Helen Whelan
President and Co-Founder
MyPrimeTime, Inc.

Helen Whelan is President and Co-Founder of MyPrimeTime, Inc., and creator of the original idea for myprimetime.com. Helen is the driving force for Great Entrepreneurs© a weekly television series that debuted on PBS in January 2001 and already commands the highest penetration of the PBS television market by a new media company. Great Entrepreneurs profiles legendary business leaders of yesterday with today’s business visionaries and includes an interactive component.

Great Entrepreneurs has grown out of myprimetime.com. What began as a Website with its October, 1999 launch, has now become one of the top two hundred fifty most-visited sites on the Web. The original idea for MyPrimeTime came from Helen.

She saw the need for a Web site devoted to baby boomers looking for ideas and tools to empower them to create happier, stronger and more financially secure lives.

Helen convinced Craig Forman and Donald Van de Mark to come to California to pitch Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Capital. Hummer Winblad funded not just a Web site, but also a multimedia company providing information, interactivity and tools to millions of adults.

Before launching myprimetime.com, Helen was the Washington, DC bureau chief of The Nightly Business Report on PBS and VP of Business Development at CNN Financial News.

In fact, she wrote and pitched the original business plan for CNNfn. (She cornered Ted Turner outside the men’s room at a company conference!) CNNfn launched simultaneously with the Web site, CNNfn.com in late 1995. Amidst $40 million worth of Web deals alone, Helen introduced CNN to the concept of promotions for equity in Internet companies.

Helen holds an MBA from Sellinger School of Business at Loyola College, was a Davenport Fellow at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and holds a BS in Journalism and Economics from the University of Florida.