Digital Hollywood Spring 2021 - Agenda

Thursday, May 20th, 2021

3:00 PM - 3:45 PM - Eastern Time Zone

All-Digital & Online

Session I:

Podcast Content, Development and Programming

Podcasting Superstars! Podcasting Partnerships! Podcasting is dominating the Media Landscape. There are over 1.5 Million Podcast Shows – 35 Million Episodes - Over 144 million Americans have listened. The advertising industry is on board. In this session, we have assembled the industry leadership.

Jenna Weiss-Berman, Co-Founder, Pineapple Street Studios

Josh Lindgren, Head of Podcast Department, CAA

Jen Sargent, Chief Operating Officer, Wondery

Steve Wilson, Chief of Strategy, QCODE

Kathy Doyle, VP Podcasts, Macmillan - Moderator

Steve Wilson is a podcast industry veteran. He is Chief Strategy Officer at QCODE, an award winning storytelling company specializing in scripted fiction podcasts. Their shows include Blackout with Rami Malek, Dirty Diana with Demi Moore, and Hank the Cowdog with Matthew McConaughey among others. Prior to joining QCODE, he spent nearly 15 years at Apple Inc. There he working on Apple Podcasts, the world’s most popular podcast platform across editorial, partner relations, and marketing. In these roles he partnered with podcasters and networks and is responsible for discovering some of todays most popular shows and hosts. He is one of the most sought after thought leaders in the  industry.

Jenna Weiss-Berman is the co-founder of Pineapple Street Studios, an Audacy company, which has made such podcasts as Missing Richard Simmons, Still Processing, Wind of Change, The Clearing, Welcome to Your Fantasy, and the Catch and Kill Podcast with Ronan Farrow/ Pineapple Street Studios is the longtime podcast partner of brands including HBO, Netflix, and Nike, and had had 12 #1 shows on the Apple Podcast charts to date. Before starting Pineapple Street, Jenna worked in public radio for a decade, and started the podcast department at BuzzFeed. She currently sits on the advisory board of The Moth and co-chairs the Google Podcast Creator Program.

Jen Sargent is a successful entrepreneur and executive with 20 years of digital media experience. She is currently the Chief Operating Officer of Wondery, the largest independent podcast publisher in the world, known for their immersive storytelling with hit shows such as Business Wars, Dr. Death, Imagined Life and The Shrink Next Door. Jen oversees strategy, marketing, partnerships and non-advertising revenue streams for the Company. Prior to Wondery, Jen was most recently President of Uproxx, a Comscore Top-100 digital publisher and award-winning content studio programming cultural content for Millennials. As President, Jen led the strategy, revenue generation, partnerships, and operations across the organization. Uproxx was acquired by Warner Music in Summer of 2018. Prior to Uproxx, Jen was the CEO and co-founder of HitFix, a multi-platform entertainment news brand focused on helping consumers discover and experience movies, TV and pop-culture. HitFix featured entertainment’s most celebrated tastemakers and a cross-platform reach of 300 million monthly viewers. HitFix was acquired by Uproxx in 2016. Previous roles include head of Online Marketing & Development for Reed Business Information (parent of Variety); the International Media Group of top ad-serving technology company DoubleClick; venture capital experience from BV Capital in Hamburg, Germany; and finance experience from JP Morgan investment banking in New York. Jen earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Josh Lindgren is the Head of the Podcast department at leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Lindgren has been a Podcast Agent since 2014 and represents many of the most successful podcast properties, creators, and production companies, including Stuff You Should Know, Happy Face producer Lauren Bright Pacheco, NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro, Dr. Death reporter Laura Beil, Little Everywhere, Salt Audio, Maximum Fun, Futuro Media Group, Gideon Media, and many more. He has also brokered deals for such production companies as Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, Jonathan Glickman’s Glickmania, Ava DuVernay’s filmmaker’s creative collective ARRAY, Mick Jagger’s Rainy Day Podcasts, Paul Feig’s Powderkeg, and Jamie Lee Curtis’ Comet Pictures. Lindgren joined CAA in 2018 after nearly a decade at The Billions Corporation.  Last year, Lindgren was named by Inside Radio as among the “Most Powerful People in Podcasting 2020.” Lindgren graduated from Grinnell College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy and Neuroscience, and completed a Neuroethics fellowship at Georgetown University Medical Center. Prior to entering the entertainment industry, he worked at the Paul Allen Institute for Brain Science.

Kathy Doyle is the Vice President of Podcasting for Macmillan Publishers, the only Big 5 with a dedicated podcast arm. She is responsible for audio-first programming, including the Macmillan Podcast Network, which produces popular podcasts with the organization’s authors and book imprints. Podcasts range from sci-fi and true crime to literature and biography. She also oversees one of Macmillan’s largest digital networks, Quick and Dirty Tips. QDT produces a dozen weekly award-winning audio podcasts hosted by subject matter experts on a wide range of topics. Podcasts include the long-running Grammar Girl and Savvy Psychologist. The network has a large web presence, too, which features content from the podcast hosts and a large variety of Macmillan authors. Prior to joining Macmillan, she had a long-standing career developing digital products and services for media companies, including The Wall Street Journal and American Lawyer Media.