Bela Bajaria, chief content officer at Netflix is the sole Indian American featured in The Wrap’s ‘Changemakers 2024,’ list of women who led, inspired and made the world a little bit better this year.
For its fifth annual Changemakers package, in conjunction with the Power Women Summit, the media company has expanded its list to 51, “shining a wider spotlight on the many women driving the industry with their strategic leadership and individual achievements as well as some extraordinarily impressive women on the rise.”
The list includes studio heads like Bajaria, “whose savvy decisions dictate what we watch in our spare time,” The Wrap says, as well as “quiet superstars who guide careers and get the deals done; producers and filmmakers and showrunners with singular creative visions; and a handful of performers whose fearlessness broke barriers and hearts.”
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“The kingdom that Bajaria oversees is unprecedented,” says the Wrap. “As Chief Content Officer of the world’s biggest streaming platform, she is in charge of all Netflix’s films and original series, which come from 27 countries and totaled almost 500 in 2024, at a production budget of a reported $17 billion. Her vision has been instrumental in redefining the television experience in the 21st century.”
Born in London, Bajaria moved to the US as a child and landed her first job in Hollywood in 1996 as an assistant at CBS after pitching herself to every studio in town via a letter-writing campaign. She quickly ascended to VP of movies and miniseries before moving to Universal Television, where she became the first woman of color to run the studio. At the time, a female TV exec of Indian descent was extremely rare, the Wrap noted.
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In 2016, she joined Netflix to lead unscripted content and licensing. Seven years later, she was promoted to her current role. Under Bajaria’s savvy leadership, Netflix has spawned such game-changing hits as “Squid Game,” “Bridgerton” and “Wednesday.” In 2024, the company won 24 Emmys for acclaimed shows including “Baby Reindeer,” “Ripley” and “Blue Eye Samurai.”
Even with subscriber growth slowing, revenue ticked up 15% to $9.8 billion in the third quarter, thanks in no small part to audience hits like “Rebel Ridge” and “Monsters: The Lyle and Eric Menendez Story,” which racked up 1.7 billion viewing minutes in its first days of release.