Master Class with a CEO: Ted Leonsis

Ted Leonsis

“Reinvention” — it’s a word that students are hearing a lot these days, especially as the jobs many of them were working towards have vanished with the economic downturn. We know a few people they might want to talk with about “reinvention.”

How about one fascinating entrepreneur who started off his career as an intern in a U.S. Senate campaign, took a left turn into computers, then zigzagged off into publishing, and founded an innovative marketing company which he went on to sell to a former video game company that had once been on the verge of bankruptcy, and had just changed its name to “America Online”? Throw in a near-fatal plane crash in the middle of all that — plus a stock market crash or two, and the near-meltdown of his sports franchise that had him practically begging fans to buy tickets — and you get an idea of what “reinventing” oneself a few times over the course of one’s career might mean.

Ted Leonsis with students in the Owner’s Suite

Thirty next generation students joined us in his private suite at the Verizon Center for a lesson in “reinvention” from a master of the subject when we sat down with marketing legend Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman Emeritus of AOL, owner of the NHL’s Washington Capitals, and one of Washingtonian Magazine’s 2009 “High-tech Titans.”  This latest opportunity to meet with consistently popular Master Class leader Ted Leonsis — was another installment in our series of conversations with economic and financial insiders on how this crisis is still affecting — and transforming — entire industries, regions and nations.

A Master Class with
Ted Leonsis
Verizon Center
Washington, DC

Master Class with Ted Leonsis inside the Verizon Center

Ted Leonsis

Ted Leonsis

Ted Leonsis is best known in the high-tech world for his fourteen-year career with AOL during its greatest periods of growth and financial success – which includes serving as Vice Chairman as well as President of several business units including the AOL Services Company; AOL Studios; AOL Web Services; AOL Core Service and the AOL Audience Business.

Mr. Leonsis came to AOL when America Online purchased his pioneering new media company, Redgate Communications, in 1993. The founder of six personal computer magazines, author of four books, and co-inventor of the board game Only in New York, Ted also worked on the introduction of the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh. Early on in his career, Ted got his feet wet in the computer industry as a marketing executive with Harris Corp. and Wang Laboratories.

Today, Ted is making high-tech waves once again as founder and chairman of SnagFilms, a social media website that lets viewers watch and share documentary films, and chairman of both Revolution Money, a Web 2.0 payment platform and credit-card service, and Clearspring Technologies, a fast-growing widget syndication and social media company – in addition to being chairman and majority owner of Lincoln Holdings LLC, which owners the NHL’s Washington Capitals hockey franchise, the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, Washington DC’s Verizon Center and the Baltimore-Washington Ticketmaster franchise.

Ted Leonsis grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and Lowell, MA, where he graduated from Lowell High School in 1973. Ted, who once served as mayor of Orchid, FL, got one of his first jobs out of school as an intern in the Senate campaign of another Greek American from Lowell – the late Paul Tsongas.

Among his many honors, including some from his alma mater, Georgetown University, Ted Leonsis has been named Washington’s Businessman of the Year, a Washingtonian of the Year, one of the twenty most influential people in sports, one of America’s most creative executives and a top ten entrepreneur of the year.

Ted Leonsis is a founding member of the Next Generation Initiative’s Advisory Board.