WildBrain provides an update on strategic focus to advance growth priorities
Skwigly
WildBrain Ltd., a global leader in family entertainment, today outlined a refined strategic focus as it advances its priority to harness the greatest opportunities for sustainable growth across its business.
WildBrain’s strategy is centred on growing the long‑term value of its intellectual property by driving fandom for entertainment franchises on a global scale through brand activations and partnerships, consumer products licensing, location-based entertainment, world-class content production, and scaled distribution through its leading channel network.
WildBrain Executives from Top Left – Maarten Weck, Stephanie Betts, Kate Smith, Ben Peace (Image: WildBrain)
To support this 360° strategy, WildBrain has recalibrated its three strategic pillars under the new names Franchise and Global Licensing, Content, and WildBrain Network—backed by a seasoned leadership team to drive growth.
At heart, WildBrain is a franchise-led company, built around some of the world’s most beloved kids and family brands. As we continue to build on our proven 360‑degree strategy, we are sharpening our focus on the greatest opportunities for sustainable growth. That focus is driving stronger execution across our owned franchises and licensing partners at WildBrain CPLG, our world‑class content engine, and the ongoing scale and evolution of the WildBrain Network. With a clean balance sheet and a strong leadership team in place, we are investing with confidence and momentum as we position WildBrain for its next phase of growth.
-Josh Scherba (President and CEO, WildBrain)
Franchise and Global Licensing
The Franchise and Global Licensing pillar is a key growth driver for WildBrain, comprising the Company’s expertise across franchise management, global partnerships, consumer products licensing, and location-based entertainment. This includes WildBrain’s management of its owned entertainment franchises, such as Strawberry Shortcake, Teletubbies, Yo Gabba Gabba!, In the Night Garden, Inspector Gadget, and Degrassi. It also includes the activities of the Company’s global licensing agency, WildBrain CPLG, a trusted partner representing WildBrain’s own and partner brands across major territories worldwide.
Highly experienced executive Ben Peace has rejoined WildBrain to lead the Franchise arm of this pillar as Executive Vice President, Franchise. Peace leads WildBrain’s team of in-house experts in franchise management, creative services, and digital marketing. Peace joins WildBrain’s executive leadership team after almost four years leading the successful expansion across Asia Pacific (APAC) of WildBrain CPLG, where he served as SVP, Commercial (Asia Pacific, MENA & India) until February 2026. Based in London, Peace began in the new role on April 6, reporting to Scherba.
On the Licensing side of the pillar, Maarten Weck, under the new title Chief Commercial Officer and Managing Director, WildBrain CPLG, continues to lead the agency’s growth strategy across existing and new territories. Weck also spearheads business development and growth in global partnerships, collaborating with key third-party IP and brand owners to offer tailored solutions across WildBrain’s 360° capabilities in licensing, content production, and distribution.
Content
WildBrain continues to invest in premium animation, live‑action and digital‑first content for its own brands and global partners, supported by an integrated creative and production engine spanning development through delivery. This approach enables the Company to build franchise‑driven content at scale while remaining highly responsive to evolving platform and audience demand.
The Content pillar comprises the full spectrum of WildBrain’s expertise in development, pre-production, and production—including its premium animation studio; digital studio; animation pre-production business, House of Cool; and live-action production business—bringing together creative excellence across all formats.
Stephanie Betts, under the new title Chief Content Officer, leads this pillar, reporting to Scherba, with a remit to oversee the Company’s content slates across development, pre-production, animation, digital, and live action.
To support an integrated approach across Content, additional leadership changes have been made, reporting to Betts:
Ricardo Curtis steps into a newly created role as Head of Creative, Animation, expanding his oversight across animation creative for both WildBrain Studios and House of Cool. Wes Lui takes on the role of SVP, Business Development, Animation, with a focus on driving growth across WildBrain Studios and House of Cool. Curtis and Lui bring strong track records of creative and commercial success as co-founders and co-General Managers of House of Cool.
Additionally, Morgana Duque expands her scope as SVP, Global Head of Production, overseeing production across digital, feature, and longform series for both WildBrain and House of Cool. Daisy Wall, VP of Content, takes on an expanded remit, adding creative leadership for digital content production alongside development, with a strong focus on our core franchises.
To strengthen market insights and take a more holistic approach to meeting the demands of industry content buyers and audiences, the Content Sales team will shift into the Content pillar, effective July 1, 2026, led by Katie Wilson, VP, Global Acquisitions and Sales.
Together, these changes create a more connected, responsive Content organization that’s built to produce world-leading content and meet the market with clarity and confidence.
WildBrain Network
The WildBrain Network is one of the company’s largest and most powerful owned capabilities, representing “the new kids’ TV” for today’s audiences by bringing together the fragmented parts of traditional TV into a single model at a global scale. Purpose-built to meet kids and families where they are watching content today, it comprises more than 1,000 WildBrain-owned and curated kids and family channels across YouTube, FAST and AVOD. Generating over 17 billion minutes of viewing each month, the WildBrain Network offers thousands of episodes of premium content from globally loved franchises owned by WildBrain and its partners, delivered in an always-on, CARU-certified and COPPA-compliant environment.
Led by Kate Smith, under the new title EVP, WildBrain Network, this pillar sits at the intersection of audiences and brands, enabling the packaging of a scaled, trusted kids-and-family audience into a powerful offering for advertising partners seeking to reach these viewers in safe, privacy-compliant, and effective environments. With unmatched industry scale, the WildBrain Network presents a significant growth opportunity through advertising sales led by the Company’s Media Solutions team.
With a mandate to grow and monetize this scaled audience, Smith leads a team of experts across YouTube channel management, FAST and AVOD partnerships, and advertising sales.