Roku veteran Kristina Shepard is becoming a member of NBCUniversal within the newly created place of EVP, Streaming and Performance Sales and Partnerships.
As the chief of a newly fashioned crew, Shepard will carry collectively key gross sales verticals together with efficiency, small-medium enterprise progress and all main East Coast impartial businesses. She will even forge horizontal partnerships spanning streaming, programmatic, retail media, social and the corporate’s FAST networks. Her new group will concentrate on demand diversification and the client-wide adoption of digital partnerships.
NBCU is heading right into a consequential hall on the gross sales entrance, with the fiftieth anniversary of Saturday Night Live subsequent yr, adopted quickly after by the Winter Olympics in Italy. Telemundo additionally has Spanish-language rights to the FIFA World Cup, which shall be contested in the summertime of 2026 in websites throughout North America.
“Kristina has an exceptional track record in building and growing new businesses across programmatic, SMB and digital enterprises,” stated Alison Levin, President of Advertising and Partnerships, to whom Shepard will report. “She has seamlessly led a multi-billion-dollar streaming operation and has cultivated extensive client relationships that will elevate NBCUniversal’s position in the CTV landscape and expand our aperture in critical emerging workstreams. As the company approaches two of its most influential years in television history, it will be essential for us to continue to diversify our revenue, and Kristina is the perfect person to steer us into that future.”
Shepard was beforehand VP of Global Advertising Sales and Partnerships at Roku, the place she oversaw the corporate’s international advert income, together with enterprise partnerships and rising media and leisure gross sales. She helped develop new relationships and partnerships with shoppers and businesses who went on to turn into key companions with Roku. Prior to Roku, Shepard labored in cellular advert tech.
“NBCUniversal has set the gold-standard for combining premium content with world class innovation against a backdrop of seismic change in the industry,” Shepard stated. “What the team has built so far is extraordinary, and as technology continues to influence media and advertising, I cannot wait to be on the front lines of the most exciting growth areas of our business. Together, we have a real opportunity to make television a tangible, performant solution for marketers of all sizes.”