Warner Bros. Discovery announces a new global leadership structure

Gerhard Zeiler, President of International for Warner Bros. Discovery, announced in a memo to the staff a new global leadership structure for the company following various executive departures and restructurings. “Following my recent announcements about the departure of Priya Dogra, Robert Blair, Hannes Heyelmann and Pierre Branco, I have been working with the leadership across the international business to create a new international structure that best leverages the strengths of our businesses, while empowering all of us to drive the future growth and success of the company,”  he said.

According to Zeiler, Latin America will continue to be led by Fernando Medin. The same is true for Poland, which has been and will be led by Kasia Kieli. In Asia Pacific, INSEAK and Western Pacific will be united into a single APAC region under the leadership of James Gibbons. Clement Schwebig, who has managed INSEAK since 2020, will now have responsibility for GSA, France, Benelux and Africa, which will be brought together into a single Western Europe & Africa market cluster under his leadership.

Andrew Georgiou has taken up the responsibility to head the business in the UK & Ireland in addition to leading WBD Sports Europe, which reflects the significant synergies between TNT Sports, Discovery+ and its linear networks in the UK. Furthermore, Jamie Cooke, who oversees CEE and MENAT and has responsibility for Creative and all pay TV channels across EMEA, will take on additional oversight of unscripted and linear content acquisition. Myriam Lopez-Otazu, who is responsible for sourcing and maximizing unscripted utilization across the EMEA WBD portfolio in collaboration with Meredith Gertler’s team, will now report into Cooke.

Meanwhile, Ragnhild Thorbech will maintain responsibility for scripted acquisitions to more fully integrate the content strategy for Max, and will become part of the Global Streaming Content Leadership team. She will report to Meredith Gertler, EVP of Global Content Strategy, Planning and Analysis.

Lastly, the following executive will continue to run their respective territories: Alessandro Araimo (Southern Europe), Christina Sulebakk (Nordics), Vanessa Brookman (EMEA Kids), Ronald Goes (international production), Qaisar Rafique (Commercial Strategy for EMEA and APAC), Louis Goldstein (Business Operations for International).

“I am delighted to have such a terrific International leadership team with the skills and capabilities to successfully lead us through the next stage of Warner Bros. Discovery’s growth. This team has both the attitude and competence to manage the complexity of the international business and a ‘one team’ mindset to collaborate effectively with the global partners across the company,”  Zeiler concluded.