Interview with Dina Kaplan
Blip.tv is an online television network focused on featuring, promoting and monetizing the best original shows on the Web. According to Dina Kaplan, who is a co-founder and COO of blip.tv, the conditions to becoming a successful career woman are threefold: 1) great communications skills, 2) diverse experience and 3) aggressiveness.
Dina Kaplan oversees the operations for the company, including media partnerships, advertising and sponsorship deals, public relations and marketing. She is one of the most influential women in the Internet and is one of a handful of female founders of a successful Internet company. We met her in New York City to get her views on the conditions to becoming a successful career woman.
Dina majored in College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. College of Social Studies is a very rigorous interdisciplinary major that focuses on history, economics, philosophy and government and emphasizes the importance of creative, analytic and critical thinking and clear writing. Irrespective of the profession, being able to write quickly, clearly and effectively is very important in getting ahead in life, and Wesleyan professors actively encouraged Dina to think critically, speak effectively and write clearly.
People may be forgiving with spoken English, but she believes that they are less forgiving when it comes to written English. In negotiating deals, written English, and especially context, subtlety and the ability to write good emails are very important in conducting business because intention and emotion are so hard to read in an email. For people who are learning English as a second language, she recommends that they spend semesters in an English speaking country during high school and college in order to be immersed in an English speaking culture and environment.
Dina's ability to analyze also comes from her eclectic and diverse work experience. Prior to blip.tv, Dina was an Emmy-award winning news reporter for local television stations, and she also worked as a producer for MTV News. Prior to MTV News, she was the Director of Research for the Office of the White House Counsel. Dina is currently a judge for the Webby Awards, which is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet including websites, interactive advertising and online film and video. A wealth of work experience enables Dina to communicate her vision with business partners effectively and effortlessly, and Dina emphasizes the importance of communication, which she says "closes deals".
As a female leader of an Internet company, Dina Kaplan stresses the quality of aggressiveness on the part of women in getting results. When she first started her funding efforts, she approached family, friends and friends of friends in order to have them invest in blip.tv. She states that you have to love what you are doing and that in her funding efforts, she sees the value of her work. In approaching potential investors, she thinks positively and approaches potential investors with the idea that she is giving people the opportunity to invest in a great company that has the potential to do really well.
For career women to succeed, it is imperative that women actively seek the advice and counsel of other female leaders. For Dina Kaplan, her most important mentor was Geraldine Laybourne, who worked for Nickelodeon for 16 years as part of management and who founded Oxygen Media. Ms. Laybourne gave Dina her first revenue deal, which in turn led to another deal with CNN, a Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner Company. Dina Kaplan spoke about the importance of women helping other women, thereby enabling the next generation of women.
For women, the sine qua non of female leadership is not only communication skills, diverse experience and aggressiveness, but it is also passion and hard work. She advises other potential female leaders to do their best in doing the work they love and to give it all they got because you only live life once.
Joseph Kim
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