THEATER ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE HOLDING DOWN THE FORT Shelli Taylor Joins Alamo Drafthouse as New CEO BY REBECCA PAHLE “That’s important to us, to expand our footprint. If we’re going to [support] filmmakers and studios and maximize the life of a film, that footprint matters. We want as many people to have access to the movies as possible.” The world was a very different place when Shelli Taylor began the series of conversations with Alamo Drafthouse that would land her in the exhibition industry, even if it was just 10 months ago, in late December 2019. Only one month later, cinemas in China would close due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In February, northern Italy followed. Within weeks, the bulk of the world’s theaters—including those in the United States—had stopped in-person operations. And on April 30, <strong>2020</strong>, Shelli Taylor was announced as the new CEO of cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse. “The goal of the role was very different” when she first signed on, says Taylor, with classic understatement. Covid-19 crystallized her number one responsibility—nothing less than keeping her company afloat through a frightening pandemic and confronting its ripple effects on the exhibition industry: closures, wobbly theatrical exclusivity windows, and a film slate that can’t seem to stay put. When Covid hit the U.S., “I decided to leap anyway,” says Taylor—inspired by the community spirit, customer service, and “incredible presentation” that first drew her in as an Alamo fan when she moved to Austin, Texas, and began taking her then-13-year-old son to the movies there. Conversations with Alamo cofounder and now-former CEO Tim League (still involved with Alamo and its sister companies, Mondo and Fantastic Fest, as executive chairman) took her from an appreciative fan to a full-on enthusiast, someone who “fell in love with this entrepreneurial, scrappy, just really cool team that’s following their passions and created an incredible business out of it. I was just like, ‘How can I pass that up?’” In looking for a new CEO, League said, in a statement at the time of Taylor’s hiring, he wanted someone “with a strong voice and battle-tested leadership skills.” In Taylor, Alamo found someone who had honed those skills outside the exhibition industry. Before being hired by Alamo, she served as president and CEO of Austinbased United PF Partners, a conglomerate of Planet Fitness franchisees. In 2010 she started a brief tenure as V.P. of Disney English China, working to deliver Englishlanguage experiences, products, and services to children ages 2 to 12. But her longest pre-Alamo role was at Starbucks, where Taylor was instrumental in the 40 <strong>Winter</strong> <strong>2020</strong>
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