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Rewarding Innovation

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Christie Hefner says people feel rewarded when their ideas matter.

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Christie Hefner:

Christie Hefner, daughter of Hugh Hefner, is the former chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises.

During her tenure, Hefner restructured operations and initiated the Company's highly successful electronic and international expansion. The Company launched its branded channel in 1982, making Playboy the first magazine brand to be successfully leveraged into television. In 1994 led the Company onto the Internet when Playboy became the first national magazine on the World Wide Web.

Hefner is active in a number of local and national organizations. She was the first woman elected to the Chicago chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization. Hefner helped found the Committee of 200, an international organization of preeminent women business owners and executives. She serves on the boards of Rush University Medical Center, Canyon Ranch Health Resort, and on the board of governors of the Paley Center for Media. Hefner is also on the Advisory Boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and The Creative Coalition, and a member of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She also spent four years as project board chairman for the CORE Center, raising $30 million to build this innovative clinic and research facility, which opened in Chicago in the summer of 1998. The CORE Center conducts clinical research and provides prevention education and outpatient care for people with HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hefner: We’ve tried different programs. We had something called the golden rabbits for a while where there was a process whereby people could be nominated for innovative ideas and then we chose a certain number each year and took people to dinner and gave them an award. We’re not doing anything as formal right now. We’re trying to, you know, kind of do shout-outs through our own internal communication vehicles. I do an annual all-employee meeting at each of our locations and that’s a logical way to kind of highlight what have been sort of special accomplishments of the last year as well as set up what our goals and priorities are for the next year.