Adeft! Adeft!

Adeft! Adeft!

Photo credit: Haddad Media

If you think you can’t do it all, you don’t know Carol Melton. “Carol is a friend and mentor and is someone that so many of us look up to,” said Heather Podesta at an evening hosted by Tammy Haddad, Juleanna Glover, Hilary Rosen and Niki Christoff.  “In a town where women don’t have success in government or business or socially, Carol has excelled in all of those ways. And she is smart, she is beautiful, she is unrelenting and she wins………. and she wins and she wins. She changed the face of media not only in this town, but internationally, and I can’t wait to see what she does with the DC world. And so, it is my great honor on behalf of all of the co-hosts to introduce the founder and CEO of Adeft Capital, a venture capital firm advising and investing in early staged companies; and basically already kicking ass.”

Heather Podesta and Carol Melton

“Well, I don’t know what someone does with an introduction like that,” responded Melton. “One of the things that I’m most blessed with is this group of friends. I had the great privilege of being in a company that got bought and being at a perfect level and at a perfect point in time to do this pivot. So, I have made a transition and we talked about it to the VC (venture capital)world. And it’s the business side of what I do at Time Warner and the policy as fascinating as it is, it was a time in my life where we both talked about working with next generations, working with people who are thinking outside of the box looking at disruptors, looking at innovative spaces is exactly the sort of thing that now gets me really jazzed.”

“Adeft, where did that come from? Like people go, Adeft, Adeft,” a guest asked.  “I will tell you. I’ll save you a lot of time,” answered Carol. “Every name of every God, Goddess, the street you lived on, the places you love …  like Capri, like any Italian city you’ve ever been in that has a beautiful name – forget it. They’re all taken, s0 it actually takes a while but I stumbled on this word that is a gamer term. You can find it in the urban dictionary. There’s also a version of it that is R rated. That’s okay too. It means a skilled player. So, it’s a gamer term and when I stumbled on that I thought, ‘Well, gee this kind of works, because I kind of been a skilled player.’ Part of surviving and ending up where I was in the corporate world was being a skilled player. So, that’s what Adeft means, that’s where it comes from.”

Design Cuisine

“If you have investments that you would like to talk about let me know,” Melton offered.  “I also have lots of things going on, so if you want to talk about anything bring it on. Part of what I’m finding most exciting about all of this is the connections that I’ve made over a lifetime of working in various places in Los Angeles, in New York and Washington.  And the friends who have hosted this party and all of you who are here, you’ve been a hugely important part of my life.  Game on!”

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