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Transcript of "From Brandeis to Disney and Everything in Between: A Conversation with Alan Braverman '69"
Ron Liebowitz
Good evening, everyone. I'm Ron Liebowitz, president of Brandeis. My wife Jessica and I wanna thank you all for joining us this evening for what I know will be a very interesting conversation, "From Brandeis to Disney and Everything in Between." We have two great conversationalists with us tonight and I think we're all in for a treat. First, Alan Braverman. Alan serves as the chief legal officer of The Walt Disney Company and oversees its team of attorneys responsible for all aspects of Disney's legal affairs around the world. Previously, Mr. Braverman was executive vice president and general counselor of ABC, Inc. where he oversaw the legal affairs of the ABC Broadcast Group, ESPN and Disney/ABC Cable. During his tenure at ABC, he guided the company through numerous lawsuits regarding news reporting and news gathering practices, supervised the company's labor department and oversaw the government relations function for Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. Alan was raised in Boston, Massachusetts, where his parents owned a children's clothing store. Alan received a BA in politics from Brandeis in 1969 and subsequently worked for two years as a VISTA volunteer in Gary, Indiana. In 1975, he received a J.D. degree summa cum laude from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh where he was also editor-in-chief of the "Law Review." Monique Nelson took the helm of UWG, one of the country's leading multicultural marketing agencies, in May of 2012 after serving as the senior vice president of brand integration. UWG offers a broad array of services to a diverse clientele including digital and traditional advertising, consumer insight, public relations, consumer healthcare communications, cultural fluency consulting services, and general marketing. Prior to joining UWG, Monique worked as a sales and marketing account executive at "International Paper" and as the global lead for Entertainment Marketing at Motorola. Monique was born and raised in Brooklyn, as was I. One interesting fact about Monique, she grew up taking riding classes and eventually became a blue ribbon winning equestrian. Monique became a Posse Scholar, earning full scholarship to Vanderbilt University where she received a BS in human and organizational development. She went on to receive her MBA in international marketing and finance from DePaul University. She has been a member of the Brandeis Board of Trustees for a little over a year and already has had a great impact on the university. For that, we thank her. In a moment, I'll turn the mic over to Monique who will ask the first question of Alan to kick off this evening's conversation. After Monique and Alan engage in conversation, we invite you to submit questions during the Q&A portion of the program. Please use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen and not the chat function, which will be turned off, and we encourage questions so please don't be shy. Monique?
Monique Nelson
Thank you so much, Ron. Thank you, everyone. I hope you are in for a wonderful evening with Alan Braverman. I am so, so excited to have this conversation with you, Alan, and it's just an honor and a pleasure. So, you know, we've talked previously, but definitely, we want to frame up this conversation. We wanna have some fun. We're gonna talk a little bit about your history at Brandeis and ultimately how you got here. But I'd be remiss not to start this conversation with what we've been coining as the trisis, and the trisis being the pandemic, the recession, depression, depending on where you are in our society, and then ultimately racial and social justice. So we're gonna kinda frame this conversation around those three areas, but I wanted to start with when you graduated from Brandeis. You spent the mid to late '60s, which was also a very tumultuous time in our history, and here we are today in yet another tumultuous time. I'd love to just start the conversation with then to now and how are you feeling?
