With an explosion of platforms to stream your favorite content at any time, there are more opportunities to work in this ever-changing area of the media. Learn about how data insights technology, and collaboration shape what audiences watch, and why streamers are looking for diversity and different perspectives in new hires.
Light refreshments will be provided after the panel.
Noël Claro, Originals Creative Strategist, Product Creative Studio, Netflix
Noël is a Creative Strategist at Netflix, where she oversees product launches for adult animation, comedy, and unscripted titles. This is a nearly perfect job for her since it revolves around consuming content and identifying strategies for promoting it. Prior to Netflix, she ran a small but fabulous design team at truTV when it was just settling into its new comedy identity. Before that, she split her time between the brand creative team at Nickelodeon and teaching at Parsons School of Design.
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Leading up to her lengthy stints at Nick and Parsons, Noël launched a boutique event planning company, worked as a producer on Craft Corner DeathMatch, and ran a small design studio. Prior to all that, her seven-year stint in magazines (Vogue, Details, Sassy, Nickelodeon Magazine) provided her with invaluable contacts, experience, and anecdotes. Pre-pandemic, Noël's side hustle was a prop studio that she formed with Parsons and Cooper Union alums where she was tasked with crafting SpongeBob from Rice Krispies, real sponges, and genoise cake, among other things. These days, she spends her extra time developing unique cookie recipes and mastering the production of her infamous granola for Noël’s NYC, her small startup bakery.
Liz Gateley, Head of Development, Originals, Spotify Studios
Liz Gateley currently serves as Head of Original Content for Spotify Studios, most recently launching the #1 video series What Now? with Trevor Noah. She has transformed brands like Spotify, Lifetime and MTV by leading her teams to create some of the most culturally impactful content of the past two decades. Her career took off when she created Laguna Beach and developed its spinoffs, The Hills and The City, followed by dozens of network defining hits at MTV. Recently she added YOU, UnREAL, Surviving R. Kelly, Wind of Change and Batman Unburied to the long list of her groundbreaking achievements. In 2020, Gateley became an Oscar-winning producer for her work on Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You’re a Girl) when it won the Academy Award for Documentary Short. She is a disruptor and one of the few executives to oversee content for both broadcast and streaming platforms, has a deep understanding of both the scripted and unscripted genres and data decision making. Gateley possesses the rare combination of excellent creative taste, business acumen and deep relationships across the entertainment industry.
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At Spotify, Liz is part of the core leadership team that has driven the immense growth of the Podcast business and TV business over the past five years. Starting in 2019 as Head of Creative Development, Liz created a startup studio within the streamer and out of the gate Spotify won Entertainment Weekly’s and The Webby Awards’ Best Podcast of 2020 for Wind of Change. Liz also attracted some of Hollywood’s biggest talent into the podcast space, including DC Comics/WB, Bad Robot and Kim Kardashian. She brought in The Dark Knight co-creator David S. Goyer to create Batman Unburied, starring Black Panther’s Winston Duke, Hasan Minhaj and Gina Rodriguez, with 2 sequels in production. It launched simultaneously in 9 languages globally and was named Best Podcast of 2022 by Variety. Since her promotion to Head of Original Content in 2022, every original podcast has hit the #1 spot on Spotify and besting The Joe Rogan Experience, including Batman Unburied, Kim Kardashian’s The System, Harley Quinn & The Joker: Sound Mind, The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark. In 2023 Spotify pivoted its content strategy towards Talk, wide distribution and monetization. Gateley led the development of What Now? with Trevor Noah which launched at #1 on both Apple and Spotify. Liz has also expanded Spotify’s original content to reach beyond podcasts, creating Spotify Pictures, under which she adapted The Horror of Dolores Roach with Blumhouse into a television series for Amazon Prime. She also produced Rap Caviar Presents, adapting one of Spotify’s biggest playlists into a docuseries for Hulu. Gateley is now adapting Wind of Change, Case 62 (starring Julianne Moore) and several other podcasts to TV series.
