Rick Cotton
Rick Cotton’s No. 1 passion is public policy–with journalism and business tied for second. Lucky for him, the executive vice president and general counsel of NBC Universal has a job that lets him combine all three. He spent most of his undergraduate days working for the Harvard Crimson newspaper. After he graduated in 1965, Cotton went to work as a reporter for Newsweek, deferring law school for one year. While his work at Newsweek was the perfect marriage of these passions, Yale Law–known for its public policy focus–provided Cotton with a way concentrate his energy where he felt it mattered most. “At that point I was very focused on public policy issues,” he explains.
