Susan Packard

Co-founder of Scripps Networks Interactive
Former chief operating officer of HGTV
Received the “Woman of the Year” award by WICT

Full Bio

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Susan Packard Introduces EQ Fitness, Challenges the Workplace

On Leadership - Susan Packard

Susan Packard is co-founder of Scripps Networks Interactive (NYSE: SNI) and former Chief Operating Officer of HGTV. She was the 2nd employee of SNI and helped to build the company to a market value of over $15 billion.

SNI’s media portfolio includes popular lifestyle television brands HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network, Cooking Channel, country music network Great American Country (GAC) and the Travel Channel. Packard held a variety of senior positions during her tenure at SNI. In addition to being COO of HGTV, she created and served as president of Scripps Networks New Ventures, where she oversaw the development and launch of DIY Network, and online interactive platforms. She was also president of worldwide distribution for the Scripps cable brands.

She began her cable career at HBO, then moved to NBC and was part of the start-up team for CNBC. In 1994 she joined HGTV and became Chief Operating Officer in 1995. Under Packard’s helm, HGTV became one of the fastest growing cable networks in television history. Today HGTV is available in more than 99 million U.S. homes and distributed in 175 countries and territories.

She has been recognized by industry peers, colleagues and employees as an innovator, role model and mentor. She received the Woman of the Year award by Women in Cable & Telecommunications (WICT) and was profiled in Modern Visionaries, a book chronicling the contributions of women to the cable and telecommunications industry. Contemporary Economics, a high school textbook, profiled her as an entrepreneur in the field of media specialization. CableWorld magazine honored her among “The Most Influential Women in Cable” numerous times. In 2008 she was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame.

Packard was the first woman elected to serve on the board of directors of Churchill Downs, Inc. (NASDAC: CHDN), the owner and manager of the Kentucky Derby and other horseracing properties. In that capacity, she served on the Audit, Strategic Planning, and CEO Succession committees.

She is active in national and local business and community affairs. She was named a College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Alumni at Michigan State University. She is past vice chair of the board of an independent collegiate day school, and has been an advisor on job training programs for the homeless as board member of Lazarus Ventures LLC. In recognition of her outreach work, she received the E.W. Scripps William Burleigh Award for distinguished community service. She was admitted to The Committee of 200, a select group of senior women executives dedicated to inspiring future women leaders and charged with granting scholarships and doing outreach to young, aspiring business women.

She is an active speaker at global business forums and at universities such as UCLA, Fordham, Carnegie Mellon, and the Darden Business School at University of Virginia. She spoke at Stanford Business School as part of SBS Executive Breakfast Briefings.

In 2019 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Michigan State University.

Susan has been commissioned and is actively teaching a form of meditation called Centering Prayer, which she incorporates into her facilitation of leadership and mindfulness retreats. She is working on certification to also teach the Enneagram, a self-knowledge tool.

Her first book, New Rules of the Game, was written to help women navigate and lead in the workplace. In 2019, Penguin/Random House published Packard’s new book, Fully Human, Three Steps to Grow Your Emotional Fitness for Work, Leadership and Life. The book offers a fresh, new framework for growing one’s emotional intelligence.

She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her husband and two female felines named Diva and Dart. They have a son, Andrew.

To book Susan Packard call Executive Speakers Bureau at 901-754-9404.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) for Today

Based on her new book Fully Human: 3 Steps to Grow Your Emotional Fitness for Work, Leadership and Life, Susan Packard outlines why EQ is more important today than ever, and offers practices that help us to grow our EQ and leadership skills. She shares cautionary tales of workaholism, and how to avoid getting stuck in power and ego traps, and inspiring ways to build honest, morally courageous cultures. Moments of reflection can strengthen EQ skills, and she shares stories of business leaders, how they actively practice great EQ everyday, and how we can too. As a certified meditation instructor, if a group is interested, she can lead a meditation exercise too as part of this discussion.

Advancement Through Gamesmanship

How do employees reach that next level in their career? Baseline talent gets everyone in the game. Then people begin to compete for advancement and factors such as likeability and trust influence who is promoted into senior roles. Susan Packard, co-founder of HGTV, lays out an approach to help your employees succeed called gamesmanship—a strategic way of thinking, as well as a language of business to help people advance. We are taught that ‘winning’ at work means collaboration and perfecting what we do. But these two drivers are not always the best way to move forward. Through a dynamic and down-to-earth approach, Packard lays out the rules of gamesmanship and illustrates how employees can better compete for promotions and plum assignments by speaking an alternative language, as well as how they can handle the many stresses that come with being in the workplace.

Now What? Creativity, Innovation and Turning Ideas into Icons

So you have a great, innovative idea that is without peer in the marketplace—how does that become a great business worth over $7 billion, such as HGTV? Packard shares with the audience her experiences and the lessons learned in growing a multi-billion dollar business, which today includes cable networks, books, DVDs, interactive properties and a family of trusted television personalities. A leader who inspired those around her to push the boundaries in innovating products to achieve business success, Packard shares the leadership skills necessary to incubate—and execute—game changing ideas.

How Culture Impacts Employee Engagement: Timeless Lessons on Talent

Two of today’s toughest challenges are recruiting and retaining the best talent. Learn how a $7 billion business did it from the ground up, and how these lessons can apply to you. HGTV co-founder Susan Packard will cover critical areas, such as team structure, having a sense of mission and how small, inexpensive things can impact loyalty and workplace excellence. Having the right people in the right jobs with the right amount of motivation is crucial to any successful organization, and Packard shares what employers must do to create a workplace that can become the envy of any industry.

The Leader Within: Growing Your Leadership Team

What do leaders need today to excel? Hear from HGTV’s co-founder, Susan Packard, as she shares leadership lessons from businesses she has helped to build, and from the leadership work she is doing today. She will discuss how vision, audacity and relentless focus are some of the key factors that make great leaders today. She will also share some unusual insights and stories about diversity as a business practice today.

Move Fast, Think Big: Building a Brand Leader

HGTV took a big idea - a cable television network devoted to all things home - into a marketplace dominated by media giants and emerged the leader. Now launched in more than 98 million homes, HGTV changed how we envision our homes and, in the process, established a new model for business innovation and success. Packard shares with audiences strategies for forging and promoting a brand while gaining customers who'll remain loyal to it, and provides ideas for expanding into other channels and platforms to secure even greater market share while maintaining brand integrity.