In Black America; Lincoln Center, with Valerie Mitchell-Johnson

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. I think they tend to be pretty detailed, the thing about media is that a lot of times it moves very quickly, most times it moves very quickly, it's certainly the case at Lincoln Center. So a lot of times the program is going to be on the air in, you know, a month, and you got to get all of these contracts done. Sometimes people agree to a deal term and then they go back later and do like a longer form contract. I don't, you know, my boss would probably not appreciate, she's very buttoned down so I'm sure she'd expect the long contract to be done. But I think that sometimes people will do business on these terms sheets depending on how, you know, well they know the partner and if it's someone they worked with before and they

trust them. Valerie Mitchell-Johnston, Deputy General Counsel, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Prior to joining Lincoln Center, Johnston was previously vice president of Legal and Business Affairs for Hit Entertainment, a children's entertainment production company owned by Mattel. He comes to Lincoln Center with over 20 years of industry and law firm experience and development, production and distribution of content across various media and domestic and global markets. Enter a new position shifts responsible for assisting the General Counsel in managing all legal aspects of the nonprofit organization, programmatic, educational fundraising and administrative activities, particularly strategic initiatives and digital media. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts serves three primary roles, present of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations and managed to have Lincoln Center campus. A present of more than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours and educational activities annually.

I'm Johnny Ohenson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Valerie Mitchell-Johnston, Deputy General Counsel, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in Black America. I thought that the law would be a good career choice for me because it seemed like a kind of a scholarly pursuit of something, even though it's a professional degree. And you know, it turned out to be the case that it was a good move for me. It's a good career for people who enjoy reading and research and making arguments and solving problems. Sometimes I kind of get burned out on arguing as my husband about that, but I definitely like solving problems. And I think for people who like to do that, especially being a transactional lawyer is a good career move. In 1993, Valerie Mitchell-Johnston earned her law degree from Harvard Law School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of Illinois. Throughout her career, she had established herself as the accomplished media attorney within

the field of entertainment law. She holds a certification and film production from New York University. Recently, she was appointed Deputy General Counsel, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She comes to the Lincoln Center with over 20 years of industry and law firm experience in development, production, and distribution of content across various media and domestic and global markets. In her new position, she is responsible for assisting the General Counsel in managing all legal and aspects of the nonprofit organization, programmatic, educational, fundraising, and administrative activities, particularly in strategic initiatives and digital media. Johnson spent six years at hit entertainment. Her work there include halting production and distribution across the U.S., Latin American and internationally. Prior to hit, she worked at Sesame Workshop as Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs, where she oversaw business affairs of global television syndication, home video, publishing digital and theme entertainment businesses. Recently, in Black America, spoke with Valerie Mitchell-Johnston.

I was born and raised in Chicago, the most wonderful city in the world, other than New York. New York is a pretty close second. And what was it like growing up in Shatown? You know, I grew up during a time where everybody kind of knew each other in the neighborhood. We had block parties, everyone was involved in the church and the community, so I thought it was a really great childhood, and I certainly appreciated my upbringing. What were some of your better studies while you were in school? Oh, well, actually, I did pretty well in school, up until, pretty much in every subject, up until senior year of high school, I had a calculus class that nearly killed me. And from that point forward, I've just developed this complete aversion to anything having to do with numbers. I have two kids. I have a 10-year-old and a six-year-old, and my 10-year-old has these math problems that I swear to you, I cannot do. She'll come to me and ask me for help, and I just go, well, you're going to have to talk

to your dad. But I think that that experience in 12th grade kind of scarred me for math. I really, really enjoyed anything to do with reading and literature. I loved all things related to the theater and history. So Lincoln Center is actually the perfect place for me to work because I am a frustrated actress, and now I get to be around artists all the time, and it's pretty cool. How did you have in select at the University of Illinois at Urbana? Yes, Urbana. Well, you know what? I would say that the University of Illinois kind of selected me because both my parents went there, and growing up, we used to go back every year for these alumni football games. All of my siblings went there, so it was kind of our family school, really. I don't think I had much of a choice. I'm not sure that my parents would have paid my tuition had I gone someplace else. It was good to know that African-Americans do have legacy admissions. Yes.

