1:05:36Emma Grede?

  What a winner. Where's Juliet now?

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's she's out there. She's out and about. You should meet her. She's great.

• 1:05:41Emma Grede?

  Go Juliet.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  And and I think that that I think she was right about that, too. So I I think, again, there's there's all sorts of, you know, early career biases. I want to do this. I want to do that. You know, just, again, learn, learn as much as you can. I think it's there's a lot of young people actually leaving college and going into the agencies and doing the trainee program.

• 1:06:01Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  That used to be a thing 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And I think it kind of tapered off. And now is I'm seeing a lot of that happen.

• 1:06:10Emma Grede?

  Well, I can understand why. And I think the same is happening in fashion and in the creative industries, like going back into those kind of very early, I guess, like

• 1:06:20Emma Grede?

  The sort of like the dirty work because at the end of the day in our businesses, it's the relationships that matter. It's again, understanding those systems and processes that are the underpinning of the industry. Like you can't shortcut some of that stuff.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Emma Grede?

  You've got to go through it, you've got to do it. And that will help you if you're making, I don't know, AI generated content or whatever you're doing.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:06:41Emma Grede?

  Still need the relationships, you've still got to be able to pick up the phone and get, you know, shit done.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  That's, that's right. No, I think that's a really good point.

• 1:06:48Emma Grede?

  Yeah, it really is. I heard that you're a big rap music fan. Are you? Do you like ABBA and rap? Is that where we're going?

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  I'm very eclectic, very eclectic in my taste.

• 1:06:58Emma Grede?

  Do you have like a hype song that you ever like as you're in the mirror, there's something?

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, having made Straight Up Compton, I love Straight Up Compton. I, I, I love, um, I love The Chronic, I love going back to the nineties.

• 1:07:11Emma Grede?

  Me too.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Oh, so good.

• 1:07:12Emma Grede?

  You can't beat nineties rap.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  You can't beat it, you can't beat it.

• 1:07:15Emma Grede?

  I will listen to like a full Warren G album before anything that's been released in the last five years.

• 1:07:22Emma Grede?

  Just so everybody will clear up where my preferences are.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  I did just go and see Kendrick and SZA though, that was a great show.

• 1:07:28Emma Grede?

  That was so good.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  Did you go? It was so good.

• 1:07:30Emma Grede?

  I did go, but, and I, and I also think that the reason I love Kendrick is because he feels like one of the old rappers.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:36Emma Grede?

  Like to me, it's like he has that like nineties sound and yeah, and it just feels so like lovely and familiar. And, and I understand what he's saying because I'm an old cow now.

• 1:07:49Emma Grede?

  No, I can't get any of the new rap. If you're called Lil anything, then I'm not feeling it. I'm sorry.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  You're out.

• 1:07:55Emma Grede?

  I can't like, that's for somebody else. Yeah, I'm just like, let my kids deal with it.

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Emma Grede?

  And how do you unwind and, and recharge? What are the things that you do to keep yourself energized and well and, and have some sense of balance?

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  In the exercise realm category, I, I do Pilates.

• 1:08:14Emma Grede?

  I could, I could have told you that you're a Pilates person.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  I do weights and I love to hike.

• 1:08:19Emma Grede?

  Oh, that's that's a privilege of living in L A.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:08:22Emma Grede?

  The hiking, like none of my English friends are like, where are you hiking?

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  What's hiking?

• 1:08:26Emma Grede?

  I hiked like in, you know, I'll be in Beverly Hills and I can see a mountain. I'm not, I have no idea where I am, but it's the best thing ever.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  So great. It's so good for the soul, just clears your head.

• 1:08:35Emma Grede?

  Yes, it is.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, we we are fortunate enough to have a place in Ojai and.

• 1:08:39Emma Grede?

  Oh, it's so beautiful there.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Best hike right outside of our door. So I do that. And oddly, I find reading scripts really therapeutic.

• 1:08:50Emma Grede?

  Really?

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:51Emma Grede?

  After all these years?

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  All these years. And I think it's because in my day to day job, there are so many things pulling me away from that creative process that I I I love it. I sit down and I've got the script there and I open it. I might take a nap for ten minutes, just a ten minute, just a quick one. And then, and then I'm back to it. Getting connected into that process makes me, it really is, I find it really calming.

• 1:09:14Emma Grede?

  Well, that's probably another reason why you're so successful, because you've been able to somehow couple the business aspect and keep this creative part of your job, which you're clearly very, very good at, but the two things like go hand in hand. And I think that that's kind of quite unusual in a way that you could head a studio and still be at that point where you're like, I'm reading scripts.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I I think if I think if I lost that, it would be time to leave the field.

• 1:09:42Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and it's nowhere near time for you to be leaving the field.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  I'm not ready.

• 1:09:46Emma Grede?

  So what is next for Donna Langley?

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  I think I'm really focused on where our industry is going. I we've been waiting for this seismic change to happen for, I think, you know, almost a decade, you know, with with streaming now being so ubiquitous. It is here and it's not going anywhere. People are consuming their content, their user generated content in such a different way. And then A I is going to come in and. Change the game completely. And I I don't mean movies and TV shows are going to be made and written by by AI. There's going to be checks and balances. And I'm a big believer in, you know, the human element is so important. It's our compassion and empathy that that enables

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  us to tell stories in the way that we do. And storytelling is a, you know, as humanity, it's the it's the one, it's the one constant, right? I'm just excited to kind of see where it goes and look for any opportunity to continue doing the things that I really love doing and hold on to those and and but don't don't hold on too tightly to the things that are maybe going to change and go go away forever.

• 1:10:58Emma Grede?

