黛布拉·布鲁诺
2017年3月20日
With members in all 50 states 和 more than 80 countries, the D.C. 酒吧 is beginning a regular feature to profile the people who make up our community. Read about your peers, their lives, 和 their work around the world.
Never let it be said that 香农纳什 passes up an opportunity to do something a little different.
靠谱的滚球平台, 税务专家, 注册会计师, 和企业家，她的职业生涯始于D.C. law firms—has taken her peripatetic life 和 fashioned it into a series of jobs 和 other ventures.
She was involved in producing a Cannes Film Festival-winning documentary on autism.
Several years ago, she opened an actors’ lounge in Atlanta.
早些时候, 她住在瑞士, where her in-house job with Amgen required her to travel to France, 西班牙, 和意大利.
Today, Nash, 46, is vice president of finance for Cumulus Media, based in San Francisco.
She credits her background for providing her with a foundation for everything that came after. She worked as a venture fund 和 tax lawyer for Cooley LLP (formerly Cooley Godward) 和 as a tax 和 corporate attorney for K&L Gates LLP(原Kirkpatrick) & 洛克哈特).
“Those early years at law firms were invaluable because of the training they provide. 它们教会你思考和交流，”纳什说.
当她丈夫, 比尔, 前海军中尉, l和ed an interview at biopharmaceutical giant Amgen in Los Angeles, 她尾随而去. 在她丈夫的采访中, he called her 和 asked her to take a cab over to the company’s 办公室.
“我以为他们是在试图说服配偶,她回忆道。, 因为这份工作需要搬到公司的卢塞恩, 瑞士, 办公室. 但当她到了安进公司的办公室, she found herself sitting down with the head of the tax department, 和, 最终, 和她丈夫一起被雇佣的. “这太疯狂了——我完全被伏击了，”她说.
纳什在瑞士安进公司工作了两年. “At this point, my mind is being completely exp和ed,她说。. “I was meeting so many people of so many different backgrounds.不仅如此, but her in-house counsel job required her to travel to other countries where Amgen had operations.
Her years in 瑞士 made her realize something about herself. “当我回到美国的时候.S. 2005年，我意识到我是一个完全不同的人. 我不再是一个在靠谱的滚球平台事务所工作的人. I had all these amazing experiences 和 they were not traditional lawyer experiences.”
After 瑞士, Nash 和 her husb和 l和ed in Los Angeles. 大约在那个时候, 他们18个月大的儿子杰森被诊断出患有自闭症, 在很多方面，哪一个是“具有挑战性的”, 她说. She got involved with the group known today as Autism Speaks. (More recently, she has been less involved in autism issues, Nash says. Her son, now almost 19, is in a post-high school transition program.)
Dealing with her son’s disability was also how Nash got into the entertainment world, 她说. The hours are more flexible—people in the entertainment industry tend to wake up late 和 work late, which meant that she could spend the early hours of the day taking her son to therapy. She went to work for the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, doing finance 和 human resources work.
Through Allen, an actress, dancer, 和 director, Nash made several connections. “我被介绍给每个人. 像,每个人都.” Nash also says that Allen taught her confidence 和 gave her credibility in the entertainment industry.
她丈夫的下一个职位是在亚特兰大, 纳什意识到这个城市, 哪个在娱乐界还处于起步阶段, 即将成为电影制作中心吗, so she worked in finance for several production companies there. In that process, she joined Sunseeker Media 和 helped produce 给我的心灵增添色彩, a documentary about autism with a focus on parents of color—including Nash—which won “best short documentary” at the 2013 American Pavilion at Cannes. The company then started a nonprofit based on the film 和 sold the rights to the documentary to BET/Centric.
Nash also got involved in an entrepreneurial venture, an actors’ lounge called the Green Room. “这太有趣了,她说。, “但在一天结束的时候, 经营这样的生意需要你24小时都在那里,客厅关上了. 供将来参考, 她指出, she would pick a location that might be less central but that offered better parking.
这家人最终搬到了旧金山, 他们现在的基地在哪里, 纳什在那里增加了她的广播技能. Cumulus Media owns 454 stations in 90 markets around the country. At Cumulus’s San Francisco branch, Nash also runs the human resources department. Being a lawyer has been helpful for employment law issues, 她指出.
One current challenge is that Cumulus Media is on the verge of bankruptcy, with a federal judge last month rejecting its most recent refinancing plan that would reduce its $2.40亿的债务负担. 纳什说:“这个行业肯定在不断变化. 她补充说，其他广播巨头的债务甚至更大.
与此同时，纳什正在展望未来. Her ultimate goal, 她说, is to get on the board of a for-profit corporation. In San Francisco, she joined Hipower, a group to empower women toward success. “It’s the different things you need to do to chart your course,她说。. It’s made her realize that doing in-house work 和 financial advising for a range of companies has helped her more than being a traditional lawyer.
“If your end goal is that you want to be in the C-suite somewhere, 你需要在你的履历上有这些经历,她总结道。.
