When she doesn’t know something she sets about getting to know it, which is important in a world in which technology changes so much.

— Josh Sapan, former CEO, AMC Networks

By Stuart Miller

Kristin Dolan always loved to read — and that’s how she ended up as CEO of AMC Networks. An English major in college, Dolan wanted to go into publishing. She later earned her master’s in publishing at Pace University and then took a job at Random House. And that’s when she realized the print world wasn’t for her. “It was an old-school culture,” Dolan said, one which made her look back fondly at an internship she’d previously had at, of all places, AMC.

She snagged a job in affiliate sales and marketing and spent much of the 1990s there. “I spent my 20s traveling all over the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic states and everybody in the industry was young at that point,” she recalled. “I got to meet a lot of up-and-coming people in this cool industry. It was a fun time.” It was also a learning experience. “It gave me so much exposure to the operating side of the business,” she said.

Her career saw a steady rise in the Cablevision Systems family, which included creating a department called Field Communications, an internal team responsible for communicating everything the company was doing all the way up and down the line. (She also literally became part of the family in 2002, while she was vice president of digital product management, when she married CEO James Dolan.)
 

“I met with our new interns yesterday and they always ask, what’s the most important thing in my job, and it’s absolutely communication. “You need to make sure people understand your goals and strategies and tactics and why those decisions are being made.”
–– Kristin Dolan

A Great Communicator
“I met with our new interns yesterday and they always ask, what’s the most important thing in my job, and it’s absolutely communication. “You need to make sure people understand your goals and strategies and tactics and why those decisions are being made.”

As a former AMC intern herself, she also emphasizes there’s no way to know where your career will end up. In 2016, as Cablevision’s chief operating officer, she was part of the leadership team that reaped a $17.7 billion sale of the company to Altice USA. She then founded a new company, partnering with Charter Communications to form what became 605, an advertising measurement and analytics firm that was sold to iSpot.tv in 2023.

“We had already been selling advertising in a different way at Cablevision, doing impression-based and segmented media sales as opposed to just throwing it at the wall and see what sticks,” she recalled. “I really liked getting to create a culture there from the inception,” she said, noting the company mixed old-guard cable executives with young tech start-up analysts. “We spent a lot of time and energy on what we wanted the company to be and how we wanted people to be treated.”

That experience proved crucial in 2023 when she became CEO of AMC Networks, which includes cable outlets AMC, BBC America, IFC, Sundance Channel and WE tv, as well as streamers such as AMC+, ALLBLK, Acorn TV and Shudder. “It’s still about communication and culture,” she said, especially coming in after layoffs and in a period of transition. “We’ve had all-hands meetings and monthly coffee chats and visited every office to communicate our strategy.” She’s added midyear reviews and employee surveys. “We want to get everyone on board. Now we're all rowing in the same direction.” Dolan is the right leader for this moment as someone who remains calm in troubled waters, according to a predecessor as AMC Networks CEO (and in the B+C Hall of Fame), Josh Sapan. “She can build a team and delegate with great comfort while describing her vision well to thousands of people,” he said. Dolan is “super-smart, capable and wildly articulate” with experience in almost every area, Sapan added, but also someone who loves to learn. “When she doesn’t know something, she sets about getting to know it, which is important in a world in which technology changes so much.”

Jen Koester, president and chief operating officer of Sphere Entertainment, who worked under Kristin Dolan at Cablevision years ago, added that Dolan’s “unwavering commitment to data and her ability to drill down into data for insights and then translate to clear actionable plans” is essential to her success. (Koester also notes that Dolan has consistently championed opportunities for other women in leadership. “She provides guidance and advocates for them and has a history of promoting women, so her impact is undeniable.”)

Positive Vibes
Dolan feels good about AMC’s future. “It’s still chaotic out there, but we’re well-positioned,” she said. “We like our size, and we like our independence, and now I have the right teams in place and we still make really good programming. “We've gotten a lot more efficient but I think there's even more work that we can do without compromising the quality of what we put on the street,” she added. “We’re getting there.” Looking back, Dolan adds that being a lifelong reader not only enabled her to pore over and glean information quickly, but also made her a better leader. “I think all the exposure to different people and different cultures in the novels I’ve read has been helpful in understanding people,” she said.