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Walt Disneys new headquarters in New York is like a city contained within a single block. By the end of this summer, around 5,000 people will work from within the stately 1.2-million-square-foot skyscraper, and the company ambitiously designed it to create a sense of flexibility and appeal for every single one of them. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] Thats a tall order, because the entertainment corporations portfolio is more diverse than ever. Today Disneys work includes studio films and theme parks, but also broadcast news, radio, podcasts, streaming, digital media, and magazines. The media roster, largely based in New York, includes ABC News, ESPN, Hulu, and talk shows like The View, Live with Kelly and Mark, and the Tamron Hall Show. The brands were previously spread across multiple buildings in Manhattan and are now all relocating to the new building. So instead of referencing Disneys cinematic archives (which made sense when creating a workplace for Imagineers) the design firms behind the buildingSOM on architecture, Gensler on interiors, and SCAPE on the outdoor areaslooked to the core of its business in New York and designed a building that can move right alongside the fast-evolving nature of media. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] Compared to Burbank and Orlando, New York Disney culture is so driven by news and sports and information as opposed to entertainment, says Colin Koop, a partner at SOM. The feeling of this building is meant to bring a cohesive culture across many business segments. To that end, SOM and Gensler designed the building to be durable enough, aesthetically and functionally, to house all of its New York operations under one roof now and in the future. They created a space where everyone, no matter if they are an assistant on a radio show or a gaffer on a broadcast set or a developer on a streaming service, can do their best work. Disney has a history of flexing its ambition through architecture. The elegance of 7 Hudson Squarealso known as the Robert A. Iger buildingmight be surprising in comparison to the companys previous corporate image, which leaned heavily into fantasy. In the 1980s and 1990s, under the leadership of then-CEO Michael Eisner, it practically collected postmodernist buildings by the eras heavy hitters. Remember how Michael Graves used 19-foot-tall statues of the Seven Dwarfs as columns? Or Arata Isozakis homage to Mickeys ears? Disneys corporate strategy, which involved a web of interconnected platforms centered around its films, has diversified quite a bit since the early 1990s when those buildings were commissioned (and when the media landscape was much simpler than it is now). [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] LESS GLASS, MORE PERSONALITY For a long time, New Yorks 21st-century energy-efficient buildings have shared a similar look: those ubiquitous mirror-like glass facades, like the towers in Hudson Yards and the World Trade Center. However, on the outside, Disneys headquarterswhich is sheathed in viridian terra-cotta tiles and bird safe glassis a spiritual descendant of sophisticated, materially rich, and lustrous Art Deco designs like the peacock-green McGraw Hill building. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] Because of zoning and setback laws, the building actually looks like a collection of gridded towers. The 22-story structure has bronze-framed windows at street level and polished champagne brass awnings and decorative elements over its entrancesmaterials that resonate with the surrounding context without replicating it, says Colin Koop, a partner at SOM, one of the firms behind the building. There are restaurant and retail storefronts on the street level (which is rare for a corporate headquarters to have); offices, newsrooms, and a screening theater in the floors above; and three live-audience studios down below. When did the building open? While the street view of the building is impotant, its also impressive under the hood. Disneys HQ is one of the first large-scale projects to be completed since New York passed Local Law 97, a policy that requires buildings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The building is all electricthe most noticeable difference between a conventional structure is there is no cooking gas for the kitchens and restaurantsand received a LEED Platinum rating thanks to a suite of features like rooftop solar panels, windows outfitted with automated daylight sensors that adjust their tint (which helps reduce heat gain), and a direct outside air system and heat pumps for ventilation, which is more energy efficient than a standard HVAC setup. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] That cocktail of systems is becoming very widely adopted now, Koop says. (A bike room with showers also helps employees choose low-carbon transit to work.) While the building is bright and light inside, windows compose less than 50% of the facade, another move that helps reduce energy use. Every developer and broker will tell you that tenants only want a glass building, Koop says. I enjoy an all-glass view as much as the next person, but I do think that you can create that sense of openness in different ways. For example, the company decided to keep conference rooms and private offices toward the core of the building, and workstations and lounges near the windows, so light is more free-flowing and equitably distributed. That energy efficiency also helps if theres an extreme weather event that cuts off power to the building. It can run off the grid for days thanks to multiple generators on the roofa necessary feature because of the newsrooms in the building. There’s a tremendous amount of resiliency in this building, Koop says. It cannot go black ever. