Jack of All Trades

Year to Year, Karen Dougherty Buchholz Tackles Ever Larger Projects at Comcast

By K Neel -- Multichannel News, 1/30/2012 12:01:00 AM

Karen Dougherty Buchholz has always liked being in charge of large, complex projects.

She was just 30 years old when she was tapped, in 1998, to head up the Philadelphia host committee that was charged with landing and then overseeing the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts was also the co-chairman of the convention committee and quickly came to the conclusion his company could benefi t from her skill sets.

After the convention, Roberts hired Buchholz to oversee the creation of the company’s first corporate communications department.

It wasn’t long before she was taking on even bigger, multifaceted tasks, including construction of the company’s new headquarters and, more recently, the wideranging diversity initiatives now being undertaken on a companywide basis.

RISING RESPONSIBILITIES

Buchholz’s title — vice president of administration — doesn’t fully describe her duties at Comcast, which seem to zig and zag each year, depending on what she and her boss, executive vice president David Cohen, decide she should focus on.

“Each year her responsibilities become broader,” Cohen says. “She is the most talented person I have ever worked with. She is the most impressive, poised and organized person I know. She is in charge of corporate real estate, security, aviation, administration and now diversity. Every year we look at what’s next for her, and this year it’s diversity.

“After the NBCUniversal merger, we recognized we needed to create a centralized diversity initiative,” Cohen adds. “We needed to plan, develop, review, monitor and execute a master plan for the company. We knew it had to be a high-priority project and we knew Karen would be the perfect person to oversee such a big and complex project. Th e bigger, more complex the project and the more moving parts there are, the better it is for Karen.”

Buchholz says her biggest challenge is getting everything done to her satisfaction, adding: “But it’s also what gets me up every day. I love what I do and I work with really smart people, which is a joy.

“We want to be the model of diversity,” she says of her current focus.

“We have created fi ve areas of focus: governance, employees, suppliers, programming and communities,” she explains. “We are working in lockstep with our partners over at NBCUniversal and have formed an external diversity council that meets twice a year and talks regularly via teleconference. NBC has already done a lot in this arena, and I am working closely with them as well as the business leads in our departments. It’s very exciting.”

Buchholz had worked in politics, which helped when it came time to help land and plan the convention. But she didn’t know much about construction or real estate.

To help prepare, she took real estate classes at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Her study of the construction industry helped her anticipate what would be needed for both the convention and Comcast’s new headquarters, One Comcast Center, which opened in 2008 and is the tallest building in Philadelphia.

Buchholz credits Cohen with providing valuable advice and inspiration. “David sets the highest of standards, and no detail is too small,” she says of her mentor. “He taught me to always be prepared. I’ve learned a lot from him.”

Cohen and Buchholz met in 1990, when she was overseeing the Pyramid Club, an eating club in the Mellon Bank Center. Cohen worked at law firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, which was moving into the building. “She was incredibly young and incredibly dynamic,” Cohen says.

Later, he went to work for then-Mayor Ed Rendell, who had pledged to help sell suites in the city’s new arena (now called the Wells Fargo Center). Buchholz then was a sales executive at the arena.

Cohen and Rendell recruited her as a staff member on the convention committee. “But it wasn’t long before she was running it,” Cohen recalls.

‘SHE’S A CONDUCTOR’

The convention was a huge success, drawing more than 50,000 people and generating more than $300 million for the City of Brotherly Love’s economy.

Cohen and Buchholz reunited at Comcast, which Cohen joined in 2002.

“She has to be a conductor of an orchestra so at the end of the day, some terrific music is made together,” Cohen says. “Karen is incredibly organized and no detail is too small. But she is able to focus on the big picture and not get lost in those details. She has the strongest project management skills I have ever seen.”

Buchholz credits her experiences in politics for such core beliefs as standing by her word and working hard to build personal and professional connections.

She and her husband, Carl, are the proud parents of Alex, 16, and Julia, 13.