That's right. So what sparked that interest in the law since you graduated with a English degree? Yes, I did. You know, to be honest, like I said, I enjoyed reading, I enjoyed history. I thought that the law would be a good career choice for me because it seemed like a kind of a scholarly pursuit of something, even though it's a professional degree. And you know, it turned out to be the case that it was a good move for me. It's a good career for people who enjoy reading and research and making arguments and solving problems. Sometimes I kind of get burned out on arguing, ask my husband about that, but I definitely like solving problems. And I think for people who like to do that, especially being a transactional lawyer is a good career move. Any attorneys in the family or were you around attorneys while you were growing up? No. In fact, I think I might be the only attorney in my family, which sometimes leads people

to ask me for legal advice about subject matters, but I don't know anything about, you know, they'll ask me about something to do with taxes or real estate or, you know, and I kind of just wing it. So what led you to, I guess you said you were frustrating actress to entertain me, Loss? I guess that was the caveat. Yeah, I think, you know, I wanted to work in an industry that I was familiar with and passionate about and interested in. So I knew that even when I was in law school, I knew that I wanted to be an entertainment lawyer. Now, when I went to school, it was quite a while ago, although I graduated when I was five, so, you know, I'm so only, you know, 30, but when I graduated, when I was in school, there weren't really a lot of offerings for people who are interested in entertainment law. And, you know, I studied copyright and I took a sports law class and I tried to work

for law firms that had entertainment practices just so I could be exposed to it. When you were in law school, how valuable was those internships? Oh, I think they're really invaluable. I mean, you know, the great thing about going to a school like Harvard is that people automatically just recruit from there. So you would have these companies come to campus to interview students. And I think, you know, that's just, that's a real blessing for, for people who may not have contacts at different places, who may not know people. Like I said, I was the only lawyer in my family. We didn't really know a lot of attorneys, so I wouldn't have necessarily had an entree into some of these firms had Harvard not had these connections. So that was, it was very helpful. Tell us about that first real job. Woo, that first job out of law school was quite a rude awakening. You know, gone was the sort of scholarly pursuit of sitting in a classroom and arguing about

a point. And, you know, when you're working for real, you have to get to find the answer, find it quickly and, you know, deliver it. Law firms aren't necessarily breeding ground for the best people managers. I will say, so you would hear a lot of screaming and kind of yelling at the younger associates. And, you know, I always tell my girls, well, actually my husband says this too, that I think it's really important for young girls to play sports. Because if you're on a team, you can sort of, you don't personalize it when someone's yelling at you. It's all about, you know, the team and getting the work done. But for me, who is about as athletic as a, I don't know, a wet string bean, I kind of didn't understand that at first. So it took me a while to kind of get used to the idea about things being on a deadline and not to take things personally if someone was yelling like something had to get done.

It wasn't about me. It was about, you know, getting the work done. Was there anyone at the firm that took you under their wing? There were people that were kind of close to my age, like middle-level associates who were very kind to me and gave me quite a bit of advice about how to approach things and how to prioritize my work and how to deal with partners. I think one big mistake I made at my first firm is that I didn't kind of seek out partners. Because I hadn't, I think if I had been a summer associate in New York, I would have had a better opportunity to meet partners, but I spent both my summers in Chicago and then I moved to New York after law school. So I didn't really know the partners before I started working. And I think it is very, very important for a young person to kind of get together with someone more senior who knows the ropes, who can really show them what's going on and explain to them what's important, you know, in a given contract or if they're doing

like them. You know, we have, I don't know if you're familiar with the term due diligence, but that's one of the big things that young associates have to do, which is essentially looking at hundreds of documents and gleaning from those documents, what's important for maybe someone who's interested in buying a company. So for me, I didn't even really know what to look for in the documents. Here I am just reading hundreds of documents and not knowing what I was doing. And I think had I had a partner take me under my wing, that would have been really helpful. So I urge people, young people to do that. When I went to my second firm, I was, I was a lot better about that and I did have some great mentors in that firm amongst the associate and the partner level. If you're just joining us, I'm John E. L. Hansen, Jr. and we speak with Valerie Mitchell Johnson, Deputy General Counsel for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Ms. Johnson, when did you start working for Sesame Workshop? Was that one of the third time on the wrong?

That was actually, you know what, it was, it was my fourth, I worked with two law firms and then I spent a pretty brief time at a publishing company. But the same time that I interviewed at the publishing company, I interviewed at Sesame, but at the time they didn't offer me a position. I don't know if they, it just took them a long time to fill it or they gave it to someone else, but they ended up calling me less than a year later. And I really struggled with the idea of leaving the publishing company because, you know, the General Counsel was a really stand up guy and so sweet. But I really felt like Sesame was my dream job. So I took the leap and I went to Sesame and I was there for quite a long time. And you also worked at Hit Entertainment? Yes, that is another children's media company. It produces programs like Barney and Thomas and Friends and other sort of preschool oriented properties. Obviously, you and the business part of show business, tell us a little background

about how that all takes place because we're going to get to your new position at the Lincoln Center. But obviously, before the show goes on, contracts needs to be written. Absolutely, so yeah, everything, soup to nuts that you need to get a production up and running was what the lawyers in production companies would do. So if someone has an idea for a new property or program, you would have to secure the rights to that idea from that person so you do an agreement with them, like a development agreement. And then you might do a production agreement with a production company to make a show or a writer to write the script for the show or songwriters to write music actors to perform. And then once you have the show produced, sometimes you have to partner with different entities to help pay for the show or you might sell it to a television station or a home entertainment distributor or more and more now, a digital distributor.

