Entrepreneurship is innate, not a learned skill, Black Entertainment Television Chairman and CEO Debra Lee '76 told students at the Brown Entrepreneurship Program's 10th Annual Forum Saturday afternoon.
Lee encouraged a standing room-only crowd in Leung Gallery to "take risks, learn from them, grow with them and reinvent yourself if necessary."
"I fundamentally believe that you either are or are not an entrepreneur. I really don't think you can aspire to be an entrepreneur," she said - though she said it may be possible to "learn to do it better along the way."
Drawing largely from events in her own life, Lee discussed how ambition and open-mindedness propelled her from her racially segregated hometown of Greensboro, N.C. - where she grew up in the 1960s - to Brown and Harvard Law School, then on to a corporate law firm in Washington, D.C., and ultimately BET.
The former sixth-grade class president said she developed "a firm sense of self" growing up in a segregated but "proud" middle-class black community.
"We were so proud of our segregated high school that when integration looked like it was inevitable, we held 'Save the Black School' rallies," she said, adding later that she had led some of those rallies. "We didn't need others to tell us we were smart ... or articulate," she said.
Lee described her years at Brown as "some of the happiest moments of my life" and said she fostered her entrepreneurial spirit studying abroad in Southeast Asia her junior year.
After five years with the "white shoe" Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson, where Lee worked on the BET account, she left to join the cable network "no one thought would last" as its first full-time in-house lawyer. Given cable television's then-murky future, the career move was risky.
"You get to a point in life where you have to really make decisions for yourself and you have to figure out what you really want to do," she said. "I took a step back and said 'this is something that I want to do, even though I don't know whether it will be successful.' "
Twenty years later, as chairman and CEO of BET Networks, which she said reaches more than 100 million households through various media outlets, Lee said the company is at a crossroads again. As viewers rely increasingly on new technologies for entertainment, Lee said BET is pursuing fresh sources of revenue - for example, making the network's content available through iTunes and Verizon VCast.
As she steers the company's effort to reinvent itself, Lee said she is relying on her entrepreneurial spirit. Effective leaders, she said, must be "politically savvy to reach the top and entrepreneurial to stay there."
Responding to a student's question about BET's role in promoting negative stereotypes of black Americans, Lee said she and her colleagues "try to strike a balance" when determining each year's programming.
"It's important for us to entertain, but we want to educate at the same time," she said.
Students in the audience told The Herald they enjoyed hearing Lee's life story.
Renata Sago '10, who said she attended a predominantly black high school in Chicago, said she related to Lee's description of her early life. "What she said was inspirational," Sago said.
Gabriel Doss '10 said he was glad Lee shared information about her life experiences. "It was an interesting choice to focus on her personal story," he said. "I enjoyed it a great deal."
Robby Klaber '07, co-president of the Enterpeneurship Program, said he was "very pleased" with Lee's speech but did not agree with her assertion that entrepreneurship is an exclusively intrinsic trait.
"I don't think it's a gene that some people have and some people don't," he said. "Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, and a lot of the qualities that go along with it are developed over time."
Co-president Young Peck '07 said he appreciated Lee's honesty and thought her definition of entrepreneurship may be more specific than their organization's.
"I think entrepreneurs can be created. Entrepreneurship is a way of life. It's a mindset that involves being creative in whatever you do," he said.
In addition to Lee's opening address, the forum included a series of smaller panels and closing remarks from John Sculley '61, a former CEO of both Apple and PepsiCo.
Founded by Brown students in 1998, the Entrepreneurship Program is a student-run organization that seeks to connect students interested in entrepreneurship with successful alumni and business leaders.
