Sylvia Walks: Sylvia Muller's Profile Page

I was lucky enough to grow up in the '60s- a time when anything was possible... I was also lucky enough to get a great liberal arts education. I learned how to learn and this opened for me the opportunity to do anything I wanted to do. I didn't grow up thinking of work as just a paycheck. I grew up knowing I would never be happy unless I was working at something that was interesting to me. (Not that I have always been happy in my work, but it has never been boring!)

I graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1976 with a major in music (composition) and a minor in film (history, criticism and production) and decided I did not need to be a musician if I did not want to be. Knowing that I would always have music around me (my first husband is an extremely talented musician), I decided not to take a job unless it was related to film in some way. This decision ultimately landed me in the burgeoning Pay TV business, an industry which "the boys" had not yet taken seriously so there were plenty of openings for women. Many of my female peers from those early days are among the top names in the cable, satellite, and new media industries today. In the mid '80s I had the great fortune to get a job as Director of Programming for Wometco Home Theatre, an over the air Pay TV service in the New York metro area before most of the boroughs and suburbs had cable TV. I got to program everything from major motion pictures and entertainment events, to art films, children's and even adult programming... What a blast!!!

When our parent corporation was sold off in KKR's first leveraged buyout deal (so '80s!!!), I landed at the BBC's US commercial operation as Director of Sales focused on the cable TV industry. Over the course of my 10 years at the BBC, our team increased their revenue in the US nearly tenfold. It wasn't always fun (it was in the house of my ancestors that we got dressed up for the Boston Tea Party {really true!} and it is not in my blood to submit to British Colonial Rule!) but it was never dull. Along with a few intrepid colleagues in our Canadian, Australian and German offices, I helped drag the BBC kicking and screaming into the brave new world of branded channels and new media development. Against much corporate objection, I built the business and programming plans to launch BBC America. It's a longer story than I have time to tell here, but the BBC in all their infinite wisdom decided to lay off all the senior management in the US that had made all this happen. A kick in the butt, but an immediate feeling of freedom!

I was never very "corporate" and did not interview well with the network boys. I did some marketing and business development consulting. I dabbled in streaming video online, but we were a bit ahead of our time for our business model.

At this time my (2nd) husband was also going through a period of change. He had gone from owning restaurants, a food manufacturing business and a Wall Street catering company, to just one restaurant and some commercial real estate to sell. His partner did not want to do any more new business. At the time, we had a second home in Montauk, NY and were stretching our weekends with laptops in tow. We were trying to figure out how to create a way to make a living in a place where we wanted to live. Gary suggested buying an inn. I said, "I could do that..."

My grandparents were both art history professors at Smith College and taught summer courses in Florence and Venice. My mother went as chaperone and translator and my grandmother was gracious enough to pay for my sister and me to tag along. For six summers of my childhood I lived in some of the top small hotels in Europe - the Hotel Tournabouni Beacci in Florence (where they shot "A Room With a View" - that was my mother's room!) and the Locanda Cipriani Torcello in Venice. I remember the Signorina Gabriella having trestle tables set up beside the canal every afternoon. The waiters and chambermaids brought out all the flowers from the restaurant and guest rooms. The gardeners brought baskets of fresh flowers and she spent several hours getting new arrangements ready to fill the inn. I knew what it was supposed to be like...

The rest, I guess, is history, and what's next, I suppose, is "herstory" in the making.