USA Network Founder Kay Koplovitz Urges Women Dealmakers to Be Bold
StarVest Partners’ Deborah Farrington and other panelists provide role models and advice at ACG New York Women of Leadership event
Panelists at ACG New York Women of Leadership’s Women at the Deal Table – Challenges and Solutions event Oct. 25, including Kay Koplovitz, who started the USA network, doled out advice to the all-female attendees.
Women should ask for things if they need them, take risks, demand what they think is theirs and develop a personal brand, the speakers advised.
Koplovitz; Beth Bronner, a managing director and operating partner at private equity firm Mistral Equity Partners; Deborah Farrington, founder and general partner at venture capital firm, Starvest Partners; and Rosalie Mandel, principal at accounting firm Rothstein Kass, shared the stories of their success as women in male-dominated fields.
When Mandel got to Rothstein Kass, there were no women partners. After she had her first child, she took six months off, then went back and told the firm she wanted to work three days per week. When she had another child and took another six months off, she missed a promotion because people at the firm hadn’t seen her around. That, she says, is when she started fighting for women, and started a women’s initiative at the firm. This year Rothstein Kass was on Workingmother.com’s list of the best 100 companies for working moms.
During a fireside chat with Mergers & Acquisitions editor-in-chief Mary Kathleen Flynn, Koplovitz talked about how she went from being a television producer in Wisconsin to starting the USA Network, and the importance of diversifying corporate boards. For more on Koplovitz, see “Avoid Group Think.”
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