Lauren Zalaznick has an impressive resume. She graduated from Brown University, as an English Major on a pre-medical track. She produced independent films such as Kids, Safe and Poison. In the 1990s, she was Senior Vice President for Original Programming and Development at VH1. Now, she is President of NBC Universal Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks. She oversees Style Network, Bravo, Oxygen, and online destinations such as Fandango and Swirl.
On Wednesday, February 9, she came to speak in Boston University’s School of Management. The crowd was a little over a hundred people. It was mostly woman and mostly communications majors, with a mixed group of graduate and undergraduate students.
Zalaznick spoke about her experience as a student, and her road to her current position.
“I was an English major, and I was premed,” she said. “I took, at the time, a semniotics course—which was film theory—and a class in film production.” It was then that Zalaznick realized that she had in interest in the film industry.
Zalaznick said she got lucky when she first graduated.
“I did not have any connections from Brown,” she said. “I sent one letter to one guy, and I got a response.” That was how she got the position of director’s assistant to Frank Perry on the 1985 film Compromising Positions.
After being a director’s assistant on a few more films, she met up with some friends from Brown and produced their film, Poison.
Years later, she got her job at VH1, helping to develop fan favourites such as Pop-Up Video, and many items in the channel’s Top 100 series. From there she went on to Bravo, which was at the time known mostly for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. With her help, the NBC-Universal-owned channel has transformed into a staple of reality television programming, with shows like Top Chef, Project Runway (until its move to Lifetime in 2009) and the Real Housewives series.
Her path has been a nontraditional one, but Zalaznick would not have it any other way. A degree in film, she said, “can give you a leg-up, and it does help, when you apply… but what I’m saying is that if you still don’t know what you want to do, that is okay.” She was met with a nervous laugh from the crowd of uncertain college students. “I will talk to all of your parents individually,” she said.
But that does not mean that she achieved all she did without effort. When asked if she had any advice for the communications students of today, her response was sound common sense. “Everything you do, you kind of… have to do,” she said honestly. “It doesn’t just happen because you want it.”
