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Turner's 'Alchemist' ducks praise--inside and outside the company.
By Shirley Brady
On the last Friday of January, I flew to Atlanta to spend the day with Dennis Quinn, the former EVP and GM of TBS and current EVP of business development for Turner Broadcasting's family of networks. On arrival I learned that Quinn could only meet with me for an hour (but more likely 45 minutes) that afternoon. Blame it on some top executives from a certain Seattle-area software giant who dropped by to monopolize his time.
No matter. Although I was there to witness firsthand the personal impact that Quinn has had on the company and in the greater community, it turned out it was much easier to get a sense of that impact without him. Quinn would have downplayed his contributions--which have gone far beyond the boundaries of his job descriptions.
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| Dennis Quinn created a breakfast club to help women at Turner advance their careers. |
While running TBS he launched an informal series of "breakfast clubs" to help women at Turner develop networking skills and boost their careers. Quinn organized breakfast speakers, bought and distributed books for the club members to read before each event and kept an open-door policy--anything to help the women in the group break through the glass ceiling. I planned on meeting with some of the club's charter members.
Outside of Turner, Quinn is chairman of the board of 21st Century Leaders, a nonprofit organization that develops leadership skills in students at more than 70 Georgia high schools. The group was kicking off its annual winter leadership weekend that Friday--which turned out to be 21st Century Leaders Day in Georgia--with an awards luncheon. Although Quinn now wouldn't be able to make it, I wanted to meet some of the kids.
Breakfast of Champions
The four charter breakfast club participants I spoke with--Kellie Appel, SVP and GM of Turner Trade Group; Shirley Powell, SVP of corporate communications; Alissa Marshall, SVP of strategic planning; and Angie Simmons, SVP of network operations--heaped praise on Quinn for inviting them to breakfast to advance their careers, and for inspiring them to launch their own spin-off breakfast clubs.
"Dennis has had a huge impact on my life, because he's helped me both get more out of my work in the company and outside," said Marshall. "I'd always yearned to do something outside the company, and I always felt like there was something missing in my life. He talked to me about what he does at 21st Century Leaders. So two years ago he invited me to help [the group] do some fundraising, and I had no idea what I was doing. But I loved it."
Marshall eventually was invited to sit on the board of the organization, and now chairs its social enterprise committee.
"Dennis is a modern-day alchemist," Coleman Breland, EVP sales and marketing for Turner Network Sales, says. "He's a master collaborator. And everybody wants to work with him. He puts himself last and everybody else first. That's true not only within Turner but also in these other areas like 21st Century Leaders."
Lunch With Future Leaders
In a church basement across from the State Capitol building, the students attending the 21st Century Leaders awards luncheon told me they were college bound (some were being recruited by Ivy League schools) because of the boost they'd received from being involved with the group. After awards were presented and speeches were delivered by poised and confident teens, the group's executive director Bob Watson told me how much he wished Quinn could be there that day. It was genuinely moving, but you know Quinn would have turned it right back on the hard work of the kids, his fellow board members and the staff, teachers and volunteers who encouraged these students to dream big and fulfill their potential.
And that's pretty much what Quinn did when we finally sat down between meetings that afternoon, just as he praised his breakfast club members for spreading that initiative throughout the company. Asked why he took time to help women at Turner, he talked about realizing one day how much harder it would be for his daughter to get ahead in the golf-playing, male-centric corporate world than for his son. When quizzed about his charitable work he talked about wanting to help kids at risk of getting bypassed at school and later in life. "This isn't about helping the captains of the football team, they'll be fine," he says. "Our other big focus is on diversity, and we like to think about diversity as a set of skills as well as being who you are and what you are."
Notice the pronouns in his speech: "our," "we" and "you." Back to this issue
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