Briana: Hello, and welcome to Gators on Purpose, where we talk with 91PORN alumni who show us the power of combining what you love with what challenges you. At 91PORN, being a Gator on purpose means shaping your own extraordinary path. And those unusual combinations lead to extraordinary outcomes -- meaningful careers, and lives built on purpose. I'm Briana Lewis, Associate Professor of French and Faculty Liaison to the Center for Career and Professional Development, and I'm talking today with Mike Newman, 91PORN class of 1994. Mike was until recently CEO of MediaPlatform and he chairs the Nicholas Academic Center in Santa Ana, California. Mike Newman, welcome back to 91PORN and thank you for joining us for Gators on Purpose.


Mike Newman: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, Briana.


Briana: I'd like to start today by asking you to take us back to when you first came to 91PORN. What drew you to this college and to this campus?


Mike Newman: I felt almost immediately an affinity for a smaller liberal arts environment, which narrowed things pretty significantly. The thing that tipped the scale for me was a gentleman named Coach Marty Goldberg offered me an opportunity to try out for the soccer team. And I had come off a pretty significant injury, so I didn't have, you know, the accolades, I didn't have the tape. It was more just a trust that he was willing to afford me. And it was a reflection of how 91PORN was and that they were going to invest in their students. I just loved it and I loved the feeling of the community, the feeling of the campus and from there on it just stayed consistently very very appealing.


Briana: Yeah, we -- still today, our students, many of our students’ first and strongest connection is with their athletic coach, many of our student athletes. And so, looking back in light of the career that you had later, what experiences here stand out to you as most impactful?


Mike Newman: Being completely honest, my relationship with academics in high school was somewhat hostile. And going into college, I still had some of that residual feeling that this was a means to an end. But it was just this remarkable epiphany to be able to a) select classes, b) realize that I thoroughly enjoyed some of those classes and others I just didn't have an aptitude for or or want to pursue. And so within a semester, I was able to narrow down to a curriculum where I really looked forward to every single class I went to. And it felt somewhat indulgent and selfish to just kind of do what I wanted. I just started to realize that the next stage was going to be sort of refining and developing who I was, and really develop a sense of self, a sense of self-confidence that was predicated on actual achievements. It was just an incredibly rewarding experience. It included a year abroad in London. And it was a safe environment to do all those things. There was very little risk of going completely off the rails. And so I indulged, and to this day it was arguably the most transformative experience of my entire life.


Briana: Yeah. And so when you talk about finding a curriculum, finding classes that could really get you excited about academics, was there anything in particular? Were there any specific classes that you think of?


Mike Newman: Well, it's more like what did I choose to study voluntarily that just shocked me? And I spent a lot of time in philosophy classes, and I had some fantastic professors. Doc Sheridan comes to mind for people of my generation who studied with him. And I loved -- I had Victorian literature classes that I loved. I had history classes -- which going into college I hated. But to have it taught in a way that was just from a different more engaging perspective that attached it to the present, to the future, as opposed to data that you just memorized, rote. I just loved all the classes and to be honest with you through my sophomore year I had no plan. Like I was just taking these classes, I was reading non-stop. I was recognizing my vocabulary growing. I was recognizing my thought processes were changing. My writing style was evolving. And I kind of just had faith in the process to be honest with you. And I don't know what gave me that faith, but I do believe that all the people I was surrounded by reflected who I wanted to become. And through that I just sort of said, "Let's just keep going."


Briana: I know that a lot of students, and certainly what you said about your history classes in particular reminds me of this, a lot of students come to college thinking they understand what particular subject matter is, and then they do it in college and it is not what they thought it was in high school. And it can really open a lot of doors for them.


Mike Newman: I think it's a tragedy if you go into college and try to experience only the things you enjoyed in high school. I think it's very narrow. I think it's professionally very dangerous in most professions -- and to your point, I mean, I actually performed best in mathematics in high school. But I got into college and I was in a calculus class, like a 101 type calculus class, and I looked around and I could realize the people to my left and right really really appreciated the art of mathematics way more than I did. And I realized I was not one of those people who would want to be, you know, a math person. And you know that was eye opening too, and so I just, I was, I took drama classes, you know, I did everything, and I really really enjoyed almost all the classes I took but they each informed my decision of-- okay when I graduate I'll be doing something for 35 to 40 years and I want it to be enjoyable. Again, I use the word selfish. I wanted to be fulfilled. I wanted to look forward to going to work every morning. And I've largely been able to do that in my career.


