Vanguard Awards: Kristin Dolan

As chief operating officer of Cablevision Systems, Kristin Dolan leads the company’s cable operations, overseeing thousands of employees, including the entire customer and field-service workforce.

Dolan, this year’s Vanguard Award honoree for Distinguished Leadership among women, is also responsible for the full customer experience, including product development and management, as well as programming, marketing and sales for the company’s residential and commercial Optimum TV, Online, WiFi and Voice products. In addition, she oversees the human-resources organization, as well as Cablevision Media Sales, the company’s advertising-sales division.

Over the past several years, Dolan’s efforts have resulted in improved customer metrics and service activity in the nation’s most competitive market, and a strong, performance-based culture.

“I have been immensely fortunate to serve as Cablevision’s chief operating officer during a time of great change and innovation within the company and across the entire industry,” she said. “This honor [the Distinguished Vanguard Award] is the culmination of Cablevision’s transformation to a connectivity-focused company, and I share it with all of the dedicated and talented professionals who helped make it happen.”

A 27-year company veteran, Dolan was previously president of Optimum Services, where she guided the introduction of faster broadband speeds and an enhanced multiroom DVR service, as well as the large-scale expansion of the Optimum WiFi network.

Dolan began her career in 1990 at Cablevision’s programming division, Rainbow Media (now AMC Networks), where she worked in a variety of sales and marketing positions with increasing levels of responsibility. In 2000, she joined Cable vision as the company’s vice president of field communications and advanced to senior vice president of digital product management, responsible for the MSO’s digital and analog video products, its high-speed Internet product and strategic direction of the launch of Optimum Voice in 2003. As senior executive vice president of product management, marketing and development, she led a dramatic redesign of the “Optimum” brand.

Dolan is a member of Cablevision’s board of directors, and is also on the board of AMC Networks and The Madison Square Garden Co. She has served on the foundation board for the State University of New York at Albany and the national board for Women in Cable & Telecommunications. She was named to Multichannel News’s 2o04 class of Wonder Women and is regularly listed among the top 100 executives and top 50 most influential women by Cablefax.

Dolan received a master’s degree in English literature from the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, a master’s degree in publishing with a concentration in marketing from Pace University and a bachelor’s degree in English from SUNY Albany.