Alan Braverman
Well, first of all, it's great to Zoom with everyone. And I know a few of my ex-classmates are out there and I just want to say a special hello to them. One of the things, Monique, when we were talking the other day that really struck me that I hadn't thought about was the extent to which the '60s and now kind of bookend each other. The '60s were a time of a tremendous amount of energy, concern and mobilization around social justice issues. For me, Brandeis was certainly a place where issues regarding social justice were widely discussed, widely debated, deeply held. And then when I left Brandeis, in many respects, you know, in VISTA for two years in Gary, Indiana, sometimes I think that's where I really woke up. The inner city, and the inner city of Gary was quite a learning experience, sort of building on the social justice issues where it was no longer abstract. It was quite real. And the difference between the way that I had lived my life and the way you got to witness how others were living was really profound. And I think that became, for me, in a way, the seed of the reactions to what's happened over the past year. With the combination of, not only COVID, I remember we left our office on a Friday afternoon not knowing when we would return but certainly not thinking that we would still be out. We had had a new CEO named in the company. We had been together as a team for only nine days. Turned out to be a really bad year to be in the people-congregating business. And we had to deal with that and watch a number of our businesses close, dealing with a global staff that, across the globe, really, was working from home and had never worked from home before, you know, in the midst of this crisis. And then the George Floyd murder happened and it provoked a series of amazing conversations. There was good in this, and in a way, I think this Zoom culture actually enabled us to have conversations that we might not otherwise had, peculiarly, because there's a network effect to Zoom. You know, people can gather in large numbers without the friction involved in scheduling and traveling. You just have to send around a Zoom link. We can talk more about this but it provoked a series of really intense, we called them brave conversations where I think, really, for the first time, people felt comfortable in exposing how they were honestly feeling which is the starting point for really making meaningful progress. And to go back to the question you asked, the thing that I had pondered, and when you raised it, it really rang true to me, was we were so hopeful in the '60s. We really believed that we could effect permanent change. And if we had been as successful as we had hoped to have been, we wouldn't be having the conversations we were having this year. And so one of the things we've been focusing on is how do you avoid movements becoming a moment? How do you avoid movements becoming a moment? Because that's what's happened. The great energy behind concerns, it falls away when the urgency of the moment passes. And so the focus of these conversations is we're not gonna let that happen again. And in some ways, in an odd way, I think Zoom has enabled it.
Monique Nelson
Absolutely, no, I'd love to stay with that. What's been that revelation for you? Why was this moment, why are you having conversations now that you didn't have before that, you know, your classmates, you guys were right in the middle of it. What do you think that breakdown was? How can we make sure we don't revisit this in another 51 years?
Alan Braverman
You know, I think the difference, in the '60s, there was a lot of anger, rightfully so, and expressions of anger, and the hill that had to be climbed really required that expression of anger. And the anger in some course led to militancy. The conversations that we've been having this year is much more along the lines of how do I bring my authentic self to the workplace? A sense of belonging. I belong. I wanna belong. I wanna make a contribution. Hear me out, hear me. So that was number one. Number two, I think there is a certain, you know, when the George Floyd murder happened, but it's not singular at all in terms of awful events like that, there was real hurt, real, real profound hurt. And I think one of the breakthroughs was, in a kind of funny way, it was happening so frequently that the hurt wasn't acknowledged. And this was sort of a galvanizing moment, a point in time where people said, "I am hurting. This is what it's like to be black in America. Hear me." And that was combined with this is what it's like to be black in an institution, in a company, in a legal department. Hear me. And, you know, we talked, Monique, you know, I, one of my huge priorities and passions is the importance of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession, which has done a woeful job. And so it's been a journey we've been on, you know, at Disney for, you know, eight or nine years. You know, I believe strongly that as lawyers, what we do is we're in the problem-solving business, dealing with disputes among people. And in order to be effective in forging solutions to conflicts among people, you need to have by your side people who can understand what's driving conflicts among people, to have their perspective in mind. And, you know, so from the perspective of just running the department and doing the job, I have felt for a long time that we needed to be a highly diverse group of lawyers, paralegals, and assistants. It was an imperative to doing what we were being asked to do. So, you know, eight, nine years ago, I can't remember how long. We were the first department to institute the Rooney Rule. I interview everyone we hire at Disney, everyone, because I think that, so it's my voir dire moment. It's my opportunity to say, "This is what we're about. Are you it?" And because I did that, I was able to establish a practice where I would not interview anyone for a job unless there was a diverse pool of candidates. And that put pressure on the process. And for the last eight or nine years, I think 75% of our new hires have been diverse. So you would think that's great. And, you know, in terms of numbers, and I thought, well, you know, this is kinda easy. If you can hire enough diverse lawyers, both women and lawyers of color over a long enough period of time and everyone sees themselves in the department, then you've achieved the inclusion goal 'cause, you know, diversity is just the path to inclusion.
Monique Nelson
That's right.
Alan Braverman
You can achieve the inclusion goal. Well, you know what? Not so fast, because we have the numbers and we're proud of it and we've made progress in that respect. But the goal of inclusion is, as I suggested earlier, is to bring your true authentic self into the workplace. That's the key because if you go back to the problem-solving and the dimension that's added by having diverse people in a team, that only works if they feel comfortable being themselves.
Monique Nelson
That's right, that's right.
