EVP, Global Brand, Content Marketing & Creative, Discovery+ at Discovery Inc
Vikki Neil serves as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Discovery’s Digital Studios Group, a hub with deep experience in consumer strategy and digital lifestyle experiences across content development, product and audience creation. The group is responsible for the business of the sites, social and digital platforms for Food Network, HGTV and Travel Channel. Neil’s team has successfully led the Food Network, HGTV, and Travel Channel digital experiences to reach hundreds of millions of people globally every month. This reach supports the U.S. Ad Sales division and the company’s emerging direct to-consumer and other growing digital businesses within Discovery.
Prior to Discovery’s acquisition, Neil spearheaded the launch and dramatic growth of Scripps Lifestyle Studios positioning the division as a full-service editorial and product unit to drive digital innovation across multiple platforms while providing advertising solutions for lifestyle. She oversees the HGTV Digital studios and Food Network Kitchen, which are both treated as content and culinary labs producing daily content. With tens of thousands of videos, recipes and articles produced annually, the content group specializes in cultivating high-quality engaged audiences across all digital platforms. Her teams have been recognized for producing Webby, Digiday, Realscreen, Cynopsis, and CableFax-award winning series and experiences, like “House Hunters Kids” to social short-form franchises “Food Network Finds”.
Innovation is at the heart of her product team. The Food Network “In the Kitchen” app, is among the Apple Store’s Hall of Fame and reaches hundreds of thousands of people every month. She leads teams who develop for emerging platforms and the e-commerce space with early launches of Food Network Alexa and Google skills and a explores new alternative revenue for the division.
Before joining Scripps Networks Interactive, she also worked for Disney’s media group, focusing on digital product development for ESPN.com and, ABCNews.com. Neil got her start in local media, building one of the first digital news teams for a local ABC station affiliate in Tampa. She also worked deeply in creating first generate classified products in real estate, employment, and automotive for the St. Petersburg Times newspaper and the E.W. Scripps newspaper division.
Neil has been named one of Cablefax’s “Most Powerful Women in Cable” and to its “Digital Hot List.” In 2017, she was honored as a Corporate Visionary in Cynopsis’ “Top Women in Digital” awards. She serves as a board member for Digital Content Next and is a member of Digital 50. Neil is a graduate of the Betsy Magness Leadership Institute, Stanford’s Senior Executive Summit and Cable’s Executive Management at Harvard. She holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in marketing from East Tennessee State University.