Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program

• The challenge should cover a project that is key to the organization's sustainability in the market.
• The challenge should be something it would take 10 to 20 months to accomplish successfully.
• The challenge must be "ripe" so that it makes sense to tackle it during the year the fellow is participating in the Punch Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program.
• There is a performance expectation with each challenge. Fellows must set goals that answer the question: "What does success looks like?"
• The challenge needs to involve people of the enterprise beyond the Fellow. Everyone involved should feel at risk when they commit to take on the challenge and succeed at it.
• The challenge should not be "business as usual" – success at tackling the challenge should demand new abilities and ways of working.

1. Individualized Coaching
A personal coach selected from top management executives and consultants works with each Fellow to implement the initiative. Coaches check in weekly to discuss progress, setbacks, clarify the goal and determine next steps to achieve success and lead to change.

2. Tailored Content
The core content of this program is made up of the most pressing challenges facing news organizations. This can vary according to the organization's needs and financial outlook. There is no one model for success. It all depends on what you want to achieve.

3. Tangible Result
Participants create measurable outcomes throughout the year, developed with their coaches on a task‐by‐task to reach completion and achieve project success. Throughout your Fellowship year, our staff will help you learn to identify stakeholders and enlist their support, ensuring that your results will stick.

4. Long-term Success
The leadership and management skills learned in the Punch Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program can be used over and over within the news enterprise so success is replicable.

January is the kick‐off week. The graduating Fellows overlap with the incoming Fellows, so the incoming class can get guidance from the outgoing class. Fellows learn the essential tools, frameworks and insights about strategy, innovation and leading change within the Sulzberger Program’s proven approach. Throughout the week, Fellows are asked to use these frameworks and tools to help refine their challenges and to identify core issues they will face while working towards success at those projects.

In the first six to eight weeks, fellows finalize their challenges. They answer the question, What Will Success Look Like? and they work with people at their organizations to develop their projects. They look for signs of progress and early wins. The March session is used to finalize the choice of challenge and identify the early wins that are key to building the momentum needed for success.

In the March session, as well as the June and September or October sessions at Columbia, roughly half the time is focused on sharing updates and getting feedback from peers and project advisors. The rest of the time is spent learning additional managerial frameworks as well as news industry specific insights and content that can help fellows succeed.

At the final session in January, fellows present their results and receive their certificate of completion.

Throughout the year fellows are provided detailed assignments designed to drive success at the challenges. In addition, the advisors regularly speak with fellows by phone to assess progress, identify and address issues and provide guidance.

Doug Smith, Executive Director

Doug Smith is the founding executive director and architect of The Punch Sulzberger Leadership Program. His challenge-centric design draws on more than three decades of helping thousands of folks lead real performance impact and change in sixty-plus industries and fields across the private, governmental and nonprofit sectors. Doug’s track record of success is cited as #1 for all consultants discussed in the book, High Impact Consulting.

Doug is also the author and co-author of seven books, including Make Success Measurable, which provides the tools and disciplines required for setting and achieving performance in today’s tough competitive environment; The Wisdom of Teams, globally acknowledged as the best book written on teaming – as well as its sequel and companion, The Discipline of Teams; Taking Charge of Change, a path-breaking book named by the Peter Drucker Foundation as “the best book on change management”; Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented Then Ignored the First Personal Computer; Sources of the African Past; and On Value and Values, which describes the possibilities of ethical life in a world of markets, networks, organizations, friends and families.

Charles Baum, Senior Business Advisor

Charlie Baum, the senior business advisor in The Punch Sulzberger Leadership Program, has been associated with the program since its inception. He has coached more than 75 participants and now helps manage the daily operations of the program.

Charlie’s work has spanned the public and private sectors, both as a management consultant and as an executive. As a consultant, he collaborated with McKinsey & Company to help over 300 teams, involving thousands of people, to generate early wins in major change initiatives.  He also has coached over 200 executives in the approaches underlying the Sulzberger program.  His work has been profiled in Taking Charge of Change by Doug Smith, High Impact Consulting by Robert Schaffer, Masterful Coaching by Robert Hargrove and Vice President Gore’s book The Best Kept Secret in Washington.