Alan Braverman
And so what we learned in the brave conversations that followed after the George Floyd murder was we weren't there yet. We weren't there yet. That, you know, just having people in numbers is not enough, that there were concerns about, you know, so-called acts of microaggression, words that are used, things that are done to reinforce differences. And it was just fantastic to sit down and have conversations that if you want me to be me, if you want me to feel comfortable being me, these are the kinds of changes we have to have. And the remarkable thing about that process was people were being themselves in doing it. So I said, well, you know what? Here's the model.
Monique Nelson
Let's keep it.
Alan Braverman
Here's the model. Just keep doing what you're doing. So it was fantastic. And the other thing just to mention, because I think it's important, is it's not just race. It's gender. The other thing that Zoom has done has brought work into the home and you get to kinda witness firsthand, and I think importantly, the challenge and the conflict that caretakers have in trying to balance work and life. And for the first time, and this has been talked about, you know, you have, whether it's, you believe in the lean in or you get out of the workplace for a while so you can accommodate your children and then you try to come back, you know, all kinds of, this was the first time they were really raw, honest conversations from people who were suffering by trying to do it all. And it led to some really interesting conversations about, well, are we compounding the problem by the way we work that's unnecessary to get our jobs done in terms of when we schedule meetings, how we schedule meetings, the flexibility that people are given in terms of how they do the work. And so that was kind of in an odd way facilitated by the crisis and the Zoom means of communication that it promoted. Long-winded answer, but.
Monique Nelson
No worries. No, thank you. I mean, listen, we're all working way more than we did prior to this. We don't have the commuting break. We don't have those natural moments, even the water cooler conversations. How do we kind of recreate that? It's been a really interesting time. I wanna kinda shift the conversation and then we'll certainly come back to DEI for sure but I wanna talk a little bit about, you know, yes, the business you're in, while one side being, you know, in person, you've had a tremendous success on the streaming business and this is a time for, I think, courageous organizations as well. You're talking about having conversations at work that were quite taboo probably before this moment, but now really leaning into that and having the courage to let innovation lead. Can you talk a little bit about where, you know, Disney is, how you've been managing through that and ultimately being in a courageous organization, how are you guys looking to not only survive but thrive through this crisis and trisis time?
Alan Braverman
So this goes back, it's a really great question, important question. This goes back to I think 2005 or '6 when Bob Iger became CEO of Disney. And I had been with Bob and started at ABC in '93 and essentially been his general counsel for 18 years. And we did an offsite, which is frequently done when there's a new person and I don't know about you, but I've been to a lot of them and I don't remember many of them but this one I remembered because he brought in a speaker and he talked about the battle between the insurgents and the incumbents. And he posited that the insurgents almost always win because the incumbents are focused on defending the business they have rather than having a finger on the pulse of changing consumer sentiments, you know, and a great example of that that even then they could use was Kodak which was so busy defending its film business that it missed the digital revolution. And Bob, at that point, put a flag in the ground and said, "We are going to behave like insurgents." And it created a kind of, a bit of an insurgent mentality in the company. Now, this was long before the kind of radical transformation we're seeing now. It was aided along, Steve Jobs was on our board and had kind of a profound influence in terms of understanding the importance of not asking the consumer what they want, you know, that old bromide that Henry Ford said, "If you ask the consumer what they want, they want a faster horse." But you also have to anticipate their needs and you build around quality, not quantity, and you build around innovation. And so the pillars of this, and Bob, big fan, you would imagine, of Bob Iger, but he was quite brilliant. So the pillars of this were, you know, in 2005 when he became CEO, we acquired Pixar, very successful animation studio for $7 billion, which back then was a lot of money. They had made six movies, six films. You were not buying the library. You were buying the, you know, you were buying the creative culture. And so the company bought Pixar, made a conscious decision of not to integrate because you didn't want to integrate to the point where you would destroy the creative culture that you're purchasing, and Steve hated lawyers. So there were no contracts. There was not a single employee at Pixar who had an employment contract. Then, and he bought it because he thought, and correctly so, that animation was the lifeblood of Disney and we had gone into a long trough of creative output and it was a kind of genius idea of the two leaders of Pixar, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, that they would come and they would co-manage Disney animation and set up kind of a little rivalry between the two studios, which is in fact what happened. Then the next move was to acquire Marvel Entertainment because we, you know, we realized that we were, we were skewing a little bit more younger and female. Then Lucasfilm and then 21st Century Fox. Why? Because of a belief that at the end of the day, the quality of content is gonna be the differentiator of success. And then another acquisition that got no attention which was this company called BAMTech which is the end-to-end platform that was servicing majorleaguebaseball.com, the nhl.com, HBO back in those days, and it was the world's leading end-to-end provider of high-speed video at scale. Then we started to see a deterioration in the existing means of distribution of video content, which is cable and satellite subscription. It is a wonderful business going back to, it is like film stock to Kodak. I mean, if you have a linear network and we had, you know, ESPN, all the ESPN networks, we had the Disney Channel, we had A&E, we had the ABC television network. Life was good because you got paid per subscriber whether they watched you or not.
