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Canon Club: Issue No. 5
Welcome to the fifth issue of DEG’s Canon Club Newsletter!
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Congratulations to the women who were named as finalists for the EnTech Awards! | |
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Patty Campagno
Amazon
Technology Innovation in Content Distribution (B to C)
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Daniella Ruotolo
Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology
Rising Star
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Ilke Demir
Intel
Emerging Technology
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Nicole Ngo
NBCUniversal
Rising Star
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Andrea Riehle
NBCUniversal
Localization Trailblazer
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Tanya Razo
Premiere Digital Services
Technology Innovation in Content Distribution (B to C)
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Jacqueline Grace Padilla
Pixelogic
Rising Star
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Huge congratulations to Annie Chang of Universal Pictures for being
2024's Hall of Fame honoree!
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RSVP Today!
Doors Open @ 5 PM Pacific
Sound Space | Los Angeles 90036
Awards Presentation Begins Promptly @ 5:45 PM
Networking Reception Immediately Following Awards
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Congratulations to the women who were elected to the DEG Board of Directors! | |
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Andrea Downing
President
PBS Distribution
Secretary
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Carolyn An
Head of Partnership Engagement, US, CA, LATAM and APAC
Amazon MGM Studios
Director
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Alisa Bowen
President
Disney+
Director
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Katherine Pond
Group VP Platform Content & Partnerships
Vizio
Director
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Congratulations to women in the DEG community who have recently joined new companies or been promoted to prominent positions. | |
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Fabric x Xytech
Kira Baca
CRO
Formerly CRO at Ateliere Creative Technologies
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Lionsgate
Tayanna Todd
Director, Inclusive Content & Business Strategy
Formerly Manager, Inclusive Content and Business Strategy
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Warner Bros. Discovery
Shauna Spenley
Global Chief Marketing Officer - Streaming
Formerly President of Global Entertainment at Riot Games
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Did a female executive recently join or receive a promotion at your company, or were they honored for any industry awards?
Email cayla@degonline.org to recognize them in our next newsletter!
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“I don’t know how you can do what we do and not be an optimist, because you have to believe that we can take an idea from nothing and it becomes the next big hit show. ”
-Pearlena Igbokwe, chairman of Universal Studio Group, on her interest in bringing rom-coms to the small screen .
Read more
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50 Women to Watch in the Digital Entertainment Business 2024
Media Play News
Instead of selecting a dozen or more “captains” and then profiling upwards of 100 women executives based largely on nominations we received from various studios, streamers, distributors and other businesses, we narrowed the section down to 50 key movers and shakers, who are presented in random order. Read more
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Women’s Sports Are On an Upward Trajectory as Fans, Brands Engage
CNBC
The fervor and passion surrounding women’s sports aren’t going to go away, said Jessica Berman, commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League. They’re only going to get bigger. “We’ve finally reached the point where it isn’t a question as to whether this is a moment and it’s going to pass or whether it’s going to stand the test of time, because it isn’t just an isolated set of circumstances that have been successful, like one sport or one league or one event,” Berman said during CNBC x Boardroom’s Game Plan sports business event. Read more
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Xbox’s President on Handheld Consoles and Subscription Gaming
Bloomberg ($)
In her role leading Xbox’s hardware development and relationships with publishers, Bond splits herself between shoring up its traditional gaming business and reaching into untapped areas. She’s hinted at new Xbox hardware—Spencer has repeatedly professed his interest in a potential handheld device—while the company has also begun to release Xbox’s exclusive games on competing consoles and promoting Netflix-esque subscriptions that don’t need a console at all. Read more
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Female Creatives See Gains In Representation On Docs As Their Overall Participation In U.S. Indie Film Production Decreases, New Study Finds
Deadline
According to the study, over the course of the last year, top U.S. festivals have for the first time featured more documentaries directed by women than by men. The festivals highlighted screened or streamed an average of nine documentaries helmed by at least one woman and eight directed exclusively by men. Meanwhile, the same festivals were found to have spotlighted an average of 11 narrative features from men and just seven directed by women. Read more | Read the full study
