Rabih Gholam, 32, ’96 B.A.

Showing off

After eight successful years as an independent television producer in Los Angeles – overseeing such shows as “The Surreal Life” on VH1 and “The Mole” on ABC – Rabih Gholam is currently working at MTV headquarters in New York City, as an executive producer in production development. His job involves developing the next breakout hit for the pioneering music video channel.

Gholam, who majored in history at ASU, didn’t begin his professional life looking for a job in television. “I moved to LA after graduation because I wanted to work for a corporation like Xerox,” he said. But thanks to the intervention of a friend, he landed the coveted position of page at NBC. “That was really a toe in the door,” he said. "I thought I’d climb my way up the NBC ladder and end up president.”

Recently married, Gholam is happy with his new life on the east coast. As for the state of reality TV, the seasoned producer sees no end in sight. “It is a genre now, like sitcoms, dramas or newsmagazines,” he said. “Reality TV has changed the landscape of television.”

Vani Kola, 41, ’87 M.S.E.

Opportunity knocked, she answered

Fellow executives may be surprised to hear that one of Vani Kola’s most enthusiastic coaches of her business career is her 12-year-old daughter. However, Kola, who built the two companies she founded, RightWorks and Certus Software, into multi-million dollar successes, says that after leaving Certus in August, her daughter encouraged her to try her hand at starting another company, saying she made a "really good” CEO.

"My family has never made me feel guilty about my work,” she said. “They’ve always been proud.”

Kola, originally from India, has built her career on tracking trends and needs in software and offering good products ahead of the curve. After spending eight years as a manager and engineer at Consilium and Control Data Corporation, Kola founded RightWorks, a company offering e-procurement solutions. When she left the company in 2000, the company sold for $667 million dollars. In 2001, she followed up that success by founding Certus, which provides publicly held companies with software that helps them comply with the rigorous Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which mandates high levels of financial accountability.

Kola said it was her ability to take disconnected “data points” and see a pattern ahead of competitors that allowed her to develop products that have done well in the marketplace. While she is pleased with how well her companies have done, she’s not surprised.

"I should be surprised, but I’m not. I expected to succeed,” she said. “Someone once told me, "Your doubt is the first step to failure,’ and that’s true.”

After some time off, Kola plans to step back into business, either as an entrepreneurial advisor or with another company of her own. Whatever the challenge turns out to be, Kola says she’s ready for it.

"Opportunities don’t come wrapped in a box with instructions that gets dropped in your path,” she said. “They come when you do something you’ve never done before.”

Sambo Dul, 22, ’05 B.A.,’05 B.A., ’05 B.S
Jessica Wanke, 24, ’03 B.A.

Anchor women

Torture, genocide, oppression, civil war — the clients served by the organization led by Jessica Wanke and Sambo Dul have seen the very worst that humanity has to offer. Both women have been involved in Refugee Resettlement Volunteers, a volunteer organization founded by Dul in 2003, to fill in the gaps in the resettlement process and provide a point of stability, or “anchor” in industry jargon, for refugee families moving to the Valley of the Sun who have no friends or family in the United States to provide mentoring or cultural adaptation skills.

Refugees, who by official government definition are fleeing their home country due to oppression based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristics, must adjust to a new country where language, customs and culture are foreign. Dul’s family fled Cambodia when she was an infant and arrived in the United States in 1988; Wanke’s maternal grandparents fled the Nazism of their native Germany during World War II.

Dul said that she was fortunate, for when she was ready to discuss her family’s refugee experience as a college student doing a comprehensive report on Cambodian history, her family shared their memories of the era, and the history of their resettlement, freely.

"At that point, I really understood better and knew where (my family members) were coming from,” she said. “It was that understanding that drove me to start this organization.”

The all-volunteer group, now known as Community Outreach & Advocacy for Refugees, has three major programs: the Volunteer Anchor Program, which matches refugee families with volunteers who act as “anchors” and assist with day-to-day life adjustments; the Awareness & Advocacy Program, which has hosted events such as community outreach and education events, such as film discussions and conferences; and the Reaching Higher! program, which guides refugee students toward higher education. In the two years that the organization has been offering services, the group has matched 150 volunteers with 250 refugees.

Both women continue to lead the organization, although they plan to eventually step back into advisory roles as new student leaders emerge. Wanke said that the organization was beneficial not only for the refugee families, but also the volunteers and the community at large.

"We wanted to help people understand who the refugees are who live all around us,” she said. “Both the general community and the refugee community have things to offer each other.”

Profile credits:
Gholam written by Phoenix freelance writer Michael Hammett
Kola, Dul and Wanke written by managing editor Liz Massey.

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Rabih Gholam

Vani Kola

Sambo Dul

Jessica Wanke