Monique Nelson
Or not, right.
Alan Braverman
Or not, and for many years, well, cable and satellite were growing in popularity. The cable subscriber universe was growing. So it was a wonderful business, was very predictable and wonderful, and then 2008 happened and the recession and people started to say, you know, do I want a Frappaccino or do I want my cable bill? And we started to see a fall off in the subscription levels for satellite and cable coupled with the fact that technology was really starting to take off and the willingness, particularly of younger generations, to consume media on phones and tablets, they were abandoning that form of distribution. So we realized that, you know, this was in a sense, a bit of a over time, you know, a melting ice cube. And if you have all this great content, you have to find a means of distributing it to satisfy, you know, that form of consumer demand and piracy was on the rise and in part, you know, I've always viewed piracy as a bit of a manifestation of consumer demand and, you know, the content, entertainment companies made money by making people wait. Go to the theater and see it and if you don't see the theater, you're not gonna be able to watch it for a while. You might be able to buy a DVD. If you don't want to buy a DVD, well, you have to wait for a while and then you might see it on HBO. And the same thing with television. If the show was on Wednesday at nine, you didn't see it, well, you know, if you could figure out how to use a VCR, maybe you can find it, but otherwise you have to wait. People were tired of waiting and they got more sophisticated about how to access content online, even if it was through a pirated means. So, you know, you had to offer content on a well-priced well-timed basis in the way people wanted to consume it. So that sounds all great in theory until you look at your bottom line, because these businesses that are starting to dwindle are still very good businesses. A lot of companies would love to be in those businesses. And so the point of courage is at what point do you start leaning into direct-to-consumer businesses which are yet unproven but hold great promise at the expense of maximizing your short-term returns? Because you are surely starting to cannibalize yourself. And that is the courage of the leadership of Disney. I tell you, there are times that you just get proud because you see people who see the future. Bob saw the future. Steve Jobs saw the future. Our current CEO, Bob Chapek, sees the future and have the courage to say, "We're going after, we are gonna be the insurgents and we're gonna lead in the insurgency, even at the expense of our incumbent business."
Monique Nelson
So as the legal representation to the insurgents, how has that been? I'm sure you had to get very creative as to how you see these businesses, especially as they want to remain authentic and the content being king, so important that the culture thrives. I always tell people, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast and all day every day, so, you know, talk, you know, love to hear a little bit more about, you know, the intricacies of, you know, how you as a legal person have to kind of look at this thing and make sure that it is papered to a point where everything is protected, but also allowing it to live and breathe and thrive.
Alan Braverman
Yeah, it's a challenge. One of the things about insurgents is they're really impatient.
Monique Nelson
Yes.
