Northwestern University Alumni

Transcript:

[MUSIC PLAYING] HELEN KIM: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections, where we talk to alumni about how key experiences have propelled them in their life's work. We're here to find out what they've done right, wrong, and what they learned at each intersection along the way. 

I'm your host Helen Kim from the Northwestern Alumni Association. And for today's episode, we invited Imran Khan. Imran is the head of development at Big Windows Productions, a production company led by Joerg Winger, which focuses on bringing stories from Berlin to a global audience and uplifting underrepresented voices in media. They develop extraordinary projects and partner with networks like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and HBO. 

His previous roles include working in media for over 13 years at CBS Television's Warner Brothers, Turner Broadcasting, and launching his own startup called the Snack Content Network. He was then recruited by Google after successfully exiting his own startup. Now he's living in Berlin, Germany where he recently started his YouTube channel called Where Do We Go From Here, where he interviews experts and everyday people about the current global crisis to explore where the world is headed. 

All right. Thank you so much for being on Northwestern Intersections, Immy. How are you doing? 

IMRAN KHAN: I'm doing well. How about yourself, Helen? 

HELEN KIM: I'm pretty good. What time is it there in Berlin? 

IMRAN KHAN: It's actually early evening. So it's almost 5 o'clock here. 

HELEN KIM: OK. So not too late. When did you move to Berlin? 

IMRAN KHAN: I've been in Berlin for about five years, since 2015. I was lucky enough to move here because my husband was actually doing a Humboldt fellowship at the Humboldt University here. And I've been really fortunate to follow him a bit all around the world. We've also lived in Singapore and Indonesia and have these really great opportunities to get to be world citizens. 

HELEN KIM: So right before you moved to Germany, where were you two? And why did you guys move to Europe? 

IMRAN KHAN: So I was actually in New York and my husband was in Miami. So we were doing the long distance thing. Which wasn't so bad, right? You know, you get to escape the winters and enjoy the summers in New York. 

You know, we decided to end up staying longer in Europe because after the 2016 election, my husband and I thought long and hard about, you know, where did we want to continue to spend our time as well as, you know, where do we pay taxes, right? What do those taxes go towards? And we decided it would be, for us, more beneficial just to stay in Europe more long term. 

And Berlin is a great city. I don't know if you've ever been. It has its own vibe. It's very vibrant. There's a big tech scene here. 

It's also got a great queer community. It also has a pretty large Muslim population. I grew up Muslim and I'm still very practicing. So it was a very good fit for me. 

HELEN KIM: Good. So like the adjustment wasn't too difficult or anything like that. I'm sure it came with some challenges. I mean, moving to a new country is hard in itself. But were there any challenges that you faced? 

IMRAN KHAN: You know, we were also really lucky. So at the time, I was working for Google. And Google was so helpful in providing us with the resources to relocate in a way that made it much more seamless. 

I think it definitely can be harder. Like I think a lot about my parents who immigrated from Pakistan to the US in the '70s and had to do everything themselves. 

HELEN KIM: Oh my gosh. Yeah. 

IMRAN KHAN: And I'm sure you have the similar experience with your parents. 

HELEN KIM: Yes. Yes. 

IMRAN KHAN: And I think, you know, being an immigrant here in Germany, it was a little bit different for me. Because just like the US, where you have a green card, there's a blue card system in Europe. So I had a blue card and then I had a whole support system provided by Google that helped walk me through a lot of the red tape and the bureaucracy. However, the benefit of that was that I learned. And during that time, I also was able to learn German. And after learning German, I was able to tackle some of these things by myself since I moved on from Google. 

So yeah, it definitely came with its own set of challenges, and you know, moving a new city. We were like later in our lives building out a whole new circle of friends. Getting to acclimate to, in some ways, a new way of living, right? We had these very established lives in New York and Miami, and all of a sudden, we were uprooted and moved elsewhere. 

And we initially thought it was going to be temporary, right? We came here, we thought it was going to be an 18 month stint. We thought we were going to go back. And then after the election, we decided we were going to stay longer. 

HELEN KIM: You never know, we might see you back here with your husband. But let's talk about your career transition. 

So it's not easy to move to a different country and possibly keep the same job. And I'm sure a lot of people have questions about that. So how did you navigate through the move and your career switches? And what are you doing now? 

