Years in Industry: 34

Education: Loyola Marymount; MBA, UCLA

Not everyone is confident that AT&T will be able to turn its Time Warner purchase into gold, but Stankey is certainly busy weaving a lot of straw these days. The amount of powerhouse content under his purview is staggering—from HBO to the Turner Nets to the upcoming WarnerMedia streaming services. He made bold personnel moves, bringing in former NBC Entertainment chair Bob Greenblatt to lead the DTC business and chair WarnerMedia Entertainment. Change has also brought some major senior level exits, including HBO CEO Richard Plepler and Turner president David Levy. Stankey’s working hard to reassure everyone—internally and externally—that AT&T won’t stifle creativity on the content side. These next 12 months are when we will find out if Stankey’s mined 14 karats or fool’s gold.

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