  That feels very, very sensible. That feels like a career that's set up for you to be doing this for the next thirty, forty years.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go do this, or I'm gonna go do that. I I I really, I'm not uncertain. It just hasn't revealed itself yet. There is something there. There's something that is gonna be pretty exciting.

• 1:11:14Emma Grede?

  But maybe that's part of the secret, that you are so open to what's coming next, and you're not scared of it, rather, you're embracing it, and you're just gonna be ready for when it does come.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Ready for whatever it is. Yeah.

• 1:11:27Emma Grede?

  That's incredible. I love, I love that so much, because it's a crazy time in all of our businesses. So if we can approach it with that idea of being open and being part of it, that's surely the way to go. That's the way to set yourself up for success.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I think so, Tim. All right. I only have some rapid fire questions for you.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Oh, good lord. Oh, these are the ones I'm really bad at.

• 1:11:48Emma Grede?

  On the spot. Okay. What is the first thing you do when you wake up?

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  Make a cup of tea.

• 1:11:53Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love that. What kind of tea do you like?

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  English breakfast tea.

• 1:11:56Emma Grede?

  Of course you do, darling.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  With milk and sugar.

• 1:11:59Emma Grede?

  You do, milk and sugar, the best. And what's the last thing you do before you go to bed at night?

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  Um, kiss my kids. I kiss my boys. They they are now old enough that they they stay up later than me.

• 1:12:11Emma Grede?

  Ah, yeah, I'm I'm approaching that right now. Every now and again, I'm like, if you're staying, like, I'm going, it's.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  My my younger one is now wanting to go and see movies, the midnight showing, and expect me to pick him up afterwards. So I'm in I'm in that zone. Yeah.

• 1:12:25Emma Grede?

  Get a doober, kiddo.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Get a doober. Exactly.

• 1:12:27Emma Grede?

  You'll be fine. Figure it out.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  So, but yes, I I love, you know, they they still snuggle, which is really cute.

• 1:12:34Emma Grede?

  So, yeah, yeah. Take the snuggles while you can. And what are you currently aspiring for in your business life?

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Continued success, just continuing to work with the best of the best. And what are you currently aspiring for in your personal life? I think it's about staying grounded. There's so much going on in our world every day. Right? And, you know, having kids, you think about them more than you think about yourself. Right? It's just, I want, you know, I'm focused on what do they need to be thinking about as a career path? You know, what's the world going to look like for them? So, you know, again, it goes back to what I was saying earlier.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Try and stay educated, stay up to speed on everything that's happening. But drown out the distractions and the noise and the hysteria as much as you can. Yeah, I just want to stay very, very grounded with my family. That's a perfect aspiration. What is a book that changed your life? Oh, my gosh. I think it was Love in the Time of Cholera. Oh. I read it at a time where I was so open. It's a good one to revisit. It's about unrequited love and it's the sexiest environment and I loved it so much. I've read it so many times. You revisit? I revisit. I do with my favourite books. Yeah, and I think I also read it at a time where a lot of people were reading it at the same time.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  And so I met so many people and made friends by virtue of reading that book. Yeah, that's so lovely. What's something that you valued when you were starting out your career that you no longer value? Oh, my goodness, that is a trick question. Isn't it? Yes. Everyone says that. You know, I think in my early days, I was much more.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  Ego driven, you know, about having to get the the credit for something or having to get the accolade for something. And over time, that's dissipated. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you'll get the pat on the shoulder. You have to learn to be okay with not getting the pat on the shoulder. It's nice when you get it, but you don't always get it.

• 1:14:54Emma Grede?

  That's some good advice right there. What's something that you value now that you didn't back then?

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  I've come to really treasure my friendships and my close relationships, either professional or personal, in in a way that when you're younger, they can, people come and go, people move in and out of lives, you know, you're kind of here one minute and over there the next. And I really, I think it may be solidified after having kids and and even through the pandemic, I just really treasure the people in my life who I know I can count on, who are there for me.

• 1:15:27Emma Grede?

  Does that include that lovely woman that moved to the US with you?

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:15:31Emma Grede?

  Amazing. Just how amazing that she's still your bestie.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:36Emma Grede?

  So, so cool. I'm so happy for you. And I just, yeah, I'm still so like, just impressed by you and all of your success. And I'm so happy that I got to sit with you today and learn even more. Thank you so much.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. It's been so much fun.

• 1:15:58Emma Grede?

  If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Grede is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Our executive producers are Corinne Gilliard Fisher, Derek Brown, and me. Our executive producers from Odyssey are Maddie Sprung Kaiser, Leah Reese Dennis, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weiss-Berman. Our producer is Kristin Torres. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Evan Cox, Kurt Courtney, Andrew Steele, Carlos Delgado, and Arnie Agassi. By Olivia Homann.

• 1:16:43Emma Grede?

  Special thanks go to Brittany Smith, Sidney Ford, my teams at Jonesworks and WNE, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson Rose, Tim Meeke, Sean Cherry, and Lauren Viera. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at aspirewithemagreed. Greed is spelled G R E D E. That's aspire, A S P I R E with M A greed. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emagreed.me.

• 1:17:17Speaker 09

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Anthropic is a research company first, built to make sure the transition to powerful AI goes well. When they launched Claude in 2023, its first users were businesses. Since then, it's been tested inside leading startups and enterprises. At DoorDash, a code migration that would have taken four engineers months to complete took one person three weeks. At Carvana, one team used to hunt through old tickets and code to answer a question. With Claude, they get answers 65% faster. And at Rakuten, engineers have achieved 99.9% accuracy on tough coding jobs using Claude. Today, nine Fortune 10 companies

• 1:18:00Speaker 09

  run on Claude for the work they want to get right. And these businesses are helping Anthropic shape what comes next. Build your business with support from Claude at claude.ai/odyssey.