IMRAN KHAN: So I'll give you like the very quick broad strokes overview of my career, because it's been a weird one. So I graduated from Northwestern School of Communication in '05 and I had majored in theater. And I was lucky enough to, during that time, also work a little bit in LA in the drama development department at CBS television. 

And then I moved from LA to New York. And then in New York, I started to recognize I wanted to explore storytelling, which was a main area of focus that I had while I was at Northwestern. I studied a lot with Reeves Collins, who is one of the best storytelling and theater professors in the School of Communications. 

So from Turner Broadcasting, I was like, you know what, I love content. I want to do my own company. I want to see what it would take to really launch a content company. So I decided to attend Columbia Business School. And while I was at Columbia, I actually ended up launching my own company, getting accepted into their entrepreneurship program, getting funded, and then, ultimately, selling that company while I was still in business school. 

And what was really great is-- and this is an interesting thread back to Northwestern-- a friend of mine who I went to undergrad with, who is also a theater major, also went to Columbia for business school with me. He called me after he saw that I had sold my company. He's like, what are you doing now? And I was like, I don't know, I haven't really decided yet. And he was like, oh, I'm actually at Google. Why don't you come have lunch with me? 

And so I ended up having lunch with him and was lucky enough to land a job at Google a few short weeks after that. And then I spent the better part of the next eight to eight and a half years at Google, where I was working in a capacity where I was someone who was a thought leader in the content space/like a marketing consultant. So I worked with some of our top advertisers at Google to help them shape their content strategies online. So not just with video, but also with display advertising, with text advertising, just with how they engage with consumers in the online world. And that was really, really exciting for me, because I had access to the top CEOs and CMOs at some of the biggest brands in the world and that was really fun. So I could work with some of these really amazing clients like P&G, like Unilever, like GM, like Mercedes, and so on and so forth. 

And ultimately, after doing that for a certain amount of time, always as a storyteller, always as a thought leader, I decided to ask myself the question, well, what do I want to do when I grow up, right? And I started to think about, you know, my early career and creating content, and particularly, television that millions of people consume. You know, I worked at CBS television. So I was on the team that helped develop like CSI New York and Criminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer and Numbers. And so I wanted to get back to something that was more in that realm. 

And I was lucky enough to come across a gentleman named Joerg Winger. And Joerg was and is the showrunner of a series called Deutschland 83. There's two more seasons of it, Deutschland 86 and Deutschland 89, which we just launched on Amazon Prime. 

And he asked me to be his head of development. Because while at Google, I had started my own little small production company and I had started to work with writers and to help them develop their own ideas. And I had pitched a couple of those ideas to Joerg, and he ended up buying them. And then ultimately, he said, hey, just come on board. Come do this with me. 

And ever since then, we've launched our own company called Big Window Productions. And we have really hit the ground running. And even during this crazy pandemic year, we've been able to develop some fantastic concepts. Yeah, it's been paying off for us. 

HELEN KIM: What are some popular shows that you have been working with with Big Window Productions? 

IMRAN KHAN: So I mentioned the Deutschland series, so Deutschland 83, 86, 89. So Joerg and his wife often work together, and his wife is named Anna Winger. They had created the Deutschland series together. 

So you may have heard of Unorthodox on Netflix. 

HELEN KIM: Yes. 

IMRAN KHAN: That was Anna's show. And she's kind of in our consortium of producers, which is very exciting. 

And then another series, it's a German-Romanian series for HBO and TNT called Hackerville, which is an excellent series. I think it's findable in the US. You have to do a little bit of digging. 

But finding the Deutschland series in the US, it's on the Sundance channel. So that's where you can find that. And I think the first two seasons are also available on Hulu. 

Now, because Joerg and Anna created this whole world of, you know, really high quality television coming out of Germany, there is a huge Renaissance of television in Europe. And that's really exciting, right? That's only been made possible because of the Netflixes of the world, the Amazons of the world. Even Disney and Hulu are starting to launch their, you know, international version for adults. They're hopefully going to be launching a service that has some of Hulu content internationally. So we've been a partner that a lot of those, you know, networks are looking to work with, because we've done it before and we have the experience and we have the kind of quality that they're looking for. 

So we have a couple of projects, which I mentioned to you off the screen, so to speak, that we are really excited to announce have been committed to by the Disney platform, which I mentioned to you, and also with Netflix. So we're really excited to see those products come to life. 

