Donna Thomas got her start in the TV business in cable programming, at Discovery Networks. She was working in an Atlanta office as a temp and persuaded her boss, Kim Martin (later president of WE tv), to relocate her to Silver Spring, Maryland, when the Atlanta office was closing. Even though, as Martin pointed out, she didn’t really work there.
“I just knew that I needed to go with them,” Thomas recalled.
Hired as an administrative assistant, within six years she was a senior VP of affiliate marketing. “Meteoric,” Thomas said. “I was there for like 10 years. So that’s how I started.”
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These days she is helping to grow the Studio Post-Production Services business line for Vubiquity, the video-distribution services firm acquired by Amdocs in 2018 for $224 million.
Digital Media Know-How
She’s an expert in the digital media space and has worked in every aspect of the content supply chain, from creation through distribution, as stated by her colleague at Vubiquity, senior VP of strategic planning and business development Fred Handsman.
Handsman cited some of her accomplishments in nominating her to be a Wonder Woman. They include:
- She was in charge of the business when Discovery launched the first suite of digital channels, in the 1990s, and was even dubbed Discovery’s Digital Diva in one trade article.
- She played a key role in transitioning from physical to digital media by executing the first digital library management deal between Ascent Media (her then-employer) and Paramount in 2010.
- She’s helped grow Vubiquity’s Studio Post-Production Services line of business from inception to over $30 million annually.
Donna will always find a way to get it done right or to help us solve that problem.”
— Michael Trainotti, Paramount Pictures
Not bad for a girl from Warner Robins, Georgia, who grew up loving acting, performs her own one-woman show about her life and founded The Thomas Angel Foundation, which has given out more than $150,000 in scholarships to women pursuing careers in media and entertainment.
One of the friends she made along the way is Michael Trainotti, senior VP of technical services, worldwide technical operations at Paramount Pictures. They worked together on that digital library management deal in 2010 which, as Thomas related, was a long exercise in solving technical problems. Since then they have worked together on many projects, professional and personal, Trainotti said, including making horror movies.
“Donna will always find a way to get it done right or to help us solve that problem,” Trainotti said.
That might mean finding the right other person to bring in to help, he said. “Because she’s also a people person. Half of this industry is knowing people and having that network. She’s really good at having a big pool of people that trust her and that she trusts to get the job done. She’s really, really talented at what she does.”
Digital Segue Was Fruitful
Thomas, who was interviewed shortly after traveling solo on a two-week vacation in South Korea, said she’s very glad she transitioned away from the traditional cable business into digital media, and credits various bosses who helped her learn the acronyms and the technology because they knew she knew how to serve clients. Other mentors besides Martin who are well-known in the cable industry include Maggie Bellville, Rich Fickle, Peter Stern and Dave Watson. “Those are good ones to have,” she said.
She gives kudos to Vubiquity CEO and Amdocs Media general manager Raman Abrol, who succeeded former CEO Darcy Antonellis. “He’s on the East Coast, but he rolled up his sleeves, came out, really spent a lot of time trying to learn our side of the business and it shows,” Thomas said. “He’s very well-respected for that and just an all around great guy.”
She said she enjoys broadening potential new customers’ knowledge of Vubiquity, which had roots in TVN-Avail and video-on-demand services. ”When I go in and pitch studios today, it’s like, here’s what we do. We don’t do dailies, but we do color all the way through to distribution,” Thomas said. “We hold the libraries of Warner Media, we hold MGM Library, that was my deal. We do everything from soup to nuts. We’re not your grandfather’s Vubiquity. We’re backed by a $4 billion company and we’re able to operate as a boutique, a white-glove facility, which is so cool.”