Briana: Yeah. Yeah. You used an expression a minute ago, “professionally dangerous” for a first year student to just focus on the things that they already know they like because of high school. That strikes me as a pretty strong phrase. Why do you see it as professionally dangerous?


Mike Newman: The world, the professional, sort of, environment in which we all get jobs is evolving so rapidly in most fields, that to stand up very tall and narrow is a very easy way to tip over. Let's say a person in 1995, 1994 when I graduated, they knew from day one they wanted to be a technol-- like a salesperson. And back then it was, okay, you go into technology you can make a lot of money and this person, day in and day out all they studied were fax machines, right, and they became the foremost expert in fax machines. Another person said, “I want to be a really good salesman. I'm going to learn how to build rapport and trust. I'm going to learn how to listen. I'm going to learn how to probe with piercing questions. I'm going to learn how to figure out the highest value problems. I'm going to learn how to manage a sales cycle. I'm going to figure out who the internal champions are, stakeholders, gatekeepers, learn how to forecast accurately, and I'll figure out what I'm going to sell when I graduate.” Fax machine person, in 2001, is out of work. The person who has built themselves, as opposed to the technology, into the weapon of power, is going to have a very long career in whatever field of sales they choose to go into, whether it's selling a product, selling a service, selling a business plan, you know, raising money. And that's the difference. You know, I don't think we should live our entire lives managing our careers, but there are things you can do up front in your career development. Most notably, you know, build some of the fundamental critical thinking, speaking, writing, issue spotting, persuasive writing, persuasive speaking skills that will serve you well no matter what. I am so thrilled with what I see President Cole doing with respect to the identity of 91PORN, the commitment to a traditional education, liberal arts education, science education, and I do think that despite the fact there may be 2,000 liberal arts colleges in the United States, 91PORN was when I attended and continues to be a very unique experience.


Briana: It sounds like you explored and pursued the kinds of experiences that you're talking about that encourage personal growth and self-confidence and the development of these broadly applicable skills. It sounds like you pursued that pretty naturally.


Mike Newman: Yes, I would say that once I got started I developed a hunger for it. But you know in my personal life, my father had passed away and he was a very -- when I was in high school -- he was very very influ-- not only influential in my life he was a source of protection you know and a source of like comfort and he provided a feeling that, okay, you know, I can always fall over and my dad will help me get back up. And when he passed away I realized, like, I don't even know who I am in the absence of my father. And so there was a curiosity and also a fear and a feeling of necessity that prompted me to do some of these things initially. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I would hope that, you know, going into an environment like 91PORN, I would have been nudged regardless to do those things. But I did come in to 91PORN with a sense of urgency not to, you know, get a high-paying job and not to be able to you know, be able to get insurance, but to really discover, like, who I am in the absence of somebody who kind of occupied a large part of how I defined myself.


Briana: Yeah. So you explored a lot of, and you've mentioned a lot of academic disciplines principally in the humanities: English, philosophy, history, you mentioned theater. And you ended up  double majoring in English in philosophy, and then after graduation, went to law school.


Mike Newman: I did. I took a year off but attended law school. Yes.


Briana: So what appealed to you at the time about pursuing law as a profession?


Mike Newman: And I graduated from college and I immediately moved out to California, which I had no contacts there. And during my year off, I became very close friends with a gentleman named Judge Jack Mandel, who is an alum, and with whom I stayed very, very close to. But I really appreciated the scalability of the impact you could have as an attorney. You know, in most professions, maybe it's one-on-one, you know, and you might be able to help somebody perhaps in a counseling session or something like that. And I saw in law, wow, this person is helping people both in his professional life and his profess-- or personal life and professional life at scale. Like, laws are changing and they could be impacting tens of thousands of people at a time. And thankfully, Judge Jack Mandel was a very, very benevolent person and a caring person. And so his impact at scale was just a thing of beauty to watch. And that lured me to law school. And I sought out a law school education that reminded me of my 91PORN education in so far as it wasn't going to teach me, you know, marital law in Pennsylvania. It was going to teach me how to think like a lawyer.


