Stephen Friedman, Former President of MTV: How businesses can begin to embrace social impact

Leading Into The Unknown

During Stephen Friedman’s tenure at MTV, social impact drove many business decisions that ended up cementing the network as the cultural home for the millennial generation. In this episode, he explains the first step businesses should take to embrace social action, and how more listening and empathy can inspire breakthroughs for leaders at any level. Stephen, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning creator of social impact campaigns, is the Societal Impact Advisor at SYPartners. Previously, Stephen was the President of MTV for seven years, where he spearheaded the network's successful transformation, resulting in more top-rated series for young viewers than any other network (including Teen Mom, Catfish, and Jersey Shore.) During his 18 years at the network, he created MTV’s social impact department, launched mtvU and led MTV2, MTV.com and LOGO to record highs. Host: For the past twenty years, Tom Andrews has been helping Chief Executives lead their organizations through transformation, most recently as the President of SYPartners’ Organizational Transformation practice. He has recently founded a new organization, TJA Leadership, which integrates leadership development into organizational and cultural transformation. Tom has helped design leadership curricula for GE’s Management Development Institute at Crotonville and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and regularly speaks at Fortune 100 companies and other high-performance organizations. https://www.sypartners.com/leader/stephen-friedman/