Executives

Jeff Sakson

Vice President, Publicity

Jeffrey Sakson is Participant Media’s Vice President of Publicity, reporting to Executive Vice Presidents of Marketing Buffy Shutt and Kathy Jones. At Participant Media, he is responsible for overseeing publicity efforts for all Participant film releases and social action campaigns related to its films, liaising with Participant’s in-house social action and digital teams as well as the various distributors' publicity teams. He is also in charge of corporate communications for the company.

Sakson is a veteran of 22 years in the marketing department at Universal Pictures, most recently as Senior Vice President of Publicity.  It was at Universal where he first worked with Shutt and Jones, who were co-Presidents of Marketing.
 
His responsibilities there included handling corporate PR for the film division, supervising Hispanic campaigns, overseeing all film-related consumer products press, management of the publicity department, and serving as the publicity point person for such films as Curious George; Jarhead; The Emperor’s Club; the re-releases of E.T., Apollo 13 and Vertigo; Casino; To Wong Foo; The River Wild; In the Name of the Father and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.  Sakson was also the studio’s publicity executive on the hit Broadway musical Wicked.  After leaving Universal, he worked as a freelance publicity consultant on such projects as The Black Dahlia and Bella.

Sakson began his career in the New York publicity department at Columbia Pictures in 1981, moving over to Universal's New York office in 1984, before transferring to Universal's west coast headquarters in 1989.

What was your first job: In junior high, I used to babysit for all the kids in my neighborhood.

Who or what has been your greatest inspiration: The movies, particularly the ones I saw when I was growing up that were products of the studio system of the 1940s-1960s.

What is the one thing you would change about yourself or the world:  I would like to be better at living in the moment rather than worrying so much about the future.

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