Nora Ali, CEO & Founder of Mason Media
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For our latest episode, I’m joined by a dear friend and mentor: Nora Ali. Nora is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mason Media, a full-service production company and brand studio, which she co-founded alongside MLB all-star Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) and tech billionaire Marc Lore. Truth be told, I’ve been waiting a long time to have her on — and in the episode excerpts below, you’ll learn why.
With a degree in Statistics and Quantitative Finance from Harvard, Nora began her career by building a foundation in capital markets as an Asian Equities Associate on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs. She then helped build and launch e-commerce company Jet.com as an early member of the product and marketing teams, seeing the company through its $3.3 billion acquisition by Walmart. She took her finance, retail, and startup expertise to Cheddar, where she joined as an on-air anchor covering tech, business, and entertainment news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. At Cheddar, Nora also created, produced, and hosted several specialty series, with a special interest in elevating historically overlooked voices. Nora recently hosted Morning Brew’s flagship podcast “Business Casual,” a Top 10 business podcast on Apple upon her debut as its new host.
Nora is a child of Bangladeshi immigrants, and a proud Minnesotan now living in New York City. She is also an award-winning violinist and pianist, having frequently performed the national anthem at MLB games, appearing as a soloist with several professional orchestras, and making her Carnegie Hall debut in May 2023.
Read on for episode excerpts, which we’ve edited for clarity + brevity. Curated by our Content Fellow, Nikki Zinzuwadia. 👇🏾
Simi Shah: Talk to me about the genesis of your startup, Mason Media, which is a full-service production company and brand studio that you co-founded with MLB all-star A-Rod and tech billionaire Marc Lore.
Nora Ali: Marc called me and said he had a couple ideas for some specific shows, but that he really saw this whitespace in smart, entrepreneurship-focused, business-focused, innovation-focused content in television and beyond. He told me he and Alex and were partnering on some business opportunities. They didn’t know exactly what the business model was for this or what this could be. But he said, ‘We know that you're the person to do it.’
I went on my journey of my due diligence and talking to anyone who could possibly give me advice. I was personally repped by United Talent Agency because of my work as a news anchor for Cheddar TV. They said, ‘Nora, we will add people to your team that represent production companies and non-scripted people. We’ve got your back if you do this. Don't say no, because we think you'll regret it if you do.’ In the world of entertainment, the weight that people's names carry — for better or for worse — makes a huge difference. So the fact that you have a known entity, A-Rod, and then also this tech billionaire, Marc Lore, who can unlock access to different worlds, stories, IP and characters — that just automatically puts us ahead of others who willy nilly want to put together a production company. And that's how it all came to be.
Simi: Can you talk about early challenges you faced in launching Mason Media?
Nora: The hardest time for me was when I quit anchoring for Cheddar News. I was on camera every day. That’s what people knew me for. I got DMs every day asking: ‘Where did you go? Why aren’t you on TV? What are you doing now?’ I couldn't talk about it, because of the high-profile nature of my co-founders. I could only loosely share that I was working on something. At the time, I also foresaw myself anchoring for my career, so I felt pretty uneasy for a while.
In our society, what you do for work is the first question people ask you in any environment. I try to be very cognizant of that when I meet new people. I try not to make that the first thing I ask them. It was hard to be in new environments and meet new people at networking events. I could share what I was doing, but I couldn't point them to anything online about it. There was no press release; there was no website; there was nothing. Even if I named who I was working with, it felt fake.
Once I onboarded my Head of Development and my COO, it felt like I had an actual team. We had a couple pilots which made it feel real. Our development slate had 10 to 15 shows. I had to take a step back and remind myself: ‘Yes, I've been building quietly for what feels like forever. But, we have done a lot, even if it's not apparent to the public.’ But honestly, it was really refreshing to put out our first press release and to be able to share it with my family and relatives. It’s real. It’s been better to be able to actually talk about it.
Simi: You’ve gained internet fame for this, but you’re one of the few media companies and production studios that has an all-female executive team. Was that intentional? Can you speak to your experience as a woman of color in this industry?
In any industry, it's hard to be a woman, a woman of color. In entertainment, specifically, most of the people that I come across, that I’m pitching to, and am talking to have mostly only been in entertainment their entire careers. You work your way from the mailroom at some talent agency, all the way up to being an executive. Blood, sweat, and tears. So when I come in as this newbie — a relatively young, woman of color — I can sense that they feel like I cut the line.
It makes it hard for me to feel that I have authority in a lot of these rooms. Sometimes I feel that I have to maintain a different persona when I'm in certain rooms. Just to be the CEO of this company that's doing the pitch, I feel that I have to bring more gravitas and slowness than is inherent ot me. I'm naturally a very bubbly person. But in those rooms, often when I’m meeting with certain people on my fundraising journey, I feel I have to be more still and authoritative. It messes with you. You have to tap into another version of yourself. And honestly, I felt the need to do this based on discussions that I've had with other female founders during my fundraising process. I interviewed so many founders when I was at Cheddar about how hard it is to raise as a woman and/or as a person of color. I've heard all these stories, but it’s so different to actually experience it. People just don't take you as seriously when you're the one who shows up in the room.
In this episode, we explore Nora's incredible pivots from finance to broadcast journalism to entrepreneurship, and of course, the triumphs and tribulations she's faced along the way — listen now on Apple, Spotify, and our website!
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