Courtesy: Jack Selby’s LinkedIn Profile
Jack Selby recently spoke to Thunderbird students in a continuation of Thunderbird’s commitment to bringing noted guests to campus. As a former senior vice president of PayPal, managing director at Clarium Capital, and current film producer, Mr. Selby had much to impart on us students.
As he didn’t prepare a formal presentation per sé, Mr. Selby went over his history with PayPal and how he got to where he is today. He opened up the floor to questions very early into the hour we had with him, allowing for many to be answered by the students gathered there that day.
Many of the questions focused on his role as an executive film producer with the company he started, Incognito Pictures. With that company, Mr. Selby has produced films like last year’s “Bernie,” Morgan Spurlock’s “Comic Con” documentary, and “Act of Valor,” a film he produced with the cooperation of the US Navy. He spoke about producing films that were “genre-agnostic,” that tried to ride the line between making an Oscar-worthy film, and one that appealed to a mass audience, a task that is hard to do.
Others asked him about his thoughts on skipping out on business school, and whether it hurt his career at all. Mr. Selby answered that he definitely missed out on the networking, which he believes is one of the sole benefits of business school.
All in all, Mr. Selby was very open to answering many of our questions that day, and his interesting and diverse career provided for some great questions.