The Fierce Video editorial team is proud to present its third annual Emerging Leaders Awards, recognizing the brightest young professionals rising up the ranks of the streaming TV industry. Throughout the month of May we’ll be featuring these profiles with each of our finalists. We will announce the winners during our StreamTV Show with a live awards ceremony in Denver on June 6 at 7:30 p.m. MT. Not yet registered for the StreamTV Show, running June 6-8? Be sure to register now!
Nicole Kohansamad/Roku:
Nicole Kohansamad is responsible for optimizing and scaling The Roku Channel's Premium Subscriptions business and platform. In her role as core business lead for the SVOD team, she develops and implements business strategies to improve user acquisition and retention across 50+ premium partners, including Discovery+, Starz, and Showtime. Tapping into her passion for best-in-class streaming experiences, she leads cross-functional teams to bring new features and products to life. Prior to joining Roku, Nicole worked in several corporate strategy roles, one of which had her supporting the launch and growth of Fullscreen Media's subscription streaming service.
What her colleagues are saying:
"Nicole is a shining star and has truly stood out as a strong leader since starting at Roku two years ago. I look forward to seeing how her passion and commitment continues to drive value for our partners, users, and business!" - Randy Ahn, director of The Roku Channel SVOD
"We're proud to have Nicole on our team. Her passion for growing the business with our partners and providing consumers with the best streaming experience is evident in everything she does. We're thrilled to have her hard work recognized by Fierce Video!" - Rob Holmes, VP of programming at Roku
Streaming Industry Q&A:
What streaming services do you subscribe to?
Too many to count! My current favorites are Starz and Showtime, through The Roku Channel. I'm also enjoying the variety of movies on HBO Max.
Describe your biggest career highlight so far.
My biggest career highlight would have to be leading the overall strategy and execution of Roku's first massive promotional subscriptions event: Black Friday 2020. With the participation of over 30 premium subscription services in The Roku Channel, our team pulled off an unprecedented campaign to drive the growth of subscriptions on the platform and bring great deals to our customers. I had an amazing opportunity to lead my remarkable team across marketing, editorial, partner management, product and analytics to take this campaign (and several others since then) from start to finish. There's something about seeing your hard work on the screen, live to the public, that's incredibly special and exciting!
What has been your biggest career learning experience?
I'm still learning every day, but one thing that sticks out to me is the fact that everyone is human and relationships matter. It's easy to get consumed in the complex projects and problems at hand, but the more I find myself making connections with the people around me, the easier those challenges become. Especially in a time when so many of us are working remotely, making the effort to help others out, meet new team members, or admit your own humanness (we all make mistakes!) seems to go a long way.
What's next for you in terms of new challenges in streaming TV?
As we see the effects of the pandemic on subscriptions wear off and competition continues to steam up, one major area of focus is to improve the way we engage and retain subscribers through content discovery and personalization. As a distributor of 50+ premium services, some widely known and some niche in nature, The Roku Channel has the unique opportunity to create a comprehensive streaming ecosystem and surface content to users in a very personalized way. I'm excited to see what our team will accomplish in the future!