Beth Broday Gotler

Co-Founder

Digital Directions Group

Beverly Hills

Who do broadband heavyweights turn to when they need guidance? Often, it’s Beth Broday Gotler, an independent consultant whose client list has included Phillips Media, Tele-Communications Inc. and Capitol Records.

“I like to work behind the scenes and often find myself in the emerging space at the exact time when things explode. And I align myself with those who push the envelope,” she said.

Broday Gotler is co-founder of Digital Directions Group, a strategic consulting consortium in Beverly Hills that helps companies expand their businesses to the Internet and broadband.

For client Phillips Media, she recently developed an episodic content-driven Web site. Other projects on which she has recently worked include development of a broadband strategy for a real estate company and the design of a new online entertainment and shopping site for women.

“There’s only a handful of us in the industry who are exploring what it’s all about,” she said. “We’re not just re-purposing (finding new uses for existing creative content).”

Broday Gotler, 45, began her career in the music video industry, and she became one of the main suppliers of programming to MTV (leading to an American Music Award, an MTV Award and an International Monitor Award).

“I’ve always been into film and music, traditional media and technology. In the early 1990s, interactive technology came along, and I was completely captivated,” she said.

When the CD-ROM business evolved, some former colleagues asked her to take part in the development of a multimedia education project called Columbus, which was funded by IBM. “I became a bridge between the commercial entertainment people and the technology people, and migrated them to the interactive space,” she said.

After a stint with WNET-TV, New York’s public television station, Broday Gotler served as chief operating officer of electronic publishing for an urban-based information technology company called e.villages, which provides classroom and online computer literacy training for inner-city residents.

Fusing her expertise in production, marketing and interactive media, Broday Gotler left electronic publishing to join the interactive agency iXL in Los Angeles, where she helped define the universe of broadband television. Her team designed a 1,000-channel viewer navigation system for Tele-Communications Inc., launching enhanced channel demos to show the look and feel of the future.

“Whenever I get into a space and am not sure about things, I call Beth. She is always on the forefront of technology and knows the people that move projects forward,” explained Liz Heller, former executive vice president at Capitol Records.

Heller, who recently left Capitol, is developing a business concept for a new software company. Her first stop was Digital Directions.

Andrea Nylund