As an operating executive, he helped transform a chronically troubled inner-city division of a construction company into a high-performing entity.  This experience is described in the business bestseller The Wisdom of Teams by Jon Katzenbach and Doug Smith.  Charlie also served as the chief operating officer of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, a 1,500-person department responsible for managing 5 million acres of land generating $250 million in revenue, regulating forest practices and fighting wildfire. 

Charlie holds a B.A. in Economics and Psychology from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He served for 14 years as an executive coach to participants in “Achieving Excellence,” a collaboration between Doug Smith, NeighborWorks America and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University for the affordable housing industry.  

Karen Gordon, Coach

Karen Gordon is the founder of Strategic Horizons, Inc., a boutique management consulting firm established in 1991, providing strategic, organizational, and communication guidance, as well as executive coaching, to a wide range of companies.  

Her three decades of consulting experience includes six years at McKinsey & Company, where she led teams in strategic planning and organizational development on behalf of multi-national clients. Karen's unique set of complementary skills in solving complex business problems and understanding people-related issues enables her to support clients in formulating strategies, generating creative ideas, managing through change, building productive teams and communicating effectively. Furthermore, for several Fortune 500 companies and major not-for-profits, Karen has designed and delivered numerous leadership development workshops, addressing topics such as structured strategic thinking, effective communications, presentation skills, and personality profiles. 

Karen is certified as an executive coach by the Newfield Network as well as the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. She is also certified to administer the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which she masterfully uses in conjunction with personality Temperament Patterns. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, Karen earned an M.B.A. from Columbia University. 

Quentin Hope, Coach

Quentin Hope is an independent consultant with over 25 years of experience serving clients across a broad range of industries and organizations in the areas of strategic alignment, organization design, organization effectiveness and change management. He also has extensive experience in public media and digital media management and consulting.

His consulting experience includes 13 years with McKinsey & Company as a senior engagement manager, organization specialist and senior fellow with firm’s organization design practice. This work included co-authoring the field research for the book Real Change Leaders and leading the field research for Peak Performance by Jon Katzenbach. He also served as a senior advisor for eight year with Katzenbach Partners LLC working with client teams and developing firm methodologies.

Quentin’s work in media began with his founding of High Plains Public Radio in the 1980’s, which he continues to advise on a pro bono basis. In recent years he has consulted for media clients ranging from leading public media organizations to legacy metro newsrooms to digital start-ups.  He has served as a coach and faculty member for the Sulzberger Media Leadership Program since 2010.  

Several business management and media industry experts present during the program. They include:

Eric Abrahamson   

Eric Abrahamson is the Hughie E. Mills Professor of Business Management at Columbia Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership, strategic management, managing organizations and on the use of power and influence in organizations to achieve wide scale, successful and lasting organizational change. 

Robert Bontempo   

Robert Bontempo is on the faculty of Columbia Business School’s Executive Education program and also teaches in the Management Division of the Business School. He studies international comparative management, including international negotiations and cultural differences in decisionmaking.

Rita McGrath  

Rita McGrath is a professor at Columbia University's Business School. She is one of the world's leading experts on strategy in highly uncertain and volatile environments. She works with both Global 1,000 icons and smaller but fast-growing organizations.

Amy Webb

Amy Webb is the founder and CEO of The Future Today Institute. She is an author, speaker and future thinker, adapting current and emerging technologies for use in communications. She has spent more than 15 years working with digital media, founding several web-based companies and now advising various startups, journalism associations and media groups.

All applicants will need to schedule time to talk with Doug Smith prior to completing the application. Complete applications, due on Dec. 1, include: 

• A short bio, including a description of your experience (editing, finance, marketing, operations, reporting, technology and sales) and a statement that demonstrates you have the authority in your current role to overcome this challenge and lead your company to success. (300 to 400 words)
• Nomination letters from at least two of the company's top executives, including one from an immediate supervisor. If you are self‐nominating, please include two reference letters from those you have worked for in an organizational capacity.
• A statement that identifies three core trends in the news industry that have substantially affected your company and a brief explanation of the nature and implications of those effects. (300 to 500 words)
• A description of a challenge now confronting your company. Please pick one that you can realistically use as the core platform for your participation in this program. Please give your perspective on what it would take to achieve success. (300 to 500 words)
• A statement outlining the journalistic mission of your enterprise and how that mission influences your decision to take on this challenge. (300 words)
• A description of how you hope to benefit from this program and how your organization hopes to benefit from your training. (200 to 500 words)

Applicants will be notified by Dec. 15 of their acceptance status. The program begins the second week in January.

