According to Davis, Stone "gave Sesame Street its soul";[102] without him "there would not have been Sesame Street as we know it".[106] Frank Oz regarded Stone as "the father of Sesame Street",[107] and Cooney considered Stone "the key creative talent on Sesame Street[107] and "probably the most brilliant writer of children's material in America".[107] Stone was able to recognize and mentor talented people for his crew. He actively hired and promoted women during a time when few women earned top production jobs in television. His policies provided the show with a succession of female producers and writers, many of whom went on to lead the boom in children's programming at Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and PBS in the 1990s and 2000s.