All of those deals are deals that lawyers who work for production companies would handle. How detailed are these agreements? I think they tend to be pretty detailed. The thing about media is that a lot of times it moves very quickly, well, most times it moves very quickly. It's certainly the case at Lincoln Center. So a lot of times the program is going to be on the air in, you know, a month. And you got to get all of these contracts done. Sometimes people agree to deal terms and then they go back later and do like a longer form contract. I don't, you know, my boss would probably not appreciate, she's very buttoned down. So I'm sure she'd expect a long contract to be done. But I think that sometimes people will do business on these term sheets, depending on how, you know, well, they know the partner and if it's someone they worked with before and they trust them. And then they will follow up in paper with the longer form agreement, which is very detailed.

Obviously, and we still would hit entertainment. The production part, obviously, that is the actual program in itself, but then you have to deal with distribution. And I would assume that has to take in royalty rights, residuals, reruns, et cetera, et cetera. Absolutely. So, you know, I mentioned getting the rights from someone, the creator, who came up with an idea. Also, the performers, the songwriters, musicians, depending on what kind of program it is. If it's governed by like a union agreement, you know, you might have the sag atra, the screen actors guild, or the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors. So, all of those people get sort of ongoing participation in whatever profits, whatever money you make from further distributing that product. You're absolutely right. So, all of that has to kind of be taken into account when you're putting something together,

what the costs are not only to produce it, but what your profits might look like once you distribute it. Certainly, that's the case for a company like HIT, which, you know, a for-profit company. That's important. With this being an African-American focus program, are there a number of individuals such as yourself doing this kind of work? Oh, absolutely. In fact, when I was first getting trying to break into the entertainment industry, you know, I was involved with Beesla, which is the Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyers Association. I'd go to their conferences every year. And there's an organization called NAMIC. And when I was involved, the acronyms did for a national association for minorities and communications. But I think that the acronym, rather, has evolved to cover more digital, but I'm not exactly sure what it stands for now. But still, there are organizations like that with many, many people involved in media.

And you know, there are people who are working at big law firms and have their own practice. You know, I was at Paul Weiss. That was the first firm I worked at out of school. And unfortunately, I wasn't there when Ted Wells, with the partner there now, was there. But obviously, he's a very well-known person who, I think, kind of had his hand in fortune entertainment, but now has obviously evolved way beyond that. Were you at the Lincoln Center prior to your current appointment? No, I wasn't. Sesame workshops offices are in Lincoln Plaza, which sometimes people kind of confuse the Lincoln Plaza Geographic area with Lincoln Center. But Lincoln Center is actually the name of the company that I work for now. So I used to work in this neighborhood. I'm back in the neighborhood, but this is the first time I've been fortunate enough to work for Lincoln Center. So you get to take the same train now?

Yes, it's the same train. It's a nice commute. So what was it about Lincoln Center that sparked your interest? You know, I, as I said, I'm a frustrated actress. And I, when I was a little girl, I remember a couple of things in my life. They really crystallized my interest in the performing arts. I remember as a youngster, I took ballet classes and I wasn't very good. You know, I was pigeon-toed and knock-need, but I was really dramatic. And so, you know, the teachers would always cast me in these big parts, even though I really couldn't dance. But I just loved performing. And I remember going to see God spell when I was a little girl and just being so moved by the music and the story. And, you know, my parents used to take us to plays at the Goodman, which is a popular theater affiliated with the Art Institute in Chicago. We saw some wonderful productions. We saw James Earl Jones and Fences and I remember seeing Larry Fishburn in, I think it was two trains running. Just wonderful productions. It really, really sparked my interest in the performing arts.