Alan Braverman
And, you know, you have to be nimble because the pace of change is so fast and decisions have to be made more quickly than, you know, maybe you lawyers would like, because lawyers like to study and reflect and pause, but I'll tell you how I differentiated it. There's one area of risk which we cannot take ever, and that relates to our brand. The thing that differentiates Disney and I think gives it its greatest competitive advantage is the extent to which there's trust, people have trust in our brand, and that trust is both a strength and a potential vulnerability because if you violate that trust, you're probably doing more harm to shareholder value than any, virtually any other company you can think of. So in areas that involve taking brand risk and doing things that look like they would be off-brand, and that can be, you know, the result of a legal position as well as part of what we do in legal as we're kind of at the intersection of decisions. So when we see things that are brand-insensitive, we'll get involved as well. There we can't, there we have to be resolute. With regard to other risks, you know, the way I've always thought about the job of a lawyer, particularly in-house, is that legal risk is an input to a business decision. And you know, our job is to assess the likelihood of a risk, to try to quantify its impact if it occurs and to try to make some judgment about the likelihood of its occurrence and then to make sure that that decision is made by someone of sufficiently high seniority, given the gravity of the risk. And so what you try to do is, you know, there are certain instances that happened this week, I can't say what, that happened this week where there was a lawyer who just happened to raise something, and to me it was a CEO-level decision because the nature of the risk involved was so great. It wasn't a brand risk. It was an operational risk that had to be elevated. So it's really hard but it's incredibly fun and challenging. My first legal retreat that I had when I got the job a long time ago was about, it's funny looking back on it. I was like Lori from "Transformational Times," as it was called, but when I look at those, those were such calm waters. The fact that I thought those were transformational, my God. Kinda we ain't seen nothing yet, but it was about this question of, you know, our risk tolerance has to be adapted to the moment but we don't fulfill our responsibilities by closing our eyes. We fulfill our responsibilities by doing the work, doing it with the speed that's needed and make sure there's clarity of vision by the business people of the risks that they'll be taking in the event that they decide to go a path unless it involves brand risk.
Monique Nelson
Awesome, so I'm gonna start to shift a bit to some of the questions. They are coming in from the audience and wanna get to some of those and make sure we can capture as many as we can. So I'm going to start with what has been your biggest legal challenge that you've faced in your career?
Alan Braverman
It's a great question. Well, I'll say, I wanna start with, I was once asked that question by a, you know, the insurance companies interview you every year before they underwrite for the company and they said, you know, what was your proudest accomplishment? And my answer was things you've never heard about. And I honestly think that when I look back on my career, you know, the things that I'm most proud of are the things that we avoided that could have been a big problem that kind of, you know, never surface. I actually think that in some respects, the biggest legal challenge is what we're going through right now. So the, you know, the entertainment business, whether it's television or film, was based upon a economic model with talent that would appear in films and television where talent received an upfront payment for their services, but they would participate. They would take some risk associated with the success of the show or film in what's called a back-end participation. And that lived in, that was a world that kind of worked where studios made films and television programs and then they would sell it into the market in third-party sales and the proceeds that were received float into the studio. They were accounted for and those were the proceeds in which the talent would share in accordance with the terms of their back-end deal. That worked really well and there were a ton of those deals, I mean, from almost the dawn of time. Now, virtually every company is migrating to a direct-to-consumer platform. We have ours, Disney Plus and Hulu. Comcast has theirs in Peacock. HBO has theirs in HBO Max. I think Viacom is trying to launch one. Everyone's doing their direct-to-consumer thing now. It's the new thing. What's different about that is you're selling to yourself. There are no third-party sales. So the model that was created to capture sort of the rewards in which talent would share, no longer there, because the third-party sales are not there but yet the contracts read that way. It's a lot of inside baseball and HBO made an announcement the other day and its royalty industry, but the issue that's being talked about is now what? Because you live in a world now where there's, you know, the phrase is used, I don't agree with it, self-dealing, where you're selling to yourself. How do you take an entire ecosystem that was created to distribute rewards on terms that no longer exist? Because the nature of the economics of the business itself fundamentally change. And if you believe it, this may not be the greatest problem overhead, but if you believe in privacy, it's the one that's most immediate.
Monique Nelson
Absolutely, well, it's right in front of you and it's epic, right?
Alan Braverman
It's epic.
Monique Nelson
This isn't a kind of a shift. This is an epic shift. So you're clearly ready for this moment and we're so happy that you are, but I wanna now, let's rewind the tape a little bit. We're going to go back and say how are you so prepared? How did Brandeis and your time in the world prepare you for where you are today in your career?
Alan Braverman
You know, I, it's a great question. I don't, you know, I think along the way, and my mama used to say everything happens for a reason. She used to drive me crazy because she used to say it when I was unhappy about something. But, you know, I think, you know, you put the pieces together. I think one of the things about Brandeis that I think is unique is, is the extent to which the school is populated by people of tremendous intellectual curiosity. You know, and weaving the expression of truth into its innermost parts. I mean, it means something. And, you know, in all honesty, I didn't set the world on fire academically at Brandeis but I had a phenomenal experience at Brandeis. And I think that curiosity, that willingness to be open-minded and explore, you know, different points of view and to not be so sure that you're right because you're surrounded by smart people who, you know, challenged your thinking, not in a competitive way but in a curious way. And then, you know, in VISTA, I saw the life I would hope I would never have to lead. And, you know, the inner city of Gary were really mean streets and we were just plopped in there. In fact, story, we were trained to be VISTA volunteers in Northern Minnesota in an Indian reservation and the project got canceled the night before we got placed and we got sent to Gary. We got the openness, it's like match day in medical school. You open an envelope to tell you where you're going. I see Gary, Indiana, I say you've gotta be kidding. I thought we'd be with Indians, not Indiana. They said, no, no, you're going to Indiana. And we were the first white volunteers that had been sent to that city in over a year because it was thought to be maybe a little bit too dangerous. And we were really just plopped out and learned to survive. And then, you know, in law school, I went at night. I taught during the day and, you know, you combined those and that was four years, six years, you know, you wake up and you learn not to, I've never assumed anything. I've never believed I was entitled to anything and then I've always believed at each point along the way that if you own what you're working on and you dedicate yourself to it and, you know, good things come from it, so I don't know. I went to a law firm that was phenomenal. I mean, just, I lucked out. It's a true story. I was very unsophisticated. I was in law school at night, fourth year, and talked to a professor I think two months before that graduation. And he said, "What are you doing after graduation?" I said, well, I had a nice job lined up. I was gonna clerk for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and then I was gonna go to a law firm in Pittsburgh. And he said, "Why are you defining your horizons so narrowly?" I said, "Well, you know, it's Duquesne, it's night school, you know, I don't know." He said, "Do you mind if I write a letter?" And he wrote a letter to a firm in Washington and then I got an interview. At that time, I was a little bit hairier than I am now and I had kind of a full beard and I owned one suit, which was denim, so I probably donned my denim suit and went for my interview with this firm which was made up of wonderful people who thought, you know, nothing of hiring me. And they took me in and saw something, I guess. And those, they too were just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant people. So, you know, each step along the way, I, you know, I've just been surrounded by, you know, I'm really lucky. And the head of that firm was Lloyd Cutler who was a legend in Washington and, you know, he was, and John Pickering, they were legendary in the city. And then when I went to ABC, I worked for Tom Murphy who was a legend in broadcasting and then Michael Eisner and then Bob Iger and now Bob Chapek. I mean, it's just been a hell of a ride, you know? So I've been surrounded by great people. I've tried to learn from them along the way, hopefully take the best, but I don't know, it just, I kind of, it's stitching all those things together somehow that leads me where I am today.
Monique Nelson
So as you, as you navigated your career, it sounds like you always had a support system around you in some form or fashion. How did that come to be? Was that something that you curated? Was that something that, you know, again, kind of appeared as you presented yourself as your authentic self? How does that manifest itself for you and ultimately as we're looking forward, you know, how does that affect, you know, the next chapter?
Alan Braverman
So I think there are two layers of support system. I have an amazing family and, you know, they've been there for me throughout. They are, I think as a family, none of us take ourselves too seriously. So they've always kept me very grounded and, you know, whenever there were points along the way where I needed support, my god, they were there. The second thing is you can't underestimate, I don't underestimate the importance of real mentors, you know, and I know, Monique, you know this 'cause it's just, the real word is sponsorship. You know, mentoring is cheap. Sponsorship is real. And the difference is you put your skin in the game and put your own reputation on the line. And at, you know, when I was in Gary, there was a woman who worked out of a settlement house in Gary, Indiana. She was an amazing woman, amazing woman, you know, who was the support structure for me, you know, in Gary as well as some of the volunteers. Then when I went to the law firm Wilmer, Cutler, there were a couple of partners who took me under their wing and really helped, you know, guide me. I mean, one, it's just like a very simple story. A man by the name of Max Truitt who was a kind of a, he was a Washington Brahman kind of a family, I think his grandfather at one point ran for vice president and big burly guy and I remember he, when I was a first year associate, you know, and I think the firm was trying to figure out what to make of me now that they hired me, I was working in a library. He came to me, he said, "Braverman," he was talking to me. He put his arm around me, he said, "Braverman, you're gonna work on this case with me." He said, "Do you know what your job is?" And I said, "Well, what's my job?" He said, "Your job is to be my lawyer." And I said, "Well," he said, "You know what that means?" I said, "What?" He said, "What that means is you get to worry for me so when I go home at night, I don't have to worry." But along the way, there were people who, you know, provided that guidance. You know, you're dropped into situations and there's not a guidebook and it's easy to make mistakes about paths to take. And I just have been really fortunate. And then, you know, when I, you know, came to Cap Cities and ultimately Disney, I mean, no one could have a, you know, a greater leader to help molding them than I had with Bob Iger.
