What's Next for Women in Media: A Conversation with Geraldine Laybourne, Co-Founder of Katapult Studios and Oxygen Media

Geraldine Laybourne is currently chairman and co-founder of Katapult Studio,a technology start-up company for the creative generation. Gerry is a serial media entrepreneur. She founded Oxygen Media, a 24-hour cable television network for young women, where she served as chairman and CEO until she sold it to NBC Universal in 2007. Gerry was a cable programming pioneer in the 80s and 90s: she led the team that created Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite. She also served as president of Disney/ABC Cable Networks (From 1996-1998) where she ran cable programming for the Walt Disney Company and its ABC subsidiary. Gerry has been singled out for her many contributions to the industry. She was ranked No. 1 among the 50 most influential women in the entertainment industry by the Hollywood Reporter in 1996 and named one of the 25 more influential people in America by Time Magazine that same year. She serves on the board of directors of Symantec Corporation, 9 story and Betaworks. She is on the board of trustees of Vassar College and on the board of Vital Voices.

Kate Zernike is a political reporter for The New York Times. She came to the paper from The Boston Globe in 2000. She was a member of the team that shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for a series of stories about Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At The Times, she has covered education, criminal justice, healthcare, and Congress, and been a writer for the Styles section. She is the author of “Boiling Mad: Behind the Lines in Tea Party America”, published in September 2010. Ms. Zernike began her career at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts. She received a degree in History and English from the University of Toronto and received a masters degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, where she has taught as an adjunct professor. She is a visiting associate at the Eagleton Institute for Politics at Rutgers University.