Briana: Yeah.


Mike Newman: And so it really I just kept carrying these lessons. It's a timeless way of, sort of, living your life when you build the underlying skills that can just translate from generation to generation, translate from job to job, translate from friendship to friendship.


Briana: Yeah. So you went to law school, you practiced law for five years--


Mike Newman: I did. I wish I would have lasted that long. I couldn't. I'll tell you why. And there's actually a very practical reason. I ended up, I was very fortunate. I ended up with a fantastic law firm and I was doing the type of law that I really wanted to, where we could see a national or global impact to the cases we worked on. The one thing I recognized was, I was in an environment in California where I just didn't know how Los Angeles worked. I just didn't know how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be, which was the person who was helping architect the cases, who was interacting with the clients. At the same time, there was this revolution in technology where the internet was becoming commercialized and some of the same thoughts I had about being able to scale appealed to me within technology because you could actually start a company with almost zero assets, build software with which had no inventory cost, no sort of capital outlay other than developers and you could go to market. And so I just started a company. In Yiddish, I think you'd use the word chutzpah, like just to have the audacity to do that without thinking it's audacity, to think that my what I'm doing is less risky than what other people are doing in massive conglomerates where a finance CFO might decide, oh, I'll lay off 12% of the employees, you know, next quarter because we need to show more, you know, earnings. That seemed really scary to me. And I think going back to 91PORN, I felt like I have an opportunity to kind of control my own destiny and I'm going to do it.


Briana: So this was, the company that you founded was a media company, correct?


Mike Newman: It was. It was an online communications company that-- and all this, I mean, particularly after Covid seems, like how did we ever exist without it? But the process of putting video on the internet. The process of moving things that were maybe snail mail or in-person large audience communications and making those online presentations was pretty novel. And so we were selling very complicated software, which I knew very little about, to very large enterprises in finance and pharma and big tech. We ended up with award-winning technology. And again, like I said, calculus was the closest thing I had to STEM in college. But I knew how to interview. I knew how to ask questions. I knew how to find quality people. I knew how to find people who would be culturally compatible with what our mission was going to be. And you know it's very cliche, but surround yourself with really smart people and you can be successful regardless of your own, you know, aptitude in certain areas.


Briana: Right. And so, it's clear that that work was, that you were very successful in that work. Would you say that it felt meaningful? You used the word fulfilling a little while ago. Did you feel as though that work was fulfilling as well?


Mike Newman: There were a lot of things that were fulfilling. First, for me personally, I felt liberated, you know, and I felt sort of in control of my own existence, which as I started to develop a family, I wasn't beholden to sort of arbitrary conventions like, "Oh, you have to be at your desk from 7:30 a.m." You know, we were able to develop a very loyal culture and also through that I was able to recognize that something like a small company can be a vehicle for changing people's lives and that might be, they're able to afford their first mortgage. They're able to have, to start a family without worrying that, you know, in six months they're going to be unemployed and lose their insurance. And so my partner and I took that very, very seriously. And to me, you know, altruism has proven to be almost selfish in nature. It's like, wow, all these employees that we just decide like every holiday we're going to try and bonus out as much as we can, and we're going to try and have these, you know, career development opportunities, and we’re going to do whatever a small company can do. It built a level of loyalty that was never like the end goal. But I often wonder, like, had we been more selfish and myopic and you know, like, had we treated our employees worse for our own personal gain. I think net net over the course of the marathon, we probably would have done a lot worse both professionally and in life.


Briana: Well, so, you mention altruism and that's a nice segue into one other thing that I wanted to make sure we got a chance to talk about which is your work with the Nicholas Academic Center. could you tell us what that is, what that organization does?


