Jeff Skoll #15 on Outside Magazine’s Power List

Outside Magazine, November 2011 Wednesday, October 05, 2011 18 The Power List They control the lands you play on, the athletes you worship, the gear you buy, even the food you eat. Meet the 25* most influential people in the world outside. *Ranked in order of influence 15. Jeff Skoll Founder of Participant Media By: The Editors Jeff Skoll Photographer: Joe Ciardiello Hollywood is squeamish when it comes to trying new things (for proof, see last summer’s Thor, The Green Hornet, and X-Men: First Class). So when a script comes along dealing with social issues or the environment, the man you want to get a meeting with is Jeff Skoll, 46, whose Participant Media funds the untouchable message movies the rest of Hollywood laughs at. Skoll, the first president of eBay, made roughly $2 billion after cashing in his stock in the early 2000s. In 2004, the Ontario native launched Participant Media with a freshman slate of movies including Syriana, Murderball, North Country, and Good Night, and Good Luck, which combined garnered 11 Oscar nods. Follow-ups have included a few titles you might find familiar: An Inconvenient Truth; Food, Inc.; and The Cove, the graphic documentary about Japanese dolphin harvesting that won the 2010 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Skoll has dumped hundreds of millions into Participant and doesn’t expect it back. (His Skoll Foundation is equally generous, having given $168 million in grants to social entrepreneurs.) Participant recently optioned a story about the Deepwater Horizon spill, released this summer’s The Help, and is producing a film about Bobby Martinez, a gang member who went on to become a surfing world champ. By the Numbers 35: films Participant Media has financed; 18: Oscar nominations those films have received Second Opinion “To most of Hollywood, movies are ten dollars and a box of popcorn, but to Jeff Skoll they are a way to change the world,” says Louie Psihoyos, director of The Cove. “Hollywood thinks ‘butts in seats’—he thinks ‘minds in seats.’ ” To view entire article, please click on the following link: http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/celebrities/The-Power-List.html