About Normandy International, Inc.

Normandy International, Inc. is a specialized media consultancy with nearly two decades of success and hands-on experience with strategic marketing, event production and international television negotiations. Serving as an extension of a company’s expertise, Normandy “connects the dots” for clients seeking to create high-profile events, pioneer new technologies or forge strategic media alliances around the world.

The company’s growth was spurred through its many “firsts” in the global distribution of sports and music content to more than 100 countries. Normandy International was the first independent woman-owned company to distribute the worldwide television rights to heavyweight championship boxing matches, and has represented champions George Foreman and Riddick Bowe. In 2007, before the words “live streaming” became part of our national vocabulary, Normandy was the first to develop a financially successful model for the non-stop live internet transmission of music festivals from the United States. In 2010, Quincy Jones selected Normandy to pioneer the first national model of “on-demand giving”, bringing together both the cable and satellite industries for “We Are the World 25 for Haiti”. Normandy has produced hundreds of hours of network content, and currently owns the largest privately-held library of exclusive interviews with boxing champions including Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, and Lennox Lewis, and more.

When the Normandy team – led by founder Alexis Denny Kaufmann – is engaged to innovate or create, it ramps up quickly, and works side-by-side with client staff and resources to expand their reach and effectiveness. We not only provide a strategic roadmap, but go further than “consultants” in managing the execution, marketing and distribution across many platforms – ultimately ensuring a successful launch.

International companies who have retained or partnered with Normandy include BSkyB, the New York Philharmonic, Quincy Jones Productions, AEG Live, the City of Denver, Eco-Week Greece, the Bermuda Music Festival, Canal Plus, JSB, TV Globo, MNet, BBC, Premiere, and over 25 television networks on all continents.

Normandy’s board of advisors includes Reese Schonfeld, founding President and CEO of CNN, and later the first President of The Food Network. He is joined by Larry Baer, executive vice president and part owner of the San Francisco Giants, and Melcior Soler, of IXTV Barcelona.

About Alexis Denny Kaufmann:

Alexis Denny Kaufmann is an Emmy-award winning journalist, founder of several pioneering media companies and a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Yale University. Her communications expertise is both broad and deep, built through her innovative activities in both the production and business sides of global information.

As a journalist, she has conducted hundreds of interviews with celebrities in music, sports and entertainment. On behalf of Normandy International and NextThing TV, she has negotiated rights contracts in over 100 countries for some of the most lucrative pay-per-view events of the past 20 years. As a creator of new methods for media outreach, Alexis worked directly with Quincy Jones and his team to design many of the marketing messages and technology vehicles for the “We Are the World 25 for Haiti” humanitarian campaign. Alexis collaborated with partners Coca-Cola, Comcast and AEG to develop multi-media content and strategy for the rollout of nationwide billboards, pay-per-view and text message fundraising. The entire campaign – which included its video debut on the NBC Olympics, a national cable simulcast, a pay-per-view universe of 40 million homes and an iTunes rollout – was conceived, executed and launched in less than 3 weeks.

At the age of 19, Ms. Denny Kaufmann had already established herself as a pioneer in television. While a college sophomore, she was hired as the first woman on the Monday Night Football production team, writing the halftime highlights for Howard Cosell. Upon graduation in 1983, ABC Sports president Roone Arledge assigned her to produce a 30 minute program investigating the potential obstacles to a successful Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She later served as both a producer and director on the broadcast of the 1984 Olympic Games, and as a producer at CBS News prior to founding her own media company, Normandy International. Normandy grew to be active on every continent, and Ms. Denny Kaufmann has personally opened markets and led negotiations with television networks in over a dozen nations including Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, France, Germany, and the UK.

In recent years, as the communications landscape has transformed, Ms. Denny Kaufmann’s early experiences in sports during the infancy of pay-per-view television gave her a head start in understanding the creation of content for “on demand” and real-time consumption. In 2009, under commission from the Bermuda Music Festival, Normandy created and produced the first live-streamed concerts and performances for Quincy Jones, John Legend, comedian Chris Tucker, Wyclef Jean, Erykah Badu and more. Performers who had never agreed to be “streamed” were persuaded to collaborate and new licenses were negotiated for these innovative transmissions.

Further breakthroughs came with interactive fan “chats” built into Facebook architecture. Now commonplace, such integrated tactics were just a theory prior to Ms. Denny Kaufmann’s collaboration with Grammy-winner John Legend to debut the technology in late 2009. Alexis continues to be fascinated by rapidly changing media technologies, and is constantly integrating them into her strategies.

Ms. Denny Kaufmann’s experience with opinion-influencers and international celebrities, together with her long-time interest in the developing world, has also resulted in a number of goodwill initiatives bringing together clients, governments and individuals. She worked with the founding cabinet of Nelson Mandela to expand opportunities for youth in the former township of Soweto, created a coalition to sponsor less fortunate athletes in the Philippines for the Olympic Team, and organized a relief mission to war-torn Somalia (including traveling to the active war zone on a C-130 cargo jet).

Ms. Denny Kaufmann resides in Washington DC with her husband, Steven M. Kaufmann. She is committed to drawing on her range of skills and experiences to help shine a broader light on important global advocacy issues.