Rosalyn Durant
Age: 39
Company: ESPN
Title: Vice president, college sports programming
Where born: Florence, S.C.
Education: University of South Carolina (B.A., journalism and mass communications)
Favorite way to unwind: Cycling.
Cause supported: T. Howard Foundation.
Most thrilling/adventurous thing I've ever done: Is still in my future.
Person in the industry I'd most like to meet: Jerry Jones.
If I could change jobs with anyone for a day, it would be: Jerry Jones. How cool would it be to own the team you’ve loved since birth.
2015 will be a good year if: It continues the way it’s started.
My fellow Forty Under 40 class members would be surprised to know that I: Seriously dislike chocolate.
JOE FARAONI / ESPN IMAGES
verywhere Rosalyn Durant looked as she sat in an AT&T Stadium suite at the College Football Playoff national championship game earlier this year, she saw the results of her labor. On the field, Ohio State and Oregon were competing in what became the most viewed telecast in cable television history. In one part of the suite, Walt Disney Co. Chairman and CEO Bob Iger sat with ESPN President John Skipper. In an adjacent suite, ABC’s late night host Jimmy Kimmel held court.
Durant was the ESPN executive most responsible for coordinating the plans to make sure the entire Disney company was participating in the event.
{podcast}
SBJ Podcast:
Forty Under 40 editor Mark Mensheha and Executive Editor Abraham Madkour discuss this year's class, some of the more interesting stories in it and how the selection process works.
“Roz’s leadership, relationships and interpersonal skills helped a lot of this come to fruition,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN’s senior vice president of programming acquisitions. “For the first time I can remember in my 20 years at ESPN, there was a meaningful engagement by the Disney Co. around an ESPN initiative.”
That engagement included having “Good Morning America” on site; producing CFP collector-edition comic books through Marvel; and creating a marketing plan with Disney’s theme parks.
Durant spent the months leading up to the College Football Playoff organizing numerous meetings and conference calls to make sure Disney was throwing its full support behind the event.
“I was proud of the way that ESPN showed up in year one,” said Durant, who’s worked her way up through the ESPN ranks since joining the company out of college in 1999. “The CFP had the bigness that we talked about. I felt incredibly proud to have some hand in the company’s plan and success.”
— John Ourand