Apply Now

Steve Jones (2010): VP & General Manager, ABC Radio

Why Sulzberger? I applied to the Sulzberger Program to help save my business. My biggest customer was teetering on bankruptcy. I needed a strategy to survive. While my personal background was in journalism and general management, I didn't have an MBA. The Sulzberger Program gave me the business skills necessary to develop strategy, manage change and measure results. The program helped me define my core business challenge and then, through classroom instruction and persistent focus, taught me the tools necessary to succeed. Twice monthly calls with my personal Sulzberger coach ensured my progress was steady.

The two dozen Fellows in the program quickly bonded over our similar but unique challenges. The confidential environment in which the Program operates ensured candor among colleagues. I developed business and personal bonds still active today. The Sulzberger Program broadened my skills and better equipped me to manage the ongoing disruption all of us face in today's media environment.

Sue Brooks (2011): Director, AP

Taking part in the Sulzberger Program was challenging and inspiring in equal measure. It helped turn a back‐of‐a‐napkin idea into a reality which is now generating many millions of dollars annually and gave me skills that I still use daily. The mix of formal lectures, coaching and peer support made it a unique experience; perfect for a media professional looking to hone skills they didn't even know they had!

Susan Daly (2013): Editor, TheJournal.ie

Ours is a young media organization that's core challenge has been to establish a sustainable business in the digital world.

The desire to constantly innovate had to be tempered with a strong sense of direction in order to drive our whole team towards the long‐term goal of sustainability.

The Punch Sulzberger program has been a constant guide to us on that journey. It provided the tools and skills we needed to effect change in our processes, to inspire our team members and to help us achieve our goals. The quality of expert contributors to modules of the program is excellent, as one would expect of a Columbia‐based program.

More importantly, through insightful personal coaching and exchanges with our group peers throughout the progress of our challenges, we learned how to think critically about not just what we should be doing, but why we are doing it. We now seek measurable success in everything we do. It's a change in mentality that continues to pervade how our organization works.

We believe so strongly in the value of the Punch Sulzberger program that we have continued to send group leaders from our organization year‐after‐year from all departments. And each time, they grow their personal skillset and contribute more fully to achieving our overall company goals of growth, innovation and increased market share. And each time, they tell us it has changed the way they work. It has been nothing short of revolutionary for us.

Scott Finn (2014): Executive Director, West Virginia Public Broadcasting

I’m the leader of a relatively small public media organization and had wondered if I was a good match for Sulzberger. After one day in the program, I put those fears aside. People from The New York Times and ESPN were helpful and generous with their time. And to my surprise, they said they learned something from me as well – about West Virginia and about service to the low‐income audiences that need us the most.

The Sulzberger Challenge has helped West Virginia Public Broadcasting become so much more than an in‐state repeater for PBS and NPR programs. Thanks to the challenge‐centered approach, we’ve won the top award for educational videos in public media. We’ve launched five audio podcasts. And we’re starting The West Virginia Channel, which is an online and television service unlike any in our state.

The Sulzberger Program gave me the tools and the confidence to go from a news director with zero business experience to someone who has developed a comprehensive business plan and increased revenue in a very difficult market.

When I was thinking of applying, I worried about the size of the investment for a small enterprise like West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Now, I can give you 10 ways I have earned that investment back with substantial interest, not to mention the friendships and soul‐supporting experience of being with people who have the same passion for telling stories.

Punch Sulzberger

Punch Sulzberger had an antique manual typewriter and a computer in his office – symbols of the transitions his editorial team went through during his tenure at The New York Times.

Sulzberger became chairman emeritus of The New York Times Company in October 1997, after having served as chairman and chief executive officer since November 1973. He also served as publisher of The New York Times from 1963 to 1992. He spent his entire professional career with The New York Times, except for one year (1953‐1954) when he was a reporter for The Milwaukee Journal. After service in the U.S. Marine Corps in both World War II and the Korean War, he worked as a reporter on The Times' city staff and as a foreign correspondent in its Paris, Rome and London bureaus.