Monique Nelson
That's awesome. Thank you for sharing. So I've got a softball question. What was the name of the band you were in at Brandeis?
Alan Braverman
Oh, god, it's so embarrassing. Second Coming, Second Coming. Not that we were immodest.
Monique Nelson
That's awesome. I love it. And what was your role in the band?
Alan Braverman
I was a singer.
Monique Nelson
You were the singer. Oh, I won't do that to you tonight.
Alan Braverman
We were not legendary. Believe me. No, it's embarrassing.
Monique Nelson
I absolutely love that, I absolutely love that. So I would like to go back to your 2018 American Bar Association Spirit Award which really does, you know, again, talk about the fact that, you know, we've got to do it. We have to make sure that DEI is at the core of everything we do. It is the answer for innovation. It's the answer for the future. It's, you know, the reason for people in purpose and performance and making sure that we are all included in how we show up every day and making sure that, you know, entertainment is for all. And the world that you live in and create is so important that it does invoke that from every man, woman, and child all over the world. And that's, those are big, big things to shoulder, but they're so very important. And as we're looking at the landscape now, it's very polarized and we're all gonna have to try to find a way to figure out what, that we get out of our own echo chambers, right? We just talked about the fact that everything's streamed. Everybody can get their own lane and not necessarily be exposed to all the beauty that diversity has to offer. So would love to talk to you a little bit about how do we see that evolving over time, the next, you know, two, five, seven years? How do we do a better job of making sure we don't just talk to ourselves but that we impart the fact that difference is where the real innovation, the real future is?
Alan Braverman
So, you know, I prefer to be an optimist and I think, and I don't wanna overstate it but I think Disney has a role to play. You know, we were talking about diversity. I was talking about it from the perspective of running the legal function. But there's an important cultural perspective to diversity. And I think the company, you know, can have an impact. And I think it has had an impact. You know, a number of years ago, we quite consciously started doing animated films that were built around female empowerment themes and, you know, "Brave" and kids see themselves, well, girls see themselves in a different way. And, you know, and even in the superhero movies, creating a different image, and then you have a film like "Coco" celebrating Mexican culture, "Moana" celebrating, you know, South Asian folklore and then "Black Panther," you know, I'm telling you, that was one of the most, I happened to go to the premiere of "Black Panther." It was one of the most amazing things. It was like a cultural celebration. Those things have impact on culture because they tend to challenge stereotypes and humanize the differences. And I, you know, one of the reasons that the company itself has been so focused on diversity, it's much broader than, you know, legal. Legal's my little part of the world but having diversity both in front of and behind the camera and in our storytelling, I think, is part of the solution to break through these, you know, these rigid, stereotypical notions that are keeping people apart. So I, you know, I hope the company continues to pursue that course and we are, just seeing our creative output for the next two years, it's quite something in that regard. And I hope it makes a cultural impact on people saying, "Wait a minute, maybe I gotta rethink these, as I say, stereotypical notions that I have of people."
Monique Nelson
Awesome. Thank you for that. So another softball and then we're gonna have you give a little advice. So the next softball is when was your first experience at Disney and what was your favorite attraction?
Alan Braverman
My favorite attraction at, my first experience at Disney?
Monique Nelson
Mm-hm, and what would be your favorite attraction at the theme park?