HELEN KIM: How does it feel to know that what you are producing and the stories that you all are telling is getting heard by and getting interest and attention from these big companies like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime? I'm sure it feels amazing, but like how does it feel to be in that position? 

IMRAN KHAN: First of all, I have to pinch myself every day. Like I said, like I'm so grateful to be living my like Hollywood fantasy out of Berlin. 

I would say that, you know, there's another like cheesy but poignant line from Spider-Man, right, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. And I actually really ascribe to that. So as storytellers, Joerg and myself and our team, we have really defined three content pillars that we stick to when it comes to the type of shows that we create for Big Window Productions. 

The first thing is we are looking to tell stories of unknown worlds. So like when you think about Unorthodox, right, that's Deborah Feldman's story about a young woman who leaves a Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn and ventures to Berlin. And that's a very like specific world that not everyone has access to. So we're really looking to tell the stories of these characters that we wouldn't normally interact with. 

So the second content pillar that is really important to us is diversity. And what's really crazy is that, you know, in the US, everyone's like, diversity, yeah of course. Foregone conclusion, right? But in Europe, you know, really pushing the diversity angle is something that is the conversation that's starting to happen now. So when I say diversity, I mean, creating stories of people of color, strong female protagonists, characters that have, you know, mental health issues and/or disabilities. 

And then not only, you know, telling the stories of these types of characters, but working with people from these communities to tell their own stories, right? So the writers, the directors, the actors that can represent these communities. Because I think, you know, just having diversity on camera without really backing it up with authentically having those people tell their own stories behind the camera doesn't really work. So that's super important to us. 

And then the third pillar-- and this is where it comes back to with great power comes great responsibility-- we want to create smart television. So series that have a point of view that really push people to think about hot button topics of today, right? You know, questioning populism, questioning body politics, self-optimization, cultural identity, sexual identity. How do we spark conversations with people so that they start to really not only talk about our shows and our characters, but to think about the world and the way it works and how different people are affected? And so I think that's one of the most exciting things about so many people engaging with the stories we're creating. We're really getting to shape the cultural conversation. 

HELEN KIM: Is that something that you are all on the same page and decided that was very important? How did you guys go about that and then do it in such a way that now people in Europe are really seeing how important that is? And you guys are like the catalyser of conversations and stories like these. 

IMRAN KHAN: You know, I have to say, I respect Joerg so much because he's always had that vision of thinking about how story has a real capacity for shaping the way people think, and that's something that I was drawn to. And I think that's one of the reasons he took a chance on me, right? I was like someone working at Google working on marketing campaigns. And I had this background in television, but it had been quite some time. But I think what he saw in me was, you know, kindred spirit and someone that really valued telling these very unique types of stories. 

And I think, for us, what it came down to was when we started to think about our brands and our positioning and how we wanted to go to market and how we wanted to talk to Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and Apple and local broadcasters, broadcasters in the UK, as well as broadcasters in the US, we always wanted to position ourselves as a company that had thought through the type of stories we want to tell. You know, it's great to have cop shows that are procedural. Like that's awesome and super entertaining. And then there's always really great to have like feel good content, right, that you just want to watch when you just want to have something nice and fluffy that helps you, you know, pass the time. And I think, for us, we really wanted to create content around stories that were sometimes dark, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes sad, but really had an undertone that pushed people to start to think about the world and the world that they live in. 

HELEN KIM: And you know, this reminds me, the first time that you reached out to us was when you wrote to us in your email sharing your new YouTube show that you started Where Do We Go From Here? So tell us more about that. And what was the inspiration behind it? 

IMRAN KHAN: So what was really exciting is that, for a long time, I was thinking about starting a YouTube channel to start to explore how do we anticipate the future? How do we think about what the world is going to look like in three years, five years, 10 years? And the real inspiration for that-- and the series, as you just mentioned, is called Where Do We Go From Here-- were my nieces. So I have three nieces who are living in the suburban Atlanta area. They are college age, late high school, so I guess now 16, 17, and 20 years old. 

And I think what was really exciting for me was to say, how can I reach out to people within my network and the community of folks that I work with to start to think about what is advertising going to look like, what is television going to look like, what are politics going to look like, what is the financial markets in the next 5 to 10 years? And then when this pandemic happened, it was like the perfect catalyst for me to say, OK, this is the time that we need to stop and say, the world has fundamentally changed, and how do we go forward? Where do we go from here? What's the next step? And how do we anticipate those challenges? And I've been so fortunate to reach out to people within my own network who've connected me to more people who have connected me to more people to start to have those conversations. 

