The Walt Disney Co. said it added two senior execs to its streaming team, with Devika Chawla named senior VP of lifecycle engineering and Arun Chandra becoming senior VP of viewer experience.
Chawla was director of engineering, messaging and contact at Netflix. At Disney she will aim to optimize consumer interactions and retention for Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Plus and Star Plus. She reports to Sean Curtis, senior VP of services & data engineering, starting next week..
“I’m very excited about the huge potential and impact of elevating consumer lifecycle experiences across Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Plus and Star Plus globally," Chawla said. “The opportunity to build world-class teams, technologies and products for this scale that amplify the stories created at Disney is tremendous. I look forward to experiencing the magic and adventure at Disney.”
Chandra was VP, scaled operations at Facebook parent Meta. He will head Disney’s viewer experience teams and work with the company’s technology, product and data teams to drive viewer experience innovations. He will report to Alisa Bowen, executive VP of business operations starting this week.
“I am proud to join Disney, a company that continuously innovates to delight customers in both the digital and physical worlds,” Chandra said. “It’s incredibly exciting to have this opportunity to scale up our best-in-class Viewer Experience team for Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Plus and Star Plus and deliver an exceptional experience for all our viewers across the globe.”
Disney has been bolstering its streaming team with execs from tech companies, adding Google veteran Jeremy Doig as CTO and Netflix and Amazon alum Ajay Arora as senior VP, product, commerce & experimentation. ■
