Paramount Skydance has a favorite company to hire from: Google.
David Ellison’s company has brought on two more former Google execs, product chief Dane Glasgow told employees in a memo on Tuesday afternoon.
Nick Lee, who was the corporate vice president of Microsoft AI, is Paramount’s new EVP of media systems. Before joining Microsoft, Lee was a senior director of engineering at Google for nearly 17 years.
Suzanne Pellican, who most recently worked as Google’s VP of ads user experience, is also an EVP and the head of design. Prior to her more than eight years at Google, Pellican spent over 14 years at Intuit.
“These new roles will build on the great work from our already world-class Product & Tech team, while driving renewed focus and investment around critical capabilities that will advance our strategic priorities forward,” said Glasgow, who is also a former Googler.
The hires reflect an “increased investment and focus” in Paramount’s products business, a person familiar with the team’s strategy said.
Lee and Pellican joined Paramount on Monday and will be based in Seattle and the Bay Area, respectively, Glasgow’s memo said. Paramount has called many of its staffers back to its New York and Los Angeles offices, though some tech employees stayed remote.
Ellison is trying to turn the 114-year-old Paramount into a tech powerhouse, in addition to merging with Warner Bros. Discovery. (Its $110 billion deal to buy WBD is on hold.)
Paramount hired Hugh Williams, a former Google VP who’s been called “the godfather of doomscrolling,” this spring as an EVP.
In May, the company hired Barak Turovsky, who ran Google’s AI language product for seven years, as its head of consumer AI.
Read Glasgow’s full memo about the hires below:
Team, As we enjoy the last few weeks of summer and gear up for the rest of the year, I’m pleased to announce two additions to our Product & Technology leadership team. First, Nick Lee joins us as EVP, Media Systems and will lead our end-to-end media supply chain and enterprise media systems strategy. Our media systems and supply chain are an important capability for Paramount. Building efficient, scalable ways for our audiences, partners and other stakeholders to receive and enjoy a seamless and high-quality entertainment experience is critical to our business success. Nick will help accelerate this crucial function’s growth and evolution, as we bring product, engineering and operations functions from different parts of the business together for the first time. This builds on the recent organizational integration that merged Media Supply Chain Operations into Jon Mantell’s Content Systems and Operations group. These changes will enable us to develop a truly unified media systems portfolio alongside integrated operations across Paramount. He will define the long-term architecture and platform strategy for our media technology ecosystem, simplify and modernize legacy systems, and drive greater automation, reliability, and scale across our content workflows. Nick will also lead the development of our next-generation licensing platform and establish the AI-ready media infrastructure needed to unlock new capabilities in content intelligence and workflow automation. Nick will be based in Seattle and will partner closely with leaders in our streaming and licensing businesses. In addition to Jon, Tracey Wolfson, EVP and Head of Studio Content Operations Global Distribution at Paramount Television Studios, Ed Hoxsie, SVP of Worldwide Production for Global Content Distribution, and Max Miller, EVP of IT, will join Nick’s organization, as will select media supply chain product and engineering teams from Laksh Nathan’s team. Tracey and Ed will maintain a close partnership with PTVS and GCD, respectively. Additionally, Suzanne Pellican is joining our team as EVP, Head of Design, tasked with unifying the design experience, language and capabilities across our consumer, advertising, production and enterprise products companywide. Building on the strong design work from our team to date, especially across our consumer-facing products, her expertise will set a standard for the quality and coherence of the experiences we create for all of our users across every platform we operate. Suzanne will also help bring emerging technologies into our design practice and build a multidisciplinary organization spanning product design, design systems, research, and content design. Suzanne will be based in the Bay Area and will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Ad Sales. Marc Mendell and his team will continue to lead the consumer design work and remain close with the streaming product team, reporting to Suzanne moving forward. These new roles will build on the great work from our already world-class Product & Tech team, while driving renewed focus and investment around critical capabilities that will advance our strategic priorities forward. Please join me in welcoming Nick and Suzanne to Paramount. Cheers! Dane