So I've spoken with Anna Winger, who was the creator of Unorthodox. I have spoken with Karen Golden, who is the CEO and founder of Hint water, which is this, you know, massive consumer packaged goods brand. I've spoken with Meghan Asha, who's the founder of a live events company. A gentleman named Jove Meyer, who by and large is recognized as one of the best wedding planners in the world, and you know, talking to him about how have weddings changed in the time of pandemic. 

HELEN KIM: Yeah. That's big. 

IMRAN KHAN: Crazy, right? Like all these things have fundamentally changed. 

And I thought that these areas would be super interesting for my nieces and people their age to start to think about, OK, this is the world we're going to inherit. What do we do with this world? Like how do we live in this world? How do we think creatively to create opportunity within this world? How do we pick back up once we, you know, find a new normal, so to speak. And so that's really been the inspiration and that's been the focus of the series. 

HELEN KIM: Yeah. And especially for recent graduates, they're entering a world where a lot of people have been laid off. How do they navigate from that? It's just a difficult time for everyone. 

So I've seen a couple of your videos and I've really enjoyed their stories. It's just every single one of them has their own take and own advice. 

IMRAN KHAN: That's been an area of focus for me is to always ask people for advice, because that's been the thing that I think is really neat about these videos is that getting folks to really speak up and say, hey, this is what I would start to think about. So another woman I spoke with, Seana Carter, who works at a company called Egon Zehnder, which is a large executive recruitment company, she started to tell me about how the type of people they recruit for has fundamentally changed, right? Having these skills to be able to lead and manage via Zoom or via video conference versus necessarily working with 50 people in a room. That all of a sudden has become a prized skill. 

And then another woman whom I spoke with, [INAUDIBLE], who works for BCG and does supply chain, she's told me so many interesting things about how fundamental supply chain has changed. For example, when the pandemic first hit, there were literally not enough cotton swabs that are produced and manufactured in the US for there to be enough testing. There literally were not enough cotton swabs. So now, you know, there's legislation to think about so cotton swabs, not something that we have to have a certain percentage of produced locally the US. That's mind blowing, right, to think about like little things like that. So it's been a really, really interesting and educational experience for me. 

HELEN KIM: Yeah. I mean, thank you for sharing your story of going through that big move and just seeing your career go off in many different direction, but also enjoying your life at the same time. And on top of all of this, you are also co-writing a book. So please tell us about that, and what is the book about? 

IMRAN KHAN: So it's definitely a love's labor. Anyone who's written a book will tell you that it takes a lot of time and energy and creation. And this is a process that, you know, really taps your soul. 

So long story short, when we first moved to Berlin, there was a woman whom I had met through my husband who is a novelist. And she was at a party at our house one day, and I kind of pictured this idea that I had in my head for a long time. It's a story of three young women that live in a world in which magic coexists with, you know, normal human society. And I very crassly pitched it to her as like the Indian Harry Potter. And-- 

HELEN KIM: Wow. 

IMRAN KHAN: But I told her a little bit more about the characters and what they were inspired by and what the aim of the book was, and she asked me questions and whatnot. And then the very next day, she emailed me and said, OK, so when are we meeting to write this book? 

That was about three years ago. And since then, we've written the book. We've sent it out, we have an agent, and we're shopping it to publishers. 

But the story is essentially about three women, like I mentioned. And it's a story that ultimately-- it doesn't have a big bad, right, there's no Voldemort or there's no Darth Vader, et cetera. But it's a little bit about what we're dealing with in society today. So these young women are a part of this forgotten and famous prophecy that ultimately says they'll either be responsible for helping restore balance between these two opposing forces, the division and the unity. And the division is what it is. It's trying to tear people apart and to create differences and show people that they don't belong together. And the unity is trying to create cohesion. 

What we tried to do is we tried to show that neither thing is wrong or right, but that, ultimately, we need a balance between the two, right? You know, it's good to celebrate our differences, because we are different in some ways. But it's also really good to realize that there's a lot of challenges in the world that we couldn't tackle if we tried to tackle them alone. So like global climate change is one of those challenges, and that shows up a little bit in our book in terms of how we think about the world and the community around us and how we contribute to that community and to the world. 

