No Bachelor for her: OutTV mogul Brooke Karzen makes hits like The Bachelor at the office--and savors time with her family at home.

I think of myself as the mom of the whole operation," says Brooke Karsen, trying to sum up her job as a top production executive on such reality TV blockbusters as The Bachelor and The Bachelorette and the upcoming The Real Gilligan's Island.

When she says "mom," Karzen's not talking about serving milk and cookies. Reporting directly to megaproducer Mike Fleiss--the man she describes as "Mr. Reality"--Karzen is the dynamo who helps to turn his big ideas into culture-changing, Nielsen-busting, irresistible, addictive hit TV shows.

On each new project, Karzen and Fleiss start by assembling their team. "We identify who are the senior producing people who can run the show," explains Karzen, who doubles as production executive for Fleiss's banner, Next Entertainment, and as vice president of programming for Telepictures Productions, the Warner Bros. offshoot that also produces hits like Ellen and Extra.

After the planning comes, well, everything else. "I sort of produce the producers," says Karzen. "I'm their counsel, I'm their fresh eyes, I'll hear an idea, I'll ask questions, I'll suggest solutions." From both budgetary and creative angles, she adds, "I'm looking at how the whole operation's running."

Karzen learned early that she loves the high-octane mix of left- and right-brained power her job demands. "I've wanted to entertain since I was a kid." She went from childhood Paul Lynde imitations through college training in music to supporting herself as an actress. "I didn't want to do TV, I wanted to do art," she says.

Acting and teaching with a fringe theater company in Chicago, Karzen got a day job as a radio producer screening calls for an on-air therapist. "I loved it," she says. "I just got such a rush out of it, such adrenaline at just the bigness of it, at helping to make a whole show happen."

Karzen quit acting, got a job as a runner on Comic Relief III, and has been working ever since. Among her credits: high-profile gigs with Dick Clark Productions and Buena Vista Television--and a place on the launch team of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

These days, Karzen and her partner of 14 years, writer-producer Leslye Gustat, are also absorbed in being real-life moms to 5 year-old Annabelle. "She's the light of my life," Karzen says simply of her daughter. "I love getting her to school, packing her little lunch--doing those little things that affect her life so much."

Karzen's life seems so perfect, it's impossible not to ask: Has being openly gay damaged her career? "If it has, I don't know about it, and that's just fine. [The closet has] never been an option for me," she says. "Being invisible, before I was out, was such a horrible feeling that I just didn't have a choice. It's not a fine point, though. I'm a woman first--actually I'm a mom first--and I'm a woman, and I'm gay."

One thing Karzen knows for sure: Being gay hasn't affected her performance on the job. "A lot of what I do is talent-search, find people [to be] on camera. Can I tell a great-looking man, can I tell a sexy man? You bet I can!"