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] CAMERA READY FOR ANYTHING The broadcast and production needs, which are the most technically complex of all the teams that will use the building, determined a significant part of the structures engineering. In order to achieve the vast, column-free spaces necessary for the studios located in the basement, SOM suspended the core of the sublevels, which are located beneath the nearby Holland Tunnel and subway lines, from a truss on the second storey. This building is like an iceberg, Koop says. Because of the site, the broadcast architecture required extensive soundproofing and vibration insulation. A band could perform in each of the three 20,000-square-foot studios at the same time and the audience wouldnt be able to hear whats happening in the adjacent space. The studios’ sets themselves are essentially giant LED screens, which enables producers to change up the look and feel without a full build-out. One central control studio manages the setsa practical and resource-saving move. [Photo: Garrett Rowland/Disney] You can get production moving faster with more variety in any form you want, says Stephen Newbold, an architect at Gensler who specializes in design for the entertainment and media industries and spearheaded the broadcast architecture and interiors. This approach is a departure from a legacy where each show operated like little islands with its own studio and set of technology, Newbold adds. We can’t do that in today’s media world. Everything’s got to connect. Everything’s got to be agile. The design teams had to create an additional, separate entrance for the studios 600 daily talk show attendees as well. The audience entry point leads to waiting zones inside the building where people can queue up instead of crowding the sidewalkanother detail that helps the building remain respectful to the street life in Hudson Square, which is a growing tech district. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] SOM and Gensler also emphasized wide-open spaces on the newsroom floors, which, like the underground production studios, have a rather acrobatic structural support system. There, the radio station WABC and broadcast show ABC News will operate from a centralized area. That enables us to not only deliver in todays increasingly more complex news environment, but also equips us to evolve with future advancements in technology, new formats, and the continued transformation of our business, says Debra OConnell, the president of ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] Shape-shifting on demand Flexibility extends elsewhere in the building. The buildings 300-seat theater can be pitch-black for film screenings, or Disney can slide open shades to let daylight in during a long lecture or meeting. Similarly, the Great Halla communal town-square-like space on a centralized amenity floor that includes a private Starbucks, cafeteria, Disney store, and a librarycan be cleared out for events and parties. Its supposed to have 10 lives in every day, says Johnathan Sandler, a principal at Gensler. The same is true for the offices, meeting rooms, and phone rooms, which are all outfitted with tools for remote conferencing. With just a change of furniture, every conference room could be an office and every office could be a conference room as the business needs change. The design team has already tested this flexibility. The ratio of phone rooms jumped 20% because of the pandemic. The expectation now is that almost any meeting, even if it’s in person, is going to have some virtual participant joining, Sandler says, noting that as more teams move into the building, they continue to fine-tune the mix. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] As in many new offices today, part of the reason for a wide array of interior spaces is to also allow people on-site to have more choice in where they work. This wasnt the case in Disneys New York buildings before. Meanwhile, the amenities on offer werent consistent, particularly for people with production roles. It was very important to make sure that everyone, regardless of who you were or what you were doing in the building, had this really superlative experience, Sandler says. It doesn’t have to be just based on your function. A lot of it’s just based on your personality. The hope is really that people will treat this as a vertical campus. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney]
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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages ofInc.andFast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you cansign up to get it yourselfevery Monday morning. When Wendy Cai-Lee launched Piermont Bank in 2019, she says she didnt set out to build a board of directors ledand dominatedby women. I was so focused on finding the best board to help me, she says. Initially, her board consisted of seven directors, five of whom are women, including chairwoman Julia Gouw. In early February, Piermont added two more female directors, bringing its percentage of women occupying board seats to 78%. In comparison, women occupy about 30% of seats on Russell 3000 corporate boards, according to research from 50/50 Women on Boards. Steady as she goes Piermonts commitment to board diversitymany directors are also multiculturalcomes as many corporations and institutions are rethinking or scrapping initiatives aimed at increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in workplaces and leadership roles, including corporate boards, amid a changing legal landscape. The U.S. Supreme Courts 2023 ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions has had a chilling effect on workplace inclusion efforts. Late last year, a federal court struck down a Nasdaq rule that required listed firms to include at least one woman, person of color, or LGBTQ director on their boards, or explain the absence of a diverse director. Research suggests diversity can improve board effectiveness, and Cai-Lee says that her female directors have helped steer the company in positive ways. The board has supported a permanent hybrid schedule even as other financial institutions are demanding that employees return to the office full time. We understand people have family lives, they need to buy their bus or train tickets, they need to make childcare arrangements, Cai-Lee says. Because we have female representation, the board was supportive from day one to have that commitment [to hybrid schedules] regardless of what happens at other banks. The governance gauntlet To be sure, Cai-Lee is in a unique position to shape her board. Because Piermont is a new bank, Cai-Lee says she had a blank slate rather than inheriting legacy directors who might have fit an outmoded definition of board representation. Piermont, a digital-only bank with about $550 million in assets under management, is also a Minority Depository Institution (MDI), which means it is a federally insured institution where 51% or more of the voting stock is owned by minority individuals or which serves a minority community. And while the bank is privately held, it is also a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) bank and has to meet key governance standards. Last year, the FDIC issued a consent order instructing Piermont to review two years of transactions and strengthen its compliance and internal controls. In the last 18 months, we invested more resources in enhancing risk oversight programs and process improvements that align with regulatory needs, she says. We believe the fixes are behind us, and we are ready to serve our clients in a safe and sound way. So far, Cai-Lee says Piermont hasnt faced questions about its unabashed embrace of gender parity on its board. We have not received any pushback from clients or customers or investorsand these are my key stakeholdersand certainly not from employees because they joined Piermont mostly because of who we are, she says. Banking on women While Piermonts female board representation is impressive, it is worth noting that other banks have also achieved gender parity. Eight of Citigroups 14 directors are women, including CEO Jane Fraser, and half of Amalgamated Banks directors are women, including CEO Priscilla Sims Brown and board chair Lynne Fox. Elevating more women to board chair or lead director roleslike were seeing at Piermont and Amalgamated Bankmay be the next frontier in board diversification. Chairs and lead directors wield an incredible amount of influence. They create agendas, prioritize topics, and make sure all voices on the board are heard, says Alicia Syrett, who heads up Madam Chair, a group of more than 300 women who serve as chairs or lead directors at publicly traded companies. Encouraging more women to pursue these board leadership roles results in new perspectives on leadership, risk management, and team dynamics. Board members continuously share learnings of best practices across organizations, and increasing the numberof women in board leadership roles gives us even more options and knowledge on how we can make companies and boards more successful.” What’s your board ratio? Has your company achieved gender parity on your board of directors? What difference, if any, has it made to the effectiveness of your company or board? Please send your ideas and examples to stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Your responses may form the basis of a future newsletter. Read more: women in leadership Women who play sports are more likely to be business leaders The surge in women CEOs is no coincidence Women make up 43% of Britains top board rooms Meet Maggie Lena Walker, the first Black woman to charter a bank in the U.S.
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YouTube celebrated its 20th birthday last month. Currently, users watch more than a billion hours of content on the Google-owned video platform every day. And increasingly, that content is streamed on TVs rather than smartphones. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan recently announced that YouTubes TV viewership surpassed smartphone viewership in the United States for the first time. To understand why, we turned to Kurt Wilms, a senior director of product management who oversees the companys living room strategy. In a recent interview on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies podcast, he talked about how content creators can optimize for the big screen and why so many people watch the same videos on their TV and on their phonessimultaneously. YouTube viewers now watch more hours of video on TV screens rather than their phones. What prompted that shift? When YouTube started 20 years ago, everyone said that it was going to take over TV. Then, after it launched, smartphones got really big and YouTube kind of became synonymous with mobile phone [viewing]. We’re seeing that shift back to TV now. TVs are getting more technically capable, they’re getting cheaper, and more people are cutting the cord. And YouTube, with our vast array of content creators, makes every type of content you’d want to watch. You lead the team responsible for the living room effort. What does that mean? Living room is this word we use internally at YouTube: It means the version of YouTube that you would watch on a smart tv. We design and develop the entire experience from when you first land on the homepage and you get video