Prior to Spotify, Gateley was EVP-Head of Programming at Lifetime Television for 3 years, where she oversaw Original Scripted and Unscripted Series along with over 100 Lifetime Original Movies a year while managing a programming budget of $1.2 billion. While at Lifetime, Gateley transformed the channel from a traditional “women in peril” network to a “women in power” premium player, developing YOU, Surviving R. Kelly, and Learning to Skateboard as her three final projects. Her first series launch, UnREAL, won the Peabody Award and earned Marti Noxon an Emmy Award Nomination for Best Writing, Drama, in 2016. As a follow up, Gateley wooed one of television’s biggest showrunners, Greg Berlanti, by ordering Lifetime’s critically acclaimed thriller YOU straight to series, a first for Lifetime, and bringing in Netflix as a co producer. She transformed the Lifetime Original Movie brand into diverse stories of empowerment including Emmy
nominated Flint, Surviving Compton: Dre, Suge & Me (The Michel’le story), I am Elizabeth Smart and Cocaine Godmother: The Griselda Blanco Story, starring Oscar winner Catherine Zeta Jones. Gateley also developed the non-fiction hits The Rap Game and Bring It! while expanding the Project Runway franchise with its spinoff Project Runway Junior. In 2015, well before #MeToo, Gateley led a company-wide mandate to hire more women and diverse talent behind the camera
resulting in 86% of its directors being women. Because of her achievements at Lifetime in equity and inclusion, Liz was invited to be a founding member of ReFrame.
Gateley started at MTV in 2003 and, after launching Laguna Beach and The Hills, oversaw a decade of hits that defined the network, including Teen Wolf, Jersey Shore, 16 & Pregnant, Teen Mom, America’s Best Dance Crew, Human Giant, Run’s House, Wild ‘N Out and Ridiculousness. She was tasked with building MTV’s scripted business from the ground up,
launching Teen Wolf, Skins, Awkward, and Hard Times of RJ Berger as its first slate of projects. Gateley discovered dozens of new actors, including Dylan O’Brien, Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer along with giving writer-creators Seth Grahame-Smith, David Katzenberg and Lauren Iungerich their first showrunning gigs. In 2009, as EVP Head of Development, Gateley led MTV to its biggest ratings turnaround in network history.
In 2010, Barry Diller and Ben Silverman gave Gateley her chance to run her own shingle, backing her production company with Tony DiSanto, DiGa. There, Liz continued to push the zeitgeist, adapting Scream (the series) for MTV and producing the docuseries Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life, which exposed Kesha at her rawest during the beginning of her battle with Dr. Luke, while continuing to Executive Produce Teen Wolf. Because of their quick success, in 2014, Gateley & DiSanto sold DiGa to ITV.
Gateley has been named to countless leadership lists, including The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Power 100, Variety’s Power of Women 100 Impact List, Entertainment Weekly’s Annual “Hot List" and was named one of New York Magazine’s “Influentials.” The programs she has developed have moved culture and disrupted the television landscape forever.
Liz got her start as a mailroom trainee at The William Morris Agency and, prior to that, practiced law in both New York and Los Angeles after attending Loyola Law School. She grew up in Palos Verdes, CA, which was her inspiration for Laguna Beach, and attended UCLA as an undergraduate. Liz currently lives in New York City with her husband, Greg, and their three children Isabella, Gabby & Finn.
Hanna Rose, Recruiter, Roku
Hanna Rose is an accomplished Talent Acquisition professional with a strong background in recruiting and talent development. She graduated from Penn State University, earning a degree in Human Resources. Hanna spent most of her career at Hearst Magazines, where she specialized in recruiting for sales and marketing roles and played a key role in building out the company's internship program, fostering the next generation of media talent.
Recently, Hanna made a career transition to Roku, where she is part of the recruiting team within the Media, Subscriptions, and Corporate verticals. Her expertise in identifying and cultivating top talent, coupled with her deep industry knowledge, makes her an asset to the organization as it continues to grow and innovate in the streaming space.
