Dara Cook

Cook is an integral part of VH1 and MTV’s programming slate. She’s behind bringing daily live television back to MTV as well as the reinvention of “Total Request Live”—a series for which she wrote for many years. Cook has helped reposition VH1 as the network where pop culture comes to party and is in part responsible for the network’s eight consecutive quarters of growth. She thinks diversity as an idea needs to be reimagined beyond race and gender. “We also need diversity of thought which is critical to fostering a creative environment,” she says. “People who think differently create different content.”