Alan Braverman
Well, I'll say the second. My favorite attraction at the theme parks unfortunately is in Shanghai where we re-imagine the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in a very much of a multimedia. It's really extraordinary because you do feel as though you are seeking underwater even though nothing like that is happening and you're in the middle of the sea battle. And I say the second one which I haven't ridden because of COVID but I've walked through is our "Star Wars" attraction, which is 14 minutes long, which makes it the longest such attraction anywhere. And it's a culmination of every form of technology that's ever been put into a ride, so a real adventure. I think, I would say my first, I wanna tell you, I think the memory I will always take away and I think it may be relates to maybe the question, we opened "Lion King" in China. I believe it was in Shanghai. It could have been in Beijing, but I... And it was a brand new theater that had just been built. And it was the first musical of its kind that had been performed in China. I think "Cats" had been there years ago but nothing like this, and it was in Mandarin. And I spent the entire performance looking around into the eyes of the children in the audience and saw the wonder in their eyes as if they had never seen anything like this and it was captivating them and it was moving them. And I remember walking out, a group of us walking out and walking down the steps of this huge theater and we said to each other, "This is what we do. This is what we do." And it just, it always stayed with me because I think that's, you know, that's why I've always loved being so much a part of, you know, Disney as a company. So it wasn't my first experience but in some ways it was the most impactful.
Monique Nelson
Awesome, so because everyone wants to have that experience of course, I must ask the patented question. How does an attorney work at Disney? How do they have this fabulous experience that you've had over these last 51 years that has just been extraordinary and what advice would you give them?
Alan Braverman
Well, you know, the advice I give everybody is, you know, two things, one is, as I said earlier, own what you're doing because I think that's the path to success. And particularly in times of great transformation and disruption, it's always best to look out the windshield and not in the rear view mirror. So many people are holding onto the past, wishing it were different and taking their eye off the road that they're currently on because you can't, you can't reverse the trends and the circumstances that have changed your current service, you know, your current position. You've got to adapt. And I would say, you know, for people who do those things, I mean, we're always open for business when we do hire. But I would say those two things and particularly the latter. It's just, it's really interesting to me that when disruptions happen and they do happen and some of them are consequential and people's jobs change or their scope of responsibility change or, you know, the future is not as immediately happy as they thought it would be, they start looking at that rear view mirror and looking at a past they can no longer capture and they're missing so much of the present and they're missing their ability to navigate, you know, through the circumstance they find themselves. So that would be my advice.
Monique Nelson
So we look like we're, you know, on our way to a time of no return. This moment, this 2020, this moment of clarity as it's been told, right, where we actually have 2020 vision. We didn't say we were gonna love what we saw, but we now have seen it. What do you think has changed permanently, especially with respect to the industry of, you know, media entertainment at all, but please feel free to be broad. And then what do you think are some of the things that we will return to?
Alan Braverman
I think what's changed permanently from a media standpoint is that people are increasingly going to have a choice about the means in which they choose to consume content. I think that content will increasingly be made more immediately available and more accessible. I don't think, I'm not one who believes that the, you know, the so-called multi package that you subscribe to on cable and satellite is gonna disappear. I just think you're gonna wind up in a world where people make choices of, you know, what pattern of consumption best fits what available products there are. But I think that's there's gonna be a heavy shift toward direct-to-consumer consumption because of the amount of investment that's now being made and quality content that's gonna appear there. You know, and in terms of my hope, I don't know if it will happen. My hope is that, to go back to what I said earlier, the momentum behind the conversations that we've had in terms of how you accommodate work-life balance in a workplace, how you enable people to bring their authentic selves, that those become permanent features of what the workplace is. I don't think we're gonna go back to a place where, you know, in many instances where you're in an office five days a week, but I do think that physical presence is, I know it's badly missed, and I know it has a role and an important place and so I think it'll be some amalgam of that and I think we'll all be better off for it. I think that there is, there's good that can come with this horrible year. There have been good things that have happened. I once read it was, I don't remember, the number of inventions that occurred during the Depression, it was an astounding, astounding number. There's good. We just have to learn to harvest it and hold onto it when we return to more normalized lives.
Monique Nelson
Absolutely, well, Alan, it is just been such an honor to spend this time with you. So many gems. I've written down, you know, let's not let the momentum turn into a moment, which I think is just such a critical takeaway from tonight. I am so proud to have been able to spend this time with you as that you've made a major contribution, not only personally for your law family, but certainly you've made a lasting impression on your Brandeis family and community. And with that, I wanted to say thank you. Thank you again for spending the time. Thank you from the Board of Trustees of Brandeis and President Liebowitz, and then everyone else, please stay safe, stay well, and enjoy the rest of the holiday season and we will definitely see you in 2021. Thank you again.
Alan Braverman
And thank you, Monique. Thank you.
Monique Nelson
Appreciate it.