He became increasingly involved in the business and production operations of The Times after he was appointed assistant to the publisher in 1955. Two years later, he was named assistant treasurer and then assistant to the general manager. In 1959, he was elected a director of the company, and elected president and publisher in May 1963. He gave up the title of president in 1979 when Walter E. Mattson became president and chief operating officer of The Times. In January 1992, he relinquished the title of publisher and was succeeded by his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who had been deputy publisher since 1988.

Sulzberger was a director of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau and served as chairman from 1974 to 1976. He was also a director of the American Newspaper Publishers Association and served as chairman from 1988 to 1989. (The NAB and ANPA have since merged and the new organization is called the Newspaper Association of America). He served as a director of the American Press Institute from 1975 to 1986, The Associated Press from 1975 to 1984 and is co‐chairman of the International Herald Tribune.

He was chairman‐emeritus of the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Trustee Emeritus of Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1951. He held Honorary Doctor of Law degrees from Columbia University, The University of Scranton, Dartmouth and Bard Colleges, and Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from Tufts University and Montclair State College. He was the recipient of the 1992 Columbia Journalism Award, the highest honor of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Judith Sulzberger

Judith Sulzberger, sister of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, received her medical degree from Columbia University. In addition to being a doctor of medicine, she has served on the advisory boards of several institutions. She is also the author of a novel, Younger, published in 2003.

Ruth S. Holmberg

Ruth S. Holmberg, sister of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, was the publisher of The Chattanooga Times for 28 years, before taking on the position of Chairman of Times Printing Company, which published The Chattanooga Times. She served as a director of Association Press [The Associated Press], the American Press Institute, and was the director of The New York Times Company and The New York Times Foundation for 30 years. Holmberg received the Smith College Medal in 1988, the Kiwanis Distinguished Service Award in 1989, the Liberty Bell Award in 1990 and the Bravo Award from Allied Arts in 2006. She received a B.A. degree from Smith College and was named an Honorary Doctor of Civil Law by the University of the South.

Marian Sulzberger Heiskell

Marian Heiskell, sister of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, was a newspaper executive, conservationist and a leader in many public and philanthropic activities. She was a member of the board of directors of The New York Times Company from 1963‐1997 and also served as its director of special activities from 1963 to 1977. Heiskell is also a former trustee of Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. and a former director of Ford Motor Company and Merck & Co., Inc. In addition, she is honorary chairman of the Council on the Environment of New York City; chairman of The New 42nd Street, Inc.; a member of the board of directors of Audubon New York; a member of the board of directors of the 42nd Street Development Corporation; a member of the board of managers and a member of the executive committee of The New York Botanical Garden; and a member of the board of trustees of New Yorkers for Parks. Heiskell is also an honorary life trustee of the Community Service Society of New York.

Heiskell has received many awards: the Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson Annual Award, given by Keep America Beautiful, Inc.; Woman of the Year Award from the New York Chapter of Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation, Inc.; and the Lizette H. Sarnoff Award for Volunteer Service by the Women’s Division of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She has been honored by former Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus; New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch; the Gateway National Recreation Area; and the Council on the Environment of New York City at Gracie Mansion. She is a recipient of the Wirth Environmental Award and was honored by Mayor and Mrs. David N. Dinkins at Gracie Mansion for her work as chairman of the Council on the Environment of New York City from 1970 to 1992.

Heiskell and her husband, Andrew Heiskell, retired chairman of Time Inc., were honored jointly by the following: Citizens Union Annual Distinguished Service Award; the Municipal Art Society; the Parks Council for their work on New York City’s Bryant Park and their commitment and dedication to the greening of New York City; the Citizens Committee for New York City “New Yorker for New York Award”; and the South Street Seaport Museum’s Distinguished Service Award. In October 1998, they received The New York State Governor’s Arts Award, in recognition of their significant contributions to the artistic life in the State of New York. They were honored in November 1999 as "Living Landmarks" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy for their efforts towards preserving New York City. In recognition of Heiskell's years of service to New York City and her efforts to make its neighborhoods green, vital and more humane, the Marian S. Heiskell Garden was opened in September 1997. The garden is located on West 48th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan.

Contact Professional Programs
journalismPE@columbia.edu
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