Past recipients of the Women in Technology Hollywood’s (WiTH) SoCal Leadership Award told the WiTH SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit, at Nya Studios in Los Angeles on Nov. 3, how they have survived and thrived during periods of major change.
Speakers during the panel discussion “Leading Effectively Through Changing Times’’ have all demonstrated exemplary leadership during times of transformation and uncertainty.
Attendees were able to gain valuable insights as the speakers shared their experiences, strategies and visions for adapting and excelling in a rapidly evolving world, offering inspiration and guidance for future leaders in the field.
“We have been going through a bit much the past couple years but there’s always more change to come,” moderator Christina Aguilera, WiTH Foundation president, said to start the panel discussion.
“The women that we have here have some great personal stories that everyone can learn from and I would love to just start a conversation,” she added, before introducing the speakers: Theresa Miller, Lionsgate chief Information officer; Annie Chang, VP of creative technologies at Universal Pictures and NBCUniversal; Davida Johnson, executive director (interim), University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Office of Advanced Research Computing; and Cindy MacKenzie, VP and co-founder of STEM Advantage.
Aguilera asked MacKenzie to describe a specific moment or experience she recalled where she had to lead effectively during a peak period of transformation and uncertainty.
MacKenzie reflected back on the COVID-19 pandemic, telling attendees: “If we couldn’t figure out immediately how to do this business remotely, we weren’t going to have any income coming in. And then, if you think about it, every single employee understood that immediately.”
Many people at the time were concerned they would lose their jobs and not be able to sustain their families, she noted. Some employees would come into the office and there were COVID outbreaks so an “entire team would come in and work and then the entire team would go and we’d have to deal with that,” she said.
“We were able to be successful” thanks to everybody agreeing to collaborate with others, she added. “It was a lot of start and iterate. Parts of it worked, parts of it didn’t, and we just kept going. And, for me, it was probably one of the most satisfying things that I’ve done. [But] I don’t ever want to do it again.”
Success during the pandemic was also possible thanks to “credibility, relationships, understanding of the business and … staying ahead of technology,” she told attendees.
“For us, we had moved a ton of stuff to the cloud but post production was one of the last things to move because it was so intensive on the size of the files and latency issues and things like that,” she added. “If we had not been as far through the journey, we wouldn’t have been able to react fast enough. And, as we talk about AI, it’s the same thing. If we don’t stay ahead of technology changes, even before we know we have to use it in our company, we’re going to get bit.”
Aguilera noted that “we all have COVID stories” and, “pre-COVID, there was a lot of resistance to change.” So the pandemic “forced change on some people that may not have been ready or comfortable” for it, she said.
What still seems remarkable is “all the stuff that had to happen” during the pandemic actually happening, said Chang. “I mean, it’s pretty big lift.
The annual SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit was presented by Qvest with sponsorship by Softtek, and took place at Nya Studios, located in the heart of Hollywood.
The full-day event, themed “Us, Our Org, Our Community,” offered a dynamic lineup of presentations and discussions.
WiTH, founded in 2014, plays a pivotal role in advancing women in entertainment technology. The WiTH Steering Committee, responsible for selecting Leadership Awards winners, comprises representatives from prominent organizations such as Amazon Studios, Microsoft, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and The Walt Disney Company.