Milano '91
When B.K. Fulton was 22 years old, he sat down and wrote a 60-year plan. He had studied the lives of people he admired, identified what they had in common, and turned those patterns into a blueprint for himself. Decades later, that document is still doing its job.
It has guided him from senior posts at the U.S. Department of Commerce, AOL, Time Warner, and Verizon, where he served as president, into a second act as a filmmaker, Broadway producer, and author with more than 20 films, 19 books, and 4 number-one Broadway shows to his name.
“You can actually create the life you want,” he says. “You reverse-engineer it by looking at successful people that you respect, dissecting what they did, finding the common things, and then you go to work.”
It is a fitting philosophy for a New School alum.
A Second Year, and a Launch Pad
Fulton came to The New School as a Sloan Fellow, part of a program that awarded scholarships to the country’s top policy schools. Most offered a single year of support. The New School offered something more.
“The university may have been the only one to say: If we accept you as a Sloan Fellow, we’ll commit to you and pay for your second year and match the stipend,” he recalls. For Fulton, the son of working-class educators from the South, that mattered. “My
parents really did not know where the money for the second year was going to come from. And The New School solved that problem for me.”
What kept Fulton here was more than the funding. He saw The New School, with its tradition of bringing theory and practice together, as the kind of setting that would allow him to develop into the kind of scholar he wanted to be: someone who didn't only
talk about policy but was willing to get into the weeds and build something to serve individuals and communities.
“The New School set up a launch pad for a person who was interested in engaging—a person who was able to get into the messiness of it all and create something,” he says.
The Polymath’s Secret
Fulton has been called a polymath, and it is easy to see why. He runs businesses, invests in companies, produces films and Broadway shows, writes books, and gives back through philanthropy. To observers, he may look like someone juggling a dizzying number
of careers at once.
Fulton sees it differently.
“What I’m doing is applying the same approach over and over again across different domains,” he says. “What looks like a challenge to you—because I’m doing movies, doing Broadway shows, running businesses, doing philanthropy, writing books—is actually
applying the same techniques over and over again.”
He cites a line from the tennis great Arthur Ashe: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can,” and then, he adds with a smile, “Wash and repeat.”
The quotation also suggests the answer to the question of whether he was always so driven or became that way over time. “None of us are born complete,” he says. “I grew into it, and thank God for growth. I’m too flawed to be perfect, but I am too blessed
to be ungrateful.”
Why Du Bois, and Why Now
This past April, Fulton returned to campus to host the New York City premiere of his latest documentary, W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause. For him, Du Bois is not a distant historical figure but a model for meeting the moment.
“Du Bois was an amazing scholar,” Fulton says. “His output was roughly 10,000 words a week, every week, for 24 years.” It was the method more than the volume that impressed Fulton: Du Bois used every medium available to him, from The Crisis magazine
to pageants and shows. “Each generation is called to use the tools of its time.”
The themes Du Bois returned to, Fulton notes, are highly relevant to people today: reconstruction, fairness, citizenship, the idea that the world should be open to everybody. “An open mind leads to open doors,” he says. “We should all be engaged in making
the world the way it ought to be, so that we all feel safe, we all believe that we can achieve at the highest level.”
He believes institutions like The New School have a role to play. “It’s up to alumni and students at places like The New School to use the tools of our time to bring healing and correction back to a planet that we all love and share.”
A Partner in Everything
When asked about what has played a central role in his growth, Fulton points to his wife and creative partner, Jacquelyn “Jackie” Stone.
“At the end of the day, love wins,” he says. Jackie reads every manuscript and every script; serves as the resident lawyer for their company, Soulidifly Productions; and encouraged him to write his first book, about his younger sister. “All of my creative
output has happened since I’ve been with Jackie Stone. She’s critical.”
Their collaboration attracts notice, he says. “People point to us as an example of the possibility when people that really care about each other engage in something important.”
Do the Most Good
The advice that has shaped Fulton's path the most came from the late Susan "Sue" Morris, the dean of Students during his time at The New School. When he asked her what he should do after graduation, her answer was simple: "Go where you can do the most
good."
"That has stuck with me," he says. "Everywhere I go and every decision I make gets filtered through that thought. Can I do good here? Can I leave this place better than I found it?"
These are questions he hopes the next generation of New School students will always consider. A university, he says, is a place that offers students the perspective that allows them to ask these questions well and the ability to rise above their starting
point and see where the real work needs to be done.
For students just beginning their own journeys, Fulton has a simple charge: "I hope they learn to love themselves enough to give their dreams a chance."