recommendations to searching to the player. We developed the whole experience. How do you adapt mobile-first content for a bigger screen? One of the beautiful things about YouTube for a creator is that you film and then, once you upload it to YouTube, we handle the rest for you. That being said though, some of the things we’ve been seeing are creators investing in higher technical quality of video. The portion of [videos] uploaded to YouTube in 4K is up 35% year over year. I think that’s creators noticing that their viewership is shifting to TV. The other thing I’ve heard from a lot of creators is that half a decade ago, when they were making their video and they were doing their edits, they would think, Someone’s going to watch this on a phone, so it can’t be longer than 10 minutes. Now they dont have to worry about that anymore. Viewers love watching longer content on the TV. I read that people often play the same content on their screen and their phone simultaneously. Why is that? There’s third-party studies that basically say 80 to 90% of viewers are on their phone while theyre watching TV. YouTube’s a little unique in the TV space. Our service is interactive. You’re interacting with the creators, youre interacting with other viewers. We have features like the YouTube comments section. One of the things that we found is that it’s quite difficult to use some of these features with a remote control. Imagine typing out a comment with your remote, for example. We invest a lot in features where you can open YouTube on your phone and it connects automatically with the content you’re watching on TV, and you can do things like share the video to your friends and read the comments at the same time. Does that change the way people consume content? Are viewers more engaged? Viewers give us two themes. One is: I want to just lean back and watch their content and chill out. The other thing we hear is that because YouTube is so interactive, we call it lean in, where people want to read the comments, like the video, and subscribe to creators or channels. So we try to make it super seamless. What is the Watch With feature youre piloting? There’s this huge ecosystem of YouTube creators who basically make videos talking about live events while [theyre] happening. We’ve done studies where we talk to viewersand 50% of them would rather listen to a creator talk about a live event than watch the event itself. Watch With is a feature that is going to be rolling out more broadly over the course of this year. [It makes it] so you don’t have to pull up a YouTube video on one screen with a creator and then pull up the actual video on the side or on another device. Watch With will be an experience where you can see the event and also have the commentary from your favorite creator side by side. How did you select the creators to partner with on this? There’s so many creators who make a certain content format on YouTube, but they have a side passion they want to explore. Michelle Khare, who makes challenge content on YouTube. It turns out she’s an avid road biker and now she does Tour de France commentary. I think it’s a win-win for both the creators and the content owners because it’ll bring a lot of new viewers to this content, and maybe they’re not interested in watching [the Tour de France, for example], but they’re so tied to a creator that they’ll tune in just to see what the creator’s going to say about it. Are creators prioritizing long-form content as more viewers tune in on their TV? In general, every type of content is watched on the TV. The stuff that does really well on traditional TV also does really well on YouTube on TV, like Sports. I believe the watch time on TV for sports content has grown 30% year over year. Viewers are [also] watching over 400 million hours of podcast monthly on TV. There’s a huge transition in the podcast world happening, moving from audio-only to video. Even on TV, we have our Shorts product. You might think it’s a mobile-first format. We built a Shorts experience on the TV, and we had in mind that it would do okay. But when we turned it on, the usage skyrocketed. So we started talking to the viewers who were watching Shorts on TV, and these same concepts came up. If you want to watch short-form videos with friends and family, do you crowd around a smartphone? No. You put it on your TV, you sit on your couch, and you watch it together. How do you think about incorporating ads into the TV experience? We try really hard to make it as seamless as we can. One of the things we realized is when you’re watching longer-form content, when you’re watching a 20-minute video, you don’t want to get hit all the time with interruptions. That’s annoying. So we try to do what traditional television does, which is to, as much as possible, pod the ads together so you’re interrupted less frequentlyand when you are, it’s [for] a little bit longer. That change on TV resulted in more viewership as well as more revenue. We’re also trying to do TV-first ad formats where we don’t need to interrupt you all the time. An example would be direct-response ads, where we can put an adsomewhere, and if you’re interested in it, you can scan a QR code. We launched an ad format recently called pause ads, [so after] you pause the video, when you come back, [there’s an ad for you to watch], and if you’re into it, you can scan the QR code. Who are your favorite content creators? I love watching chess. There’s this guy in New York, Gotham Chess, who does a lot of commentary. l watch a lot of soccer; I follow this team, AC Milan, and it has this U.S. player, Christian Pulisic. There’s this creator named Kush who does a lot of commentary after the games.
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