Saxena is committed to serving Discovery’s superfans the content they love across all platforms. Dedicated viewers turn to Discovery when they are looking for content about food, home, animals, true crime and more. With this in mind, Saxena built a subscriber-friendly platform focused on providing viewers with exclusive, curated content and a memorable DTC experience. Despite entering a highly concentrated and competitive market, Discovery+ surpassed 15 million total paying direct-to-consumer subscribers globally this past April. And then there’s DEI. “It is Discovery’s mission to create a working environment that is just as diverse and inclusive as the content and stories we showcase,” Saxena says. To that end, Discovery launched initiatives in 2020 to amplify its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion impact across key focus areas, including Unconscious Bias Training, Content Diversity, Supplier Diversity, Social Impact, and Recruitment & Internal Career Development of Diverse Talent.
Do you think there has been significant progress on DEI in the industry in the past year?
Tech and media are both industries that have the power to touch and influence people’s lives like no other. Even the simple example of having internationally created content available in multiple languages can have the profound effect of exposing people to other cultures. Tech and media are at the forefront of acknowledging and championing the need for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion across our organization from who creates content to how and where it gets consumed. Much progress has been in the last year and will continue to be made as streaming platforms with diverse stories created by diverse talent continue to be made available globally.
Best initiative to come out of one of your company’s Employee Resource Groups?
Discovery launched initiatives in 2020 to amplify our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion impact across key focus areas including Unconscious Bias Training, Content Diversity, Supplier Diversity, Social Impact, and Recruitment & Internal Career Development of Diverse Talent. This set of initiatives ensures that we are having the right set of conversations to fundamentally change how we effectively run our business in today’s global and interconnected world.
How have you been a champion of diversity, equity, and inclusion?
It is Discovery’s mission to create a working environment that is just as diverse and inclusive as the content and stories we showcase. As an engineering leader, it is important to me that we continue to grow and expand our team globally and have diverse talent represented across our teams especially at leadership levels. We partner heavily with our People and Culture team to ensure we are recruiting from a diverse recruiting pool. We evaluate our diversity metrics each month to make sure they are trending in the right direction. And we regularly invite both internal and external diverse leaders in tech and media to highlight their own stories of how they have shaped the industry.