And so the story is really fun. It draws on all these Eastern traditions of magic, so from Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, the Arabian Nights tales, of Shintoism, the Garuda from Indonesia, some traditions from the Philippines and from Korea. I think what's really fun about it is it's a whole other perspective on magic that we haven't been really exposed to. And it's written for a very international audience. So it's so much fun coming up with all the different spells and characters and influences. And the amalgamation of all those things and how they come together, it's just such a rich tapestry. 

And the school where they go is called Jabu Academy. Jabu means magic in Hindi. And Jabu Academy is just a mishmash of all of these different traditions. So it's really fun. It's really fun. 

And we also have, you know, very similar to like Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, there's lots of animals that show up as, you know, manifestations and partners in this magical development that are your cohorts. And they are really super important. And they have their own skills and their own means of communication. 

There's also, you know, seven different disciplines of magic that students can study. There's magical versions of cricket and magical versions of Parcheesi, which is called Ludo in South Asia. So that is very, very exciting. It's really fun to create this world and bring it to life. 

HELEN KIM: Yeah. I can't wait to hear more about it. Please tell us when it's published, when it's out there. I will be the first one to tell everyone about it and tell them I know the co-author. It just sounds like it has a lot of complex layers weaved into the story. I can see, as you're telling me, your talent for content creation and storytelling really shines through. 

IMRAN KHAN: Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. I mean, truthfully, this is a story that I'm telling very much for my nieces as well, as well as for my mom and her sisters. They're really the ultimate inspiration for this story and bringing it to life. 

HELEN KIM: You have done a lot, and there's a lot going on in your career path. And congratulations to you. But how have you been doing, you know, personally going through the year 2020? 

Our lives are not always perfect. And you know, is there something that you've been dealing with personally? And how have you been keeping yourself hopeful during this time? 

IMRAN KHAN: 2020, as with many people, has been just-- man, it's been a year, right? And I have to say, for me personally, it's been a year in which I've definitely felt feelings of loneliness and sadness that have not really reared their head in a long time. 

It's definitely been very difficult, because my husband and I often spent some time apart from each other throughout the year. But this year, we've really been together constantly. So we've had some issues we've had to work through. And those have been challenging with, I'm sure, lots of other people have had to deal with. 

I think the important thing is to realize that nothing's ever perfect. You know, the sun will come out tomorrow. And I think it's really focusing on those moments of joy and finding those things that do bring you joy that helped me keep going forward. 

And I think some of these projects and work wise have really helped me do that, living these other worlds and helping to create them and bring them to life. But I will say it's been a hard year. I definitely dealt with, you know, my own set of challenges during this time. And I think it's important to talk about those things, because I feel like it's so easy to create a rosy picture of the way people's lives are. 

And they aren't always rosy, right? Everyone has ups and downs. I think Dr. Seuss said it right, right, you know, in Oh, The Places You'll Go. There's ups, there's downs, there's middles. There's the waiting place and the waiting place sucks. And yeah, sometimes just the way life is. 

HELEN KIM: And as we are interviewers who like to interview other people about their career paths, lives, and advice, what advice do you have to leave us with for the Northwestern Network? 

IMRAN KHAN: I would say, you know, a couple of things. I would say. Really figure out what are the things that, get you super excited get you jazzed to wake up in the morning, and then tenaciously pursue those, right? I've always known that I'm a storyteller and I love to help people experience and fall in love with new worlds. 

And I think when I was at Google in this really great job with lots of great resources, I woke up one day and I said, what is it that's going to give my life meaning? What is going to be the thing that I leave my mark on in the world. And I knew that storytelling would be the thing that would be most important to me. So then I tenaciously ran after that. I would say that would be my first piece of advice. 

And then I think the second piece of advice would just be, look, sometimes things take time, right, and timing is everything. I had a co-worker at Turner who once told me everything in life is about timing. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. And I think that's OK. And you have to just recognize that sometimes terrible things happen. Sometimes those terrible things will spur you on to different paths in your life, and that's OK. 

Sometimes you'll feel terrible. Sometimes you'll be sad. And that's OK. It's all right to know that we're allowed to be unwell. We're allowed to feel unhappy. But the time will come when that turns around and that changes, and you find things that will spur you forward. 

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HELEN KIM: Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Northwestern Intersections. For more information about our podcast, please visit northwestern.edu/intersections. 

Until next time, stay safe and take care of yourself and your families.