Just Five Questions: Julia Zhu ’98

Julia Zhu serves as an advisor to SwitchOn Technology. Previously she was CEO of Phoenix TV Culture and Entertainment Company, a leading media and entertainment company in China following c-level roles at Redgate Media Group and an executive role at News Corp’s STAR Group. She began her post-SOM career at JP Morgan Chase and is a founder and longtime mentor across the tech, mobile, and media ecosystem. Julia serves on the Advisory Board of the Yale Club of Beijing and was an At-Large-Delegate of The Yale Alumni Association from 2020-2023.

Q1: What’s a global trend you are following where you see an opportunity or bright spot in this challenging macro environment?

I am seeing more women emerge globally as entrepreneurs and founders and in leadership roles in VC and PE firms. I still remember the days when I was the only woman in the room at board meetings and due diligence meetings at Redgate Media when we were rapidly expanding our media and entertainment portfolio through acquisitions. Fortunately, I’ve had great mentors throughout my career, and I continue to pay that forward. I am inspired by the momentum and progress of young women leading in every industry and sector today and expect it will have a multiplier effect on both the private and public sectors. In the meantime, we need to lean into each other and create more mentorship and internship opportunities that enable young women to leverage their networks, gain experience and advance. I am grateful SOM has such strong networks and encourage recent alumni to leverage the SOM alumni community around the world.

Another trend I am following is lifelong learning. AI’s disruption in our life and work is analogous to the industrial revolution, and there’s a significant opportunity to upskill and leverage the technology to stay relevant. This is particularly important in the context of the aging population and the good news is that more people will live beyond 100 years old. The better news is that this is driving significant innovation and momentum in lifelong learning enabling us to continually broaden the skills and knowledge we learned at universities in our 20s and 30s, with the benefit of the wisdom and experience we have decades later. I recently came across an SOM webinar entitled “The Multigenerational Moment: How the generations can come together to solve problems, bridge divides and co-create a better future for everyone.” This is a very exciting moment for cross generation collaboration and impact and I’m excited about this accelerating trend.

Q2: What’s an example of how SOM’s mission informed your professional path?

My SOM class (’98) was the last class of the MPPM degree before the school offered the MBA. I kept my MPPM and consider it very special and a differentiator for Yale SOM from other business schools. I appreciate having our school’s founding mission reflected in the degree we received: Master of Public and Private Management, a business degree with purpose and responsibility to the business we manage and the society we live in. This SOM mission profoundly influenced my professional trajectory over the years.

My journey after SOM started in investment banking. After a couple of years leading venture investment at a global media company, I became a media and entertainment entrepreneur. I felt this path was where I would make the most impact by bringing the right products and services to market and also by leveraging my business and capital markets experience in scaling my company.

My first startup was a multimedia company, Redgate Media Group, focused on bringing the best international education, lifestyle and culture content to China while enabling international brands to reach the incredible demographic opportunity in China following China’s WTO entry. We partnered with a range of major global media brands including Time Inc., BBC, Wenner Media and Virgin Radio on content collaboration and licensing and created and published the Chinese editions of the Popular Science, Rolling Stone and TopGear. Our original radio programs syndication reached over 300 Chinese cities daily. It was an incredible moment for US and European media brands in China.

As the president and the only female co-founder and board member of the company, it was liberating for me to run the company with humility and integrity. I built a diverse and inclusive team and culture while exceeding our financial targets and market penetration significantly. Sometimes, it felt like I was cultivating an SOM style work environment, in which we worked as a team to get things done and it was very rewarding and impactful.

Being a media and entertainment entrepreneur, I am obsessed with smart business models that achieve both a common public good and commercial success, especially in the areas of education, culture, and entertainment/edutainment. My two years of immersive education at SOM inspired me to pursue this balance and model.

Q3: What’s an SOM experience that helped shape the way you understand business and society?

I have to say that it was a series of SOM experiences that helped me to understand the complexity of business in society. My Organizational Behavior course gave me a great framework of important, and often overlooked, soft skills on managing expectations of individual behaviors that shape the culture and performance of an organization. The case study I did with my classmates at Bruegger's Bagels on Whitney Avenue was an ongoing reminder of the OB aspects of the businesses that I was either running or acquiring over the years. I learned to not rely solely on the financial rewards when motivating the team and saw the impact a pat-on-the-shoulder and empathy can also deliver across teams. The rewards of understanding OB dynamics in business has been amazing. I was able to retain many of my best team members through the life cycle of my startups from early stage through hyper-growth and exit. Many of these colleagues are women, who also managed to achieve a rewarding work-life balance.

One event of Dean Jeffrey Garten’s guest speaker series also stood out in my memory. Martha Stewart, the founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and the company’s COO Sharon Patrick came to share with us the company’s success story. It was very empowering to see these two women passionately talking about how they transformed the Martha Stewart brand from a small catering business into a multimedia sensation and empire. I was very inspired on that day as they stood out as role models, leaders, and entrepreneurs in the media business, quite rare 27 years ago. That talk planted a subconscious seed in me: I wanted to be in the media business, and I wanted to build a media business that could be both commercially successful and socially impactful.

Q4: What’s a favorite SOM memory, faculty member, mentor, or class?

My favorite SOM memory was dating my classmate, Tom Jin. We met through an OB group project, and we became lifetime partners one year after we graduated. We often joked that SOM means the school of marriage!

Professor David Cromwell’s course on Venture Capital was very insightful and practical. He wrote the textbook which was an incredible and comprehensive guide to venture capital. His lectures were full of fascinating stories and anecdotes from his lifetime experience as a venture capitalist at JP Morgan. When I started in a corporate venture investment job, I remember going back to his class notes and even used his class handouts as my tool kit in my early days at the job.

My other fond memory was those sleepless nights at the DUNGEON, our “favorite” venue. Current students could not imagine the camaraderie we had in a few windowless study rooms in the basement of 135 Prospect Street. I can still smell the place as I am writing this. The DUNGEON was the designated place for our group project collaborations and study group meetings. Outside the class session, the intellectual energy was palpable, and our classmates were always amazing, bringing different perspectives to each other. The SOM teamwork spirit ran very high down there.

Q5: What are you excited about for the year ahead?

I am looking forward to shifting my focus to nonprofit work. I am exploring my interests in the areas of education and climate finance.

How to Reach Me: LinkedIn here

Fun Facts: The range of my taste in music has broadened - from classical music in my childhood, to the Grateful Dead in college, and then to Metallica when I met my husband, and now to Gojira as recommended by my teenage son. My favorite comfort snack that I can't live without is Challah bread from Stop & Shop.

Favorite Book or Series: My recent favorite books, that I don't mind reading for more than once, are: 

• The Year 1000, When Explorers Connected the World - and Globalization Began, by Yale Professor Valerie Hansen

• The Buried, An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution, by Peter Hessler

• Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie

• Timebends, A Life, by Arthur Miller

• A Bite-Sized History of France, Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War and Enlightenment, by Stephane Henaut & Jeni Mitchell

Just Five Questions is an initiative led by the Yale SOM Alumni Advisory Board. Want to learn more? Contact Lee Race ’93 with feedback, thoughts, and/or questions.