Facebook’s VP-Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson went to college thinking she would become a broadcast journalist. But a subsequent stint in consulting that led her to a job at Disney ignited her love of media and technology for good.
“That was the beginning of me seeing what it would be like to work for a consumer-focused company that has a fantastic brand [and] that is very-mission based,” says Everson in an interview with Beet.TV. “And really that alerted me to how much I actually liked [the] business.”
After Disney, Everson attended Harvard Business School, where she ultimately faced a setback. In her second year, she drew up a business plan for an online forum and shop for pet owners and wound up joining forces with the owner of the pets.com domain to raise $5 million to fund the company. However, she didn’t end up seeing eye to eye with the professional CEO who was brought in and was fired via fax. It was May, and she was due to graduate.
Everson was rattled by the incident, but she says it’s helped her recognize the importance of believing in yourself.
“I think about it often when I’m in a moment of feeling like I need to get my confidence back,” she says.
Reflecting on ways in which the industry will be transformed in the coming years, she says she expects to see more entrepreneurship coming out of the developing world as more and more people are coming online for the first time.
“They’re going to serve our society in ways that we probably can’t even imagine,” she says.
This segment is part of Beet.TV’s “Media Revolutionaries,” a 50-part series of interviews with key innovators and leaders in the media, technology and advertising industries, sponsored by Xaxis and AOL. Xaxis is a unit of WPP.