Puja Vohra, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Paramount+ and SHOWTIME
Puja Vohra is Executive Vice President, Marketing for Paramount+ and SHOWTIME. In her role, Vohra leads marketing efforts for the Paramount+ and SHOWTIME originals and live championship sports such as HALO, LIONESS, the DEXTER franchise, 1883, the STAR TREK franchise, DORA, PAW PATROL, YELLOWJACKETS, THE CHI, FELLOW TRAVELERS, BILLIONS, NFL, the UEFA Champions League and more. Vohra and her teams are responsible for overseeing title marketing campaigns for all streaming-first titles produced by CBS entities, SHOWTIME, MTVE and Nickelodeon, as well as managing cross-company marketing efforts across Paramount with functions spanning title marketing, full-funnel media strategy and execution, digital marketing, events, partnerships and more. With a passionate belief that good marketing can be marketing for good, Vohra also champions important causes. Under her leadership, Paramount+ became the first official streaming partner of the National Park Foundation, providing critical funding to preserve over 420 national parks.
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Vohra joined Paramount Global in May 2020 when she assumed her role as Executive Vice President, Marketing and Strategy, SHOWTIME. In her role at SHOWTIME, Vohra oversaw all media efforts, promotions, digital strategy and social media, as well as marketing strategy and analytics for original programming including award-winning series such as DEXTER: NEW BLOOD, BILLIONS, THE CURSE, YOUR HONOR, THE COMEY RULE and GEORGE AND TAMMY. She also launched “Queer to Stay,” an annual LGBTQ+ small business preservation initiative with the Human Rights Campaign that is now in its fifth year and has awarded over $1 million in grants. Vohra is a seasoned executive with more than two decades of experience working with leading brands around the world. Prior to SHOWTIME she was the CMO for BSE Global, where she directed marketing, creative and digital efforts for BSE Global properties, including the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center.
Prior to that, she served as Executive Vice President of Marketing and Digital for truTV, a division of Warner Media. In this role, she was responsible for all on- and off-air marketing campaigns for the network’s slate of programming, including the Emmy® Award-nominated At Home with Amy Sedaris, I’m Sorry, Impractical Jokers, Adam Ruins Everything and Tacoma FD.
Earlier in her career, Vohra served as Senior Vice President of Marketing at Oxygen Media, where she managed the network’s consumer and ad sales marketing teams. She also previously had senior consumer and sales marketing roles at Bravo Media, making a splash with several successful launches including early seasons of Project Runway, Top Chef and The Real Housewives franchise, as well as the network’s first “Affluencers” trade campaign.
Prior to her time in the US, Vohra held marketing roles at Seagram India and MTV India.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Delhi University and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. She’s been a speaker on several high-profile industry panels including Advertising Week, Variety Massive, NAB, TVOT and Promax. Under her direction, her teams have been the recipients of several awards, including a CLIO Grand, Shorty, several CLIOs and Promax Awards for breakthrough social response and marketing campaigns. Vohra lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, Laxman, their daughter, Mira, and their mutt, Bailey. If she could, she would eat PB&J’s from Sarabeth’s every day.
Moderator: Rob Barnett, Headhunter, Recruiter, Rob Barnett Media
Rob Barnett is a headhunter, author, and guest speaker. He founded Rob Barnett Media in 2018, an inclusive platform for thousands of job-seeking professionals and industry leaders placing the best people in the right jobs.
Rob has discovered, hired, and led hundreds of talented creators and executives in senior management roles throughout his career at MTV, VH1, CBS, and Audible/Amazon. A digital pioneer, he founded My Damn Channel, one of the first original online studios and networks.
Representing diverse careers, companies, and opportunities, Rob’s multi-platform content and no-nonsense approach inspires people to define and sell their best professional brand.
Rob’s deep industry knowledge and contacts give you unique insight into company needs and a streamlined, hands-on approach to match the right people with the right jobs at RobBarnettMedia.com
Presented with the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment and the School of Media Studies at The New School
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
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