for women.
Setting term limits for board members was controversial, but Muhtar was willing to ruffle feathers to make progress on women’s equality. Muhtar shares this characteristic with other dads of daughters, who are more likely than other male business leaders to champion gender diversity in their companies. A study of forty male CEOs in Australia found that the strongest women’s advocates were more likely to have a daughter who had faced sex discrimination herself. “I could see the struggle that my daughter was going through,” said one outspoken CEO, “so there was an emotional resonance.”
While Muhtar’s mission to expand women in leadership began with a desire to see a better world for his daughter, he quickly recognized that women were an untapped resource that could make Coca-Cola even more successful. Having women in Coca-Cola’s leadership ranks kept the company more connected to its customers. Women control enough of the global spending to have an economic impact that is larger than the economies of the US, China, and India combined. So Muhtar also talked with his daughter often to make sure he didn’t lose touch.
When Selin was twenty-eight and deciding where to take her own business career, Muhtar gave her some advice. “Follow your heart,” he told her. “It’s all about being passionate about what you do.” Selin listened to her dad and became a successful jewelry designer in New York City. She sells her brand in boutiques in Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Tokyo, and she’s making a big splash in the fashion world. Her work has been highlighted in Vogue, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar magazines, and her jewelry has been spotted on Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Watson, and Angelina Jolie. But just like her dad, Selin stays committed to her values, like making sure that her jewelry uses responsibly-sourced materials to reduce environmental impact. Selin names pieces from her jewelry collections after powerful women who have left a mark on their communities.
Although Muhtar stepped down as Coca-Cola’s CEO in 2017, he’s still the chair of Coca-Cola’s board of directors and is working hard to see the company meet its gender diversity goals. He also serves on the board of directors for Catalyst, a nonprofit that advances women’s workplace equality. During the 2016 presidential election, Muhtar was mentioned as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton, so perhaps politics will be in his future as well.
Given all that he has learned from his daughter, Muhtar now proudly self-identifies as a feminist. “If you’re a male and you’re at the top,” says Muhtar, “you have to be a feminist.” When asked why, Muhtar gives two reasons. One is that gender diversity is good for economic and social progress. The other is that advancing women’s equality is simply the right thing to do for the sake of our daughters.
Empowering Wonder Women
Jason Kilar is the dad of three daughters, and he’s never hesitated to take what he calls “considered risks.” Jason has become a proponent of gender equality in the entertainment industry, where he’s an innovator in digital media and television distribution. “Life is an exercise in living with the certainty of uncertainty,” he recently told the graduating students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he applauded the characteristics of hutzpah and moxie. He urged them not to let fear of uncertainty hold them back from pursuing their dreams, which is advice he’s heeded well in his own career.
After graduating from college and earning his MBA at Harvard Business School, Jason took a risk with a little-known start-up in Seattle that was dabbling in the online distribution of books, music, and videos. Despite raised eyebrows from friends and family, Jason trusted his instincts and spent the next nine years rising to an executive position at what has become the world’s largest internet-based retailer and a household name in e-commerce: Amazon.
In 2007, Jason took an even bigger risk by becoming the co-founder and CEO of a video on demand service known as Hulu. Although Hulu was a joint venture with several industry giants, including The Walt Disney Company, 21st Century Fox, and Comcast, it was eagerly panned as a doomed endeavor in its early days. Tech industry leaders referred to Hulu as “ClownCo,” and they ran a digital counter on a website to track the number of days until its predicted demise. But Jason forged ahead with his own brand of thoughtful stubbornness, intent on reimagining how television is delivered. “We are crazy,” Jason readily admitted of his Hulu team. “All entrepreneurs need to be.”
While Jason was building Hulu—which became a highly successful venture despite its critics—he was also helping his wife Jamie raise four small children, including three daughters. Sadie is now a high-schooler, and Ivy and Ruby are middle-schoolers. Jason admits that having three daughters made him more aware of situations where girls or women aren’t getting equal opportunities. It’s as if having daughters made his “antennae much more sensitive,” and now he sees both the overt and the inadvertent barriers that create an uneven playing field—things that he didn’t pay much attention to before he had three girls. “It’s fascinating that it took in my case having daughters to become naturally aware of this,” he remarks, “and I think that our challenge is to figure out how we can have that sensitivity and awareness even if we don’t have daughters.”
Having daughters not only increased Jason’s focus on gender equality, but also affected how he approached his leadership role in the entertainment industry. He found himself seeing everyday situations at work through the lens of his daughters, who’ve become ever-present in his analysis of the world. He’d find himself in a business meeting where women’s views were under-valued, and he’d start thinking, “Things should work a little bit differently because of Ivy, or Ruby, or Sadie.”
Jason has become more willing to speak up when he sees gender bias, and he looks for opportunities to work with people who are committed to empowering women in his industry. Sometimes he still finds himself sitting in boardrooms of entertainment and media companies where women are largely absent from the table, but he remains optimistic. He is particularly hopeful about progress that’s being made on the industry’s creative side.
Jason can’t contain his enthusiasm when he talks about the 2017 blockbuster movie Wonder Woman as an example of women’s forward momentum. The film stars the indomitable Gal Gadot, and it was directed by Patty Jenkins, the first female director of a live-action superhero studio film. Wonder Woman is one of Jason’s favorite movies, both for its entertainment value and as a dad. “I’ve run into so many fathers who have daughters who just high-five each other when they talk about it,” says Jason. He says they all rave about one scene in particular, where Wonder Woman leads the charge across a battlefield, dodging bullets as the men huddle behind her in a bunker.
The movie is remarkable because Hollywood almost never allows female directors to tell a story through the lens of a strong female character. But Jason believes that Wonder Woman’s resonance—and more importantly, its commercial success—will change things. Wonder Woman is not only the top money-making film ever directed by a woman, but it’s also one of the top thirty highest-grossing films of all time in the US. “Make no mistake,” says Jason, “whether you’re a male or female studio head, you’re going to do what commercially is going to lead to the greatest return.” So Jason is thrilled that Patty Jenkins got a lucrative deal directing a sequel, and Hollywood is figuring out that it’s actually good business to invest in strong female characters.
Jason knows that the entertainment industry has a lot of leverage in our society. It’s not just one of our country’s biggest exports, but its product can inspire, shift conversations, provide role models, and shape kids’ minds. That’s one of the reasons Jason wants to see more women in the boardrooms of media and entertainment companies.
Jason left Hulu in 2013 to tackle new challenges. He has since served on the Board of Directors of DreamWorks Animation and co-founded a subscription video service called Vessel. In thinking back on his career choices, Jason has some advice for his three daughters. “I hope that they never accept the world at face value, and instead listen to their inner voices about the way the world should be,” says Jason. “That’s when real change happens.”
Change has been notoriously slow in the male-dominated gaming industry where Bill Hornbuckle has worked for nearly forty years. Bill is the President of MGM Resorts International, a hospitality company with hotels and casinos around the world.