Kieli founded Discovery’s Polish office in 2000 with just two team members. Today she oversees 4,200 people, and Warsaw is a key Discovery location. She handles business in 140 markets—with more than a billion viewers—across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and part of Central Asia. In 2020, she aided the global rollout of discovery+. “At Discovery, we see huge benefits in bringing a plethora of perspectives to the table, on- and off-screen,” she says. “As we aim to fuel the passions of millions of viewers around the globe and create content that resonates with people of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds, we need to walk the walk ourselves.” A supporter of free speech, Kieli also fights to keep nationalistic influence out of Polish TV.
What’s one way your company has broadened the recruiting process to ensure greater diversity?
As a big media organization, we constantly think of ways to become a more inclusive environment. This requires constant learning and evaluation. We are currently working hard on our Mosaic initiative that we launched in 2020 to amplify our diversity, equity and inclusion impact across key focus areas including unconscious bias training and content diversity.
This year, we redesigned our recruitment and promotion principles, focused on a transparent, consistent and inclusive approach. Our leaders and managers across the board have a set of clear, consistent, fair, transparent, and inclusive guidelines to follow. This entails understanding and meeting diversity needs across all the regions we operate in.
At Discovery, we see huge benefits in bringing a plethora of perspectives to the table, on- and off-screen. As we aim to fuel the passions of millions of viewers around the globe and create content that resonates with people of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds, we need to walk the walk ourselves.
What one female empowerment book do you think every woman should read?
There’s a long list of great empowerment books, but if I had to pick one, I’d recommend “Daring Greatly,” by Brené Brown. It is an incredible data-driven story, not necessarily female-focused, that brings vulnerability into the spotlight. Based on years of social research, it proves that difficult emotions, that we are prone to consider our weaknesses, make a powerful tool and are the key to unlocking our full potential. The book encourages to be brave and step into the uncertain and uncomfortable world of self-doubt to discover all the wonderful things we are capable of. There is nothing that gives a greater sense of achievement than overcoming our biggest fears. And this applies to our professional life as much as home, personal relationships and parenting.
