2025

Lori Locke

Executive Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer, Warner Bros. Discovery

“We really have to have more tolerance for each other, and understand that our differences are what make us better at the end of the day.”

What qualities do you feel makes for a person with Power?

Quiet strength. More gratitude and gracefulness in your dealings with different people. You can be a good listener, and you can get your point across pretty quickly if you’re a good listener.

With all the divided issues in the world today, everything from gender equality, child poverty, violence, what do you think is the most pressing issue that we should be thinking about?

That one’s an interesting one. I think at the end of the day, in my mind, we used to gravitate more towards the middle in understanding each other. I think we have to get back to being a less decisive society and really focus on being more, everybody going for the same goals. It’s okay that people have different opinions on guns. That’s perfectly okay. And our society has always had those differences of opinions. But we need, really, to get back to where we work in compromise. Someone last night was talking to me and said, you know, when the United States itself was formed, everybody had a different opinion. But you got in a room and compromised, and we’re going to have to compromise.

Some people have a strong opinion about that and others have an ‘other’ opinion. But we have to compromise and we have to work together on what is the right answer for our country or for the world.There’s world issues that have to be compromised on, too. It’s a meeting of minds and communication. Everything when you navigate politics is about compromise and coming up with the best answer. We have to compromise and come up with the best answer as one united front, not our individual needs.

What do you think is the number one action we can take as a society to form a better society?

I guess it is sort of complimentary to the other. I think we gotta have a lot more grace, and gratefulness too, in how we deal with things. Honestly, we’ve got to understand each other’s positions better and not be just so…so diametrically opposed to each other. To be a better society, we have to.

Like I’ve seen, as everyone has seen in the last ten years, you can make a comment on a political opinion and all of a sudden you don’t have friends anymore. We really have to have more tolerance for each other, and understand that our differences are what make us better at the end of the day.

And we all don’t need to think alike, but it does parlay back into what I said before: we do need to learn to compromise too.

Do you feel that you’ve ever encountered a difficult challenge that you’ve managed to overcome?

When I was growing up, I grew up in a military town. That in itself wasn’t the challenge, but kids are mean. And I’m glad I didn’t grow up in today’s society but, I was pretty much bullied all through middle school to the point that I would get on a bus and no one would let me sit down. That was when you could ride a bus and you had to stand.

At the end of the day, I do believe there is something within me that just had an innate confidence that I would be okay and I would succeed. But there’s nothing like being bullied in—they’re just awful years—the middle school years. And a little through high school to a degree of just, people just think you’re so ugly, they don’t even want to get near you.

I would never have ever told my parents. I didn’t want them to think anything was wrong. I never complained at school, even though it happened. I mean, fascinating to me. You could ride a school bus and the bus driver never did anything either. You know, it’s just fascinating. As you get older, you look back and you realize that those are insecure people.

And I was fortunate that I’m, I don’t know, I just kept reminding myself, I make good grades. I’m a good person, and it’ll all be fine. It did. Don’t ask me how I knew that in middle school, but I just had this innate knowledge.

Thank you for sharing that personal anecdote. The next question is about your career: What was the defining moment and experience in your life that brought you to where you are today?

When I went to school, I always wanted a job that I would have forever. And to me, accounting seemed very stable—everybody needs an accountant. So that was very important to me. Then as I went through my career, I did well in school, went into big four accounting, I was good at it, got married, and had kids. I still maintained my career during that time but I did take a slower mommy track along the way, meaning that I wasn’t out seeking the next promotion all the time.

Then, when my husband decided to change course in his career from being a public company CFO to rethinking his career and changing it, he was home more, and it was my opportunity to say, okay, well if you’re with home with our children, then I can do more in my career and seek those opportunities. So I made a very strategic point at that time in our lives—that I would seek the opportunities so that I could grow in my career, with the goal becoming a chief accounting officer at a top fortune 100 company or 200 company. That became very pivotal for me.

And, you know what, it’s something very powerful about saying that your partner is with your spouse and you can support each other in your different goals as they change throughout your career.

Our goal was always very family focused and sure that one of us had more time for our kids and meeting their needs when they were younger to just, sports and everything. So you know, family’s always first, but we could help each other and support each other with these changes.

Which trait of yours makes you most uncomfortable and which trait is your most favorite and why?

I think the one that makes me most uncomfortable is, we expect things to go a certain way, and we want things to be a certain way—we want things to be our way and we want perfection. When it doesn’t go that way, it kind of makes you uncomfortable. Maybe sometimes you get more irritable. But when you’re used to things going your way, and it’s not that I’m not agile, but you have certain ideas.

