Cyma Zarghami
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Iranian-American Cyma Zarghami presiding over Nickelodeon
Cyma Zarghami is an Iranian-American cable television executive currently serving as the president of Nickelodeon and MTV Networks' Kids & Family Group and overseeing the number-one US kids network that has a presence in 116 territories and some 329 million households around the globe.
American women have long feared the invisible "glass ceiling" on their way up corporate ladders. But Iranian-American Cyma Zarghami has crossed barriers to become the President of Kids & Family Group (including Nickelodeon) of the $20 Billion Entertainment giant Viacom.
Zarghami's Iranian father, while studying for medical school in Scottland, met and married a Scottish nurse. After the couple moved to Iran, Cyma was born in the Iranian city of Abadan. The family later moved to Canada and finally to New Jersey (United States). Zarghami has not been back to Iran since 1976.
In 1980, Zarghami entered The University of Vermont in Burlington as an elementary education major, but did not complete her degree. She joined Nickelodeon as a scheduling clerk in 1985 but by 1996, her hard work, management style and productivity had earned her the position of the channel's General Manager, overseeing programming, scheduling, acquisitions, marketing and day-to-day management of the network. In January 2006 Zarghami became president of the newly formed Kids & Family Group, which includes Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nick Movies, Noggin, Nicktoons Network, and world-class brands such as SpongeBob and Dora the Explorer. Dora the Explorer is an educational and culturally diverse program popular with younger aged children. SpongeBob, however, is not as educational. He is a simpleminded yet optimistic character, and acting foolish at times.
As an advocate for kids, Ms. Zarghami has expanded Nickelodeon's pro-social leadership role as a key compnent of its brand identity. Under its award-winning The Big Help banner, Nickelodeon informs and empowers kids of all ages with programs such as The Big Green Help, Lets Just Play and the teen-targeted HALO Awards to connect kids to issues they have said are important to them and their families.
These days, as chief of a staff of hundreds, and the person steering the Nickelodeon brand, Zarghami’s days are filled with meetings. She gets together weekly with Nick’s core TV, CP and marketing teams, not to mention holding a deals meeting where all lines of business discuss what might be bubbling up, and pow-wows with outside partners like Sony Music that help keep those relationships tight. And it’s arguable that no one knows Nick like Zarghami does. She’s dedicated her entire career to the net, working her way up from scheduling clerk to the corner office, learning the business through the programming side—perhaps to the chagrin of the current team.
“I think the jobs that are the hardest are the ones your boss actually did,” she says. “So the guy who does programming has a lot of patience for me,” she adds with a chuckle.
Zarghami says during her climb up the corporate ladder—punctuated by the assumption of new job responsibilities every few years—she’s only been tempted to leave the Nick fold once. When one of Nick’s founding execs, Geraldine Laybourne, set up female-focused cablenet Oxygen in 2000, Zarghami seriously considered following but the kidnet’s relentlessly competitive nature and belief in providing entertainment to a fun audience whose “primary responsibility is to play” keeps her coming back for more.
Zarghami was named Women in Cable Telecommunications' Woman of the Year for 2006. She lives in New York City with her husband and three sons. In her personal life, she has supported some democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
Zarghami's advice for budding artists or filmmakers is to have passion. She says "passion goes a long way so knock on every door until you get someone to open the door."
