About Chris Lesinski

Programming is content strategy, personalization, editorial process and merchandising — work I've led at scale across Twitch, Snap, Sony, YouTube and Roku. But the next decade of programming gets defined by content experiences we don't have names for yet.

What even is TV? Current-state streaming and social video is derivative of linear and cable TV. It's personalized, on-demand and shorter... but that's as far as we've come. The future of TV is going to require innovation and experimentation far beyond rearranging tiles and rows of content.

I've worked across streamers, traditional studios, digital publishers and creator platforms to build programming strategies that translate new viewer behaviors into a real business. These are the new frontiers of growth in video and I've worked with them all: Interactive video. Creator programming. Live streaming and sports. Undiscovered formats. Gamification. Social and community products. I bring those and more from experiment to scalable strategy.

Most recently I was the Head of Content Programming at Twitch, where I led global programming across the platform's highest-visibility discovery surfaces (homepage, living room, mobile). I worked closely with Product and Engineering on new recommendation systems and tools that improved discovery: curation workflows, massive labeling efforts and content evaluation. Earlier in my career, at Warner Bros. and Discovery, I worked in the weeds on metadata, video personalization and publishing systems. At Warner I helped launch the company's first DTC video personalization systems.

I've spent a large part of my career working with creators. I started as a creator myself, co-founding a college media site and podcast that was eventually acquired. Years later at Twitch, I led programming and strategy for "new bets," expanding the service through acquisitions and experiments in dozens of new verticals like talk shows, comedy, news, sports and investing. As part of those efforts, my team led the GTM for flagship creator products through some hard pivots, growing adoption to as much as 30% of daily active creators. When I was a VP at Sony Pictures Entertainment and B17, I built creator-led programs for YouTube, TikTok, HBO, Disney and Snapchat, and when Instagram first launched vertical video, I wrote the playbook that trained up creators, which they kept using for more than five years. (Remember when Instagram didn't have video?)

Live streaming is still in its early innings which is why I keep coming back to it. Besides programming dozens of tentpoles on Twitch, I ran Twitch's Thursday Night Football program as part of Amazon's $1-billion-per-year NFL deal, moving the Nielsen rating measurably. I produced TikTok's most-watched livestream featuring more than 300 top creators and ran audience strategy for Facebook's daily live game show Confetti and the launch of TMZ Live. I produced one of the first YouTube livestreams, an episode of Diggnation, when the product was still in beta.

I have a knack for developing and showrunning interactive and experimental programming, where video merges with product. Recently, I was EP and showrunner on Roku's interactive trivia show which shipped to 90 million households. I've built interactive shows for Sony, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube and TNT. For Quibi, I co-executive produced five shows in a brand-new mobile format that was both vertical and horizontal. One of them required an innovative curation workflow that cut more than a thousand minutes of footage down to the best six, in a few hours. Another, which screened at Sundance, used 360 sound and cutting-edge drones to create an immersive meditation experience.

Outside my career, I'm a proud Founding Member of The Magic Castle Club. I've written for Wired, Lifehacker, and the LA Times, and taught five semesters on innovation, streaming platforms, and entrepreneurship at Loyola Marymount's School of Film and Television, where I also earned my film degree. I live in El Segundo with my wife and daughter.

I want to be building where entertainment is headed next: I've had the most impact building zero-to-one programming initiatives. I've led creative teams, programming teams, strategists, analysts, producers, and cross-functional initiatives with product, engineering, marketing, sales, finance, legal, trust & safety, and executive stakeholders.

I'm drawn to the messy, ambiguous edges of entertainment and programming — the places where TV is being redefined.

If you're building somewhere in that territory, let's talk.