It’s not always the best trait. I think that you can go different paths and get to the same thing but you gotta compromise. Sometimes you get in your head like, I want it done this way, and then you kind of get a little stubborn about it, and I’m one of those people. I can repeat it several times and people are just like, okay, we heard you I promise haha.

But sometimes you have to remind yourself, it doesn’t have to be exactly how you want something, and that’s in my personal life, too. Sometimes I’m like just stop Lori, it doesn’t need to be what you consider perfect. It might be perfect anyways, but it doesn’t have to be what I consider perfect.

And then my favorite trait is…I do think I’m a positive person and that I generally come off positively. My mom was always the glass half full person growing up and I think that rubbed off on me in general.

What do you consider an overrated virtue?

That one’s interesting—an overrated virtue. I do think that sometimes when I encounter people who are just so much in command and control over everything, which in some ways can be a positive, I feel like they’re missing out on the nuances in the world or even in what they’re dealing with at that point.

I just feel like I run across business executives all the time who just have so much command and control, but are they really listening to everybody else and picking up on what’s happening in the room and or what your team’s trying to tell you? When you’re leading a company and you’re leading large teams that you need to have command and control, I just think sometimes that, the arrogance of it, at times you miss out on the nuances.

What is one of your unbreakable rules in life that works for you?

I do what I say I’m going to do. And people have told me that, “if Lori said she’s going to do it, she’s going to do it.” There are times you tell people there’s a chance I’ll be late because of this and that, and life isn’t perfect. Of course, there’s things I have to cancel, and I had no intention of canceling, but when I commit, I commit.

What do you feel is a big risk and what is the tiniest risk that you’ve ever taken?

I think the bigger risk is, it’s sort of interesting. I grew up thinking you had a job forever—we’ll go back to that pivotal time when my husband chose to change his career and then I figured out that I was going to make opportunities for my career path. With that, the opportunities came a little quicker, we’ll say, three years, four years. When you make those changes, they have to kind of work out and that to me is a bigger risk. I got more comfortable with it because as these opportunities presented themselves to me and I realized, yeah, I should take that, it’s a promotion and it’s on the path of what I want. I never would leave anything with any negativity at all. I was always very upfront. But I think you gotta take risks if you want to get ahead.

And there’s nothing wrong—I even tell people who come work for me, my job is to help you get ready for that next role. I don’t know when that’ll be for you, but you will have to decide that. And it’s okay to leave a company. Don’t feel bad if I don’t have it for you to leave if that’s your goal. I can’t tell you what your goals should be, but if that’s what your goal is, it’s all good. I believe that people need to manage their own careers, so I actually think it’s a good thing to own your career and manage it. But you have to realize you have to take some big risks sometimes to do it.

Maybe one of my biggest risks was going to work for the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that was probably the biggest thing that has helped the pedigree of my resume and get me the opportunities I wanted. The second big risk was leaving that job six years later and going back into the industry. At the end of the day, I knew I’d be happier taking those skill sets that I learned and going back and using them in my career.

Tinier risk…maybe just networking, putting yourself out there more and realizing probably that you’re more successful at it than you thought you would be. Someone asked me to speak. Am I going to be any good? How do I make it interesting? That’s a tinier risk because you need to put yourself out there and grow and do things like that. But it is still a risk because you’re presenting yourself, you’re presenting your company, etc.

What do you feel is your biggest fear?

I don’t think it’s my biggest fear at the moment right now but throughout my career, my biggest fear is—it goes with what I started with—why did I go into accounting? It’s a steady job. I’ll have a great job.

My biggest fear is maybe losing that ability to have that job and doing that. There’s many things—I work for public companies, I always do the right thing, I’m extremely ethical, but your reputation is everything. If something were to go awry because you can’t control everything, one of my biggest fears is what I intended to do in my life is use my skill set so I’d always have a job that somehow I wouldn’t be able to have that job. I don’t know why that’s so important to me, but it is.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

The best piece of advice I’ve really ever received is don’t be afraid to take chances. I tend to be a very conservative person. I know it doesn’t sound like it when I say I switched jobs and everything but I think the advice along the way given to me was, don’t be afraid to take those chances and do different things and try different things and challenge yourself.

I learned that along the way. I’ve grown from it and benefited from it but, it’s hard. And I see it with people I lead all the time. They get really happy where they’re at and they don’t miss opportunities because they’re afraid to take chances and risk.

If you could have somebody else’s job for a day, what would that job be?

If I could have someone else’s job for a day, what would it be? Well, I’ll just kind of veer off a little. I always wanted to be an actress, so I think it’d be fun to be an actress. I know I work for Warner Bros. Discovery, but I’m an accountant. I would love to be an actress for a day.