And then I remember as a youngster seeing that movie Same, which of course was based on LaGuardia High School, which is right in this Lincoln Square area campus. So, all of those things made me very interested in the performing arts. And I just, when this position became available, I thought, okay, I'm really, even though I was pretty happy in my current job, I thought this job was tailor-made for me. I really, I need to go for it. And fortunately enough, I was able to make a case for myself and get hired and hopefully nobody is any the wiser. And I do well and everybody's happy about it. And looking at what the center has to offer, three primary roles, it offers 15 series. There's never a dull day, is it? No, not at all. There's always something going on. There are all kinds of wonderful programs, both on a campus, you know, programs you've read about,

like the White Light Festival and Lincoln Center out of doors and Mid-Summer Night Swing. But you may not know that one of the big pushes that Lincoln Center is moving to now is trying to connect with people outside of the campus. So, we've developed these wonderful programs, like Burrow Link, where, you know, we'll send dancers out to schools to teach children about ballet and different movement, Poet Link, where we mentor sometimes at-risk youth and get them involved in poetry and setting up a sort of a community of poets for them. Family Link, where we offer people who wouldn't otherwise have a chance to go to a Broadway-type theater production because the tickets are just really expensive. We might offer those tickets at, you know, very steeply discounted price and they're wonderful house seats. So, Lincoln Center is really, really having a big push right now to reach out into the community and bring the- of course, we would love for people to come to our campus.

And if you've ever seen it, it's gorgeous and it's been newly renovated. But now we're also reaching out into the world with all these wonderful programs. So, you're right, there's never a dull day. There's always something going on. And being Deputy General Counsel, I would assume that the process starts with you as far as whenever they want to bring a particular performance or program to the center. Absolutely. Right. So, what we talked about, about, you know, creating the content itself, and Lincoln Center has just a vast array of program, a whole- a whole vault of programs and storage. And so, when you want to take those programs and use them in a different way than what they were originally recorded for, you have to make sure that you have the legal right to do that. So, you know, those are the questions that people will bring to us too. Like, well, hey, we have this great idea to take these programs to libraries and to use centers and to, you know, places where people wouldn't otherwise normally have access to this kind of programming.

How can we do it? So, we're really there to help them figure out how to do it and, you know, be in compliance with the law, obviously. How big is the team? You know what? You would think the team was big for all of the work we do, but it's actually, it's not really that big. Like, we have a general counsel who's, I have never met a more polished speaker in my life. She's incredible. And we have three other lawyers on our team, full-time lawyers. And then we have a wonderful assistant, fabulous paralegal, and we get legal fellows either from law school or recent graduates who come in and do kind of a fellowship training with us. And one thing that we are fortunate to have that I think is a big credit to our general counsel is she's sort of created an entire advisory board of outside counsel that she's dubbed the Council's Council. And they are really experts. They're mostly in law firms, and they're really experts in different fields. And they help us quite a bit, you know, tackling issues of first impression that we haven't dealt with before. So, they're quite helpful to us.

Obviously, you hadn't been at the Lincoln Center that long, but now as far as your career, has there any, has there been any difficult contract that you had negotiated? You know, there have been a few that the hard thing is in the, in the world of media, especially moving from traditional media to digital media, which everyone's kind of doing. You know, there's not really established rules about how to structure the relationships and what rules govern. So, that's kind of the hard thing. You're kind of just making things up and using what you know about traditional media and applying it to these new topics and, you know, we're creating it as we go sometimes. And that can be tricky, but it's also really exciting because you're kind of, you feel like you're sort of a pioneer in these areas. So, I think probably my trickiest thing to involve digital concepts or digital distribution where we have to come up with, well, how are we going to structure this?

How are we going to make sure we're, you know, conveying the rights that we want to grant and keeping the ones we don't want to give away? Those can be tricky. I also understand that you have been a long time board member of the National Black Programming Consortium. Yes, I've resigned though about a year, I think a little more than a year ago, but I was on the board for more than 10 years and that is another wonderful organization that reaches out into the community to bring arts to underserved communities. You know, their state admission is to fund films of and for the Black diaspora, but, you know, while I was there, they did incredible things like mentor kids who were interested in learning how to use digital media to create films. They did a wonderful special called 180 days and I think they've done another one this year where they followed kids at a last chance high school in DC and they showed them throughout the course of the year. Wonderful programs like that that wouldn't necessarily get funded for broadcast had it not been for companies like NBPC.

I'd like to ask this question from professionals, how different was it from the laboratory to real world work? Well, you know, as I said, I went to school a while ago and I found that most of what I studied was not really translatable into my actual day-to-day work. The one thing that was helpful, I think, was just kind of creating a work ethic. You're in school, you take it seriously, you have a lot to learn, a lot to study, and certainly as a professional, all of those things come into play, you know, you have to take it seriously, you have to be professional, you have to be thoughtful and careful. And all of that kind of, you know, school was a good incubator for that kind of stuff. The other thing that I thought was really great about my school is that you met so many different people from all over the world doing really interesting things. And you know, those kinds of introductions are really invaluable because they really help you learn to be able to just communicate with all sorts of people.

Valerie Mitchell-Johnston, Deputy General Counsel, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions as to your future in Black America programs, email us at jhansenatkut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook and to follow us on Twitter. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez, I'm Johnny O'Hanston Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs. KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712.

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