Q&A with A+E Global Media’s Susan Tanamli

Susan Tanamli, CTO and EVP, Head of global Technology and Media Operations at A+E Global Media, was recognized with The WICT Network‘s Women of the Year–Technology award. We spoke with her about her journey in technology, changes she’s seen over time and the importance WICT carries today. Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation.

What was your reaction when you found out you were being given this award?

It was a tremendous honor. I had no idea that I was even being considered for this. I respect the WICT organization tremendously, so I’m just thrilled.

How did you come about choosing to enter a career in technology?

It wasn’t planned. I have to say that I was fortunate to encounter someone in my 20s who read my resume and said, ‘I’m going to take a chance on you and hire you into the technology department because I know you can think. I want you to take your business knowledge of rights licensing and apply that to helping them implement a new system and rights that tracks IP.’ And really, that was how I did it. I just fell into technology and I loved it, but that experience really taught me that it’s important to trust your instinct on the hiring process.

What developments have made the largest impact to your role/the industry as a whole?

From a technology perspective, I think about A+E having been a television company and needing to evolve to a global media company. This was a business shift, but it was an incredible lift for a technology and operations group. I think the technology over the last five years really lent itself to be able to for us to take advantage of that—to change our media to go to a file based workflow, we had to change all the enterprise apps and we needed to support the changing and evolving business that was having a significant presence in digital beyond our linear channels. But of course, nothing compares to the rapidly evolving technology of AI in content creation, and that, to me, is the most exciting thing that I’ve worked on.

What about AI excites you?

I think the unlimited potential of benefits to the organization gets me very excited. This represents the biggest change to how we work than we have probably seen in our lifetimes. I read a stat that the Industrial Revolution was only impacted ultimately by 15% by the introduction of steam power, and AI has already significantly outpaced that. For us to be able to understand the benefits and harness them within our organization is incredibly important, and to do that, we need a full adoption and understanding, as well as connecting the right tools to the right use cases for the biggest impact. We’ve done that. We have so many different working groups and leadership groups that are working at different levels to ensure proper communication and prioritization, but we we’ve done a significant amount of work over the last year to do this, and we’ve implemented over 140 individual initiatives to support the use of AI throughout our company. In the operations space, we’re automating aspects of receiving and prepping media, as I mentioned, and those have been the most impactful. As they say, today is the worst that AI will ever be, so we’re looking at certain tool sets to evolve quickly to support the most efficient approach to this ever-evolving business.

What are some of your proudest moments throughout your career?

I’d like to answer this in a different way. When I think about my proudest moments, I really share so many of them with my team, so I have a hard time focusing on personal moments of achievement, but I do have one here at A+E. I was the first winner of the Pete Sgro Award, and that award was created by A+E upon Pete’s passing. He actually held the position I hold now—most closely, it’s a little different. He was an amazing man. He always strived to be the best, and he was just an amazing human. So we now present that award every year, and we look to honor colleagues who exemplify teamwork and the pursuit of excellence. Just as a side note, I started at A+E 20 years ago as a freelance analyst. I got hired five years later as a director, and I think I was still a senior director when I was given that award. So to have moved up and taken a role that Pete had is very meaningful for me.

What do you think the role of an organization like The WICT Network is in today’s world?

WICT’s mission is to empower women leaders who light the way for others and who transform media and entertainment and technology. That organization is perfectly poised to continue that mission during this period of tremendous industry evolution and growth and transformation. What an exciting time, and we can all benefit from having meaningful connections to other women in this space.