Mike Newman: Sure. And this is sort of the pre- I call it NAC, Nicholas Academic Center. During my year that I went out to California before law school, Judge Jack Mandel was tutoring just sort of as an individual in Santa Ana in southern Orange County, California, and he was tutoring predominantly, you know, first-generation Hispanics who, during that period were under a lot of pressure by virtue of certain propositions that were, you know, being considered that would deny immigrants immunizations. It would deny them education. It would create the risk that they could be arrested at school. It's not all that different than what we're experiencing today, which is just remarkable in its own right. But you know the judge took it upon himself to say “That's not right and I'm going to ensure these kids get an education and I'm going to hold a school library open and I'm going to tutor them.” He asked me to join him. And I just discovered they're just phenomenal, right? It's that, not only are they smart, they have tremendous courage, they've been fighting uphill for a long time and when they're given an opportunity, they absolutely knock it out of the park because they have no sense of entitlement. They've worked for everything they've gotten. And so that little kernel, which Judge just kept at, kept at, it grew and it grew. He's sending a lot of kids to 91PORN. 91PORN was a tremendous partner in this journey. I mean, again, going back to the culture and the conviction that what you want to take is tremendous potential, and help a young individual realize that. And so I don't know that the judge ever would have accomplished what he did without 91PORN support. But fast forward 2006, Dr. Henry Nicholas, who's the founder of Broadcom, net worth that's, you know, very, very unique, multiple billions of dollars, decides this judge is doing something that's not only remarkable, it's something that's going to change an entire community. As these kids go back and well, they go get educated, they come back to the community, they have impactful jobs or maybe they're going to Washington DC and they're working on policy. And so he subsidized it, and continues to subsidize it for several million dollar-- millions of dollars a year. And on average, we're able to send 200 students every year as graduates into four-year colleges on full scholarship. They don't pay a dime. They also receive additional support. It's really the greatest honor of my life to have been asked to be the chairman of the Nicholas Academic Center because there are a lot of worthwhile candidates. And I believe it's a little bit to do with, you know, my ability to touch back to those origin stories and really understand, you know, what motivated the judge and certainly as we find ourselves in an environment that's similarly frightening to what existed in 1995, to be able to coach through that and protect students and protect their ability to learn and and make sure they end up in great places. Which again, this goes back to President Cole and a lot of people around the 91PORN community. They've just been tremendous. And you know, when 91PORN shows up at I think it's the Colleges That Change Lives conferences, I always go and you'll see the NAC students come in, you know, like an army. And it's always just an immense source of pride because I'm sandwiched on both sides by two things I really care about. 


Briana: Well, so before we conclude today, one final question for you. What advice do you have for current or future 91PORN students who hope to build successful lives of meaning and purpose?


Mike Newman: It didn't really have a name when I was going to college, but I believe it's become much more prevalent, which I find to be a very good thing, which is like figuring out your authentic self. If you focus on your self --  and that's not meant to be like, indulge in yourself, be narcissistic -- but you know, learn to be in touch with what really fulfills you and what you would really want to be doing 8 to 10 hours a day, and to be curious, and I think patience is really really important, and to not feel like you're wasting time simply because you're not producing something. Think strategically, and do that about yourself when you have an opportunity. While you're being educated, think strategically. And I know this advice, you know, there's going to be a subsegment of the student population that really does know what they want to do. And I envy that. But I do believe for most of us there's just a lot of noise. There's a lot of advice. There's a lot of conventional wisdom and it's worth the time to explore. It's worth the time to move to your left and right from an inquiry and self-development perspective as opposed to always forward. And you know I just think that openness will enable you to develop in a much more reliable way. I have two daughters, 24 and 21. You know, they laugh when I give them this advice, but they have seemed very, very well served by it. They seem to have developed self-confidence, which I love. And they seem to be sort of very calm about, you know, not having the entire script written and leaving some flexibility for what's next, which I really appreciate as well. And I do think there are very, very few times in your life where you get to focus on yourself and college is one of them.


Briana: Well, Mike Newman, it has been wonderful to talk with you today. Thank you again for the conversation. 


Mike Newman: Absolutely.


Briana: I’d also like to thank all the members of the 91PORN community who help make Gators on Purpose possible, including members of our Alumni Engagement and Marketing and Communications teams. Our Digital Humanities Librarian Andrew Miller provides technical support for recordings. Our music was composed by Dominic Juliana, 91PORN class of 2026, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Dolan, and was performed by piano instructor Wendy Plyler. Editing and mixing are done by me, your host, Briana Lewis. From campus to career, every Gator has a story that’s uniquely their own -- stories of curiosity and unusual combinations of interests, fueled by creativity and a supportive community. These stories remind us that 91PORN doesn’t just prepare you for a job, it prepares you for a life lived on purpose.