CEO Forum: Christie Hefner '74, Former chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. | Date & Time: | 25 February 2009, 12:30 - 2:00 PM | | Location: | Lemberg Academic Center | | Room: | Lee Lecture Hall | | | The title of Ms. Hefner's lecture is: "Transforming a Business. Transforming a Life."
As chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises, Inc. from 1988 to 2008, Christie Hefner oversaw the global expansion of Playboy’s legendary brand to a wide array of new platforms and markets, transforming a publishing-based business into a multi-pronged media and lifestyle company. Acknowledging her pioneering efforts in bringing Playboy into the Digital Age, Multichannel News honored Christie as a “Wonder Woman” for her “major accomplishments within the cable, broadband and telecommunications industries.” The media industry trade publication min inducted her into its Digital Hall of Fame in 2005.
The first woman elected to the Chicago chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization, Christie helped to found the Committee of 200, an international organization of preeminent women business owners and executives. She currently sits on the Council of National Advisors for Springboard Enterprises, which supports women-led growth ventures. She was a founding partner of The Directors Council, which is dedicated to meeting the increasing needs of public boards for independent directors by increasing the diversity of boards. In 1991, Christie was inducted into the Women's Business Development Center Hall of Fame for opening doors and building opportunities for all women entrepreneurs. In 2002, she received the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's Vanguard Award for Distinguished Leadership, the cable industry’s highest honor, for her longstanding commitment to the First Amendment rights of cable programmers and operators and for her strong advocacy of workplace diversity.
Christie was born in Chicago in 1952. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year of college, she graduated from Brandeis University summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and American literature in 1974. She became a President's Councilor of her alma mater in 1978. She is married to real estate developer and attorney William A. Marovitz, a former Illinois state senator.
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