Power Player Breakfast: Megan Cunningham, Founder and CEO of Magnet Media, April 23
How do you grow up to create a global content studio that helps some of the most exciting companies on planet Earth spread their stories and marketing messages? If there’s anyone who can answer that question, it’s Megan Cunningham.
In the latest of NYWIFT’s informal breakfasts featuring powerful women, Cunningham will discuss how she managed to rise from a NYWIFT intern (that’s right!) to where she is today: Founder and CEO of Magnet Media. She’ll share personal stories about how she’s tackled various challenges as well as insights into what she’s learned over the course of her career.
Magnet Media is a studio for brands, and its mission is to tell stories that matter. The company’s clients include: Google, Adobe, Chase, Airbnb, IBM Watson, CitiGroup, The TED Talks, Politico, YouTube, National Geographic Kids, PBS, Fandango and MIT Tech Press.
Cunningham was recently recognized with a Cynopsis Top Women in Digital award. She’s consulted on dozens of tech and entertainment projects and has spoken at SXSW, The Sundance Film Festival, The Wharton School of Business, The MacArthur Foundation, the CES technology trade show and the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention.
She is the author of The Art of the Documentary, featuring legendary filmmakers like Errol Morris, Ken Burns, Sheila Nevins, Al Maysles and Barbara Kopple. Cunningham was a mentor at MacArthur’s Bay Area Video Coalition, and she mentors two groups of women: female directors, through Chicken & Egg Pictures, and female startup founders, through Rent the Runway’s Project Entrepreneur.
There are other ways that Cunningham gives back, too. She’s served on NYWIFT’s board and that of another nonprofit, Global Giving. In addition, she is a founding partner of Marketers that Matter as well as the Forbes Agency Council. And she is a member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Cunningham’s education included a Punch Sulzberger Fellowship at the Columbia School of Journalism, and she is a graduate of Swarthmore College.
Produced by the Power Player Breakfast Committee
Janet Stilson, Barbara Alpert, Christina Brown Fisher, Nicole Franklin,
Carey Graeber, Julie Poll, and Susan Wagner
Special Thanks to Power Player Breakfast Sponsor
Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz