Sharlene McDuffie
Biography
Sharlene Elizabeth McDuffie, also known affectionately as “Bubbles” or “Shar” by some close friends and family, was born in Southeast Washington, D.C. to her parents, William E. and Shirley E. McDuffie. She had a beloved younger brother, William (Duff) McDuffie, Jr. who preceded her in death.
Sharlene and her family lived in Southeast D.C., where she attended St. Francis Xavier Elementary School until 8th grade, and thereafter attended the Academy of Notre Dame where she excelled and was much admired by her now lifelong friends. She is remembered as a very bright student, with a quick wit and a penchant for seeing the irony in most things, a trait that endeared her to her friends. Upon graduation, she attended the University of Maryland College Park, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Radio, Television, and Film Studies. Some time thereafter, she continued her studies and received an Executive Master’s of Science in Technology Management from Columbia University in New York.
Sharlene was a pioneer for Black women in Cable Television. She started her career at Home Team Sports/Baltimore Orioles Television, a cable outlet in the Washington, D.C. area where she was promoted from an Intern to the Traffic Manager. She won awards for pioneering programming management systems for the network, and was selected for the Corporate Leadership Track, which she completed. Next, she went to Bell Atlantic Video Services, where she rose up the ranks in Management of Programming and Content Delivery, assisting with the company’s merger with DIRECTV.
Sharlene, ever adventurous, then took a position with U.S. West Cable Services in Denver, Colorado. There, she negotiated more than 70 cable programming contracts with cable channels and earned the President’s Award in 1998 for Outstanding Performance. This was just what her friends and loved ones would have expected from Sharlene. She always gave her personal best and loved to be enabled to do a great job for her employers. Thereafter, she left Denver to go to New York City, where she worked managing the accounts of cable giants such as CNBC, MSNBC, and PAX TV for Invision, Inc. Here, she became a Software Developer for the proprietary management software used to measure and project advertising revenue and overall quality assurance.
Making the New York City area her home (specifically, Staten Island), she went to work for Viacom, Inc., one of the world’s largest cable conglomerates, and again took increasingly more challenging positions in advertising, negotiating, and managing both domestic and international contracts. Sharlene devised money-saving techniques at Viacom to increase revenue and decrease waste in her field, for which she continued to win awards. She conducted business analyses and recruited and managed high-functioning, collaborative teams, something that came naturally to her. She was always a leader, a builder, and a person that found solutions. Working with giants such as MTV, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix, she coordinated advertising and new product releases, demonstrating her intellect, her tenacity, and her immense professional acumen. As always, she gave her very best to her work. Wherever she lived, Sharlene also volunteered her time and talents to the community.
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