Neela Sakaria Hired As NBCUniversal’s Senior Vice President Of Consumer Insights

EXCLUSIVE: NBCUniversal has tapped Neela Sakaria to join the Consumer Insights team as Senior Vice President.

In her new role, Sakaria will oversee consumer insights strategy across NBCU’s television and direct-to-consumer entertainment brands, including NBC, Bravo, Peacock and Fandango, with a focus on connecting big data with consumer research to better understand audience behaviors. 

She will report to Zoë Friend, Executive Vice President of consumer insights for NBCUniversal’s Media Group. 

“Neela is a fantastic leader, data strategist and storyteller whose deep expertise in the entertainment industry is an exciting addition to our best-in-class Decision Sciences group,” Friend said. “She will be a strong advocate for our customers, and an important voice as we chart the future of our business. We cannot wait to welcome Neela to the team.” 

Prior to joining NBCU, Sakaria spent almost seven years at Netflix, where she most recently served as Head of Content & Audience Insights. In that role, she led a global team that combined analytics with storytelling to scale insights guiding the company’s rapid growth in series, movies, and kids content.

In her career of more than two decades, Sakaria held previous leadership roles at History Channel and Latitude Research. Her early career included roles at American Public Television, MTV Networks, and Discovery Channel. She holds an MBA from NYU Stern, a B.A. from Wellesley College, and is an active member of the Women in Research Mentorship Program.