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Twenty Questions With Disney’s Entertainment Chair
Bloomberg ($)
In the last 18 months, Walden and her compatriots have stabilized Disney’s streaming business, which reported an operating profit last quarter. Now, they need to get back to adding customers — and getting existing ones to watch more. “Clearly we are in a world where we are responsible for not just delivering excellent content but technical innovation,” Walden told me. “We are experimenting in a way we previously didn’t have the flexibility to do.” Read more
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Films About Women Are Having a Moment in China
Wall Street Journal ($)
Since its release in 2022, the documentary “Hidden Letters,” about an ancient Chinese writing system only used by women, has been nominated for an Emmy and shortlisted for an Academy Award. Recently, it achieved something equally significant: getting onto big screens in China. The version of the film shown in China cut scenes referring to women’s modern-day struggles with gender expectations at a time when the government strives to reinforce traditional family values. Yet, the movie’s release in China also illustrates the growing appetite in the country for cultural content about women’s issues as women increasingly chafe under official and societal mores. Read more
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Toronto: Actress-Centric ‘The Room Next Door’ and ‘Nightbitch’ Premiere, Face Different Awards Paths
The Hollywood Reporter
Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door (l.) and Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch, the two most highly-anticipated films that screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night, are in some ways very similar: both are adaptations of novels by filmmakers who have been bringing quality films to TIFF for years, and both center on complex female protagonists played by first-rate actresses. But their receptions at the fest, and their awards prospects moving forward, couldn’t be more different. Read more
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Theresa Kang’s Passion for ‘Pachinko’ Led Her to Founding Blue Marble Pictures and Management
TheWrap Pro ($)
It’s rare for the right project to come to the right person at the right time, but in the case of “Pachinko,” that’s exactly what happened. Long before Blue Marble Pictures and Blue Marble Management’s founder and CEO Theresa Kang ever picked up Min Jin Lee’s novel, she was poised to help bring this particular story to the screen.” A saga that tells the story of one family over generations, “Pachinko” revolves around a Korean family who immigrated to Japan before World War II and how they grapple with their identities in a country that’s ceaselessly hostile to them. Read more
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Sabrina Carpenter and Pop’s Next Gen Have a Secret Weapon: Amy Allen
New York Times ($)
But Top 40, in no small part thanks to Allen (pictured, l.), is entering a much-needed era of quirk, in which regular jolts of the unexpected are cutting through a sludge of smooth-brained content. “Listeners are just getting smarter and smarter now,” she added. “They want something to be odd, something to be off, something to be really catchy and unexpected about a lyric or melody. The days of really polished pop are shifting out.” Read more
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Sheryl Sandberg Discusses Women’s Advancement at Work: Progress is ‘Pretty Fragile’
CNBC
The percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs who are women has doubled from 5% a decade ago when LeanIn and McKinsey started doing this report, to 10% today. Companies now offer significantly more work-life benefits than they did even five years ago: In 2024, 92% of companies offered paid maternity leave and 86% offered paid paternity leave, up from 2018, when 78% of companies offered paid maternity leave and 70% offered paid paternity leave. Read more
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Can AI Help Female Founders Get Funded?
Fast Company ($)
This experience got me thinking: What if AI had been used to support this investor’s decision-making process? Just like AI is built on pattern recognition to make predictive models, this investor had noticed a pattern (women have more difficulty than men raising a Series A) and used that pattern recognition to guide her decision-making. Would AI level the playing field by eliminating the discrimination I faced last fall or simply reinforce those structures? Read more
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They Say It’s a Woman’s World Now. The Workplace Tells a Different Story
New York Times ($)
We spent last year hearing the chipper news that our economy was being painted dream house pink — “Barbie” barreling past $1 billion at the box office, Taylor Swift’s tour amassing more money than a small country’s G.D.P. But the supposed power that women were flexing to drive America’s spending only highlighted the fact that actual financial power still sits with men: Skyrocketing inflation, for example, hit women harder because their wages are less likely to keep pace. I’m reminded of what female colleagues told me recently when I came out of a salary negotiation meeting with my hands shaking: You do know, right, that some of the men on your team would fight back harder, and they’d consider it fun? Read more
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