Phoebe Yang

So I ended up being the person who was trying to bring some of those issues and perspectives and viewpoints and positions together.

It was a policy role, but it was a business and strategy.

You had to have a business and strategy perspective to do that role effectively.

But I really wanted, and my deal was I would come back to the United States and go into one of the business units because I really wanted to understand how businesses operated.

Well, some very well-publicized things happened at AOL, which was the business unit I had intended to go into.

It was, you know, the advent of the Internet.

We're probably of the same vintage, right, Ed?

So it was the advent of the internet and I was so interested in what was happening.

But some very well publicized things, including an SEC investigation was happening in that business unit.

And I just decided at that point, I never wanted to be at a company and not see that coming.

But in order to see that coming, I had to understand finance and operations better than I did.

And so ultimately I left, took a pause, decided that, did a little research on my family history on the side, and then decided I was going to join Discovery, which owned the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, all the real world television networks.

This was the heyday of the 300 channel universe of television.

And I joined the corporate development team.

And I was the only member of the corporate development team who had not gone to Wharton, worked at McKinsey, and been sort of a certain track.

They were all men.

They were all lovely men, but I looked and seemed quite different.

But I had this international experience, and I was willing to roll up my sleeves.

And I still have, just as a memento, I still have my Excel for Dummies book on my bookshelf.

To remind me that I learned how to run, you know, discounted cash flow analyses.