Vancouver-based Thunderbird Entertainment Group (TSX-V:TBRD) has shaken up its management team in the lead-up to president Matthew Berkowtiz' slated to leave on May 31.
Its CEO, Jennifer Twiner McCarron, a former BIV Influential Women in Business winner, is staying in place.
Berkowitz' responsibility to oversee new animated- and scripted-production development will be split between Aaron Behl, Kristin Cummings and Hillary Zwick Turner. Behl and Cummings are senior vice presidents of original work at Atomic Cartoons, which is Thunderbird's kids and family division, while Turner is a senior-vice preisident of scripted content at Thunderbird. Those three now report directly to Twiner McCarron.
Twiner McCarron, CFO Simon Bodymore, and Richard Goldsmith, president of global distribution and consumer products, will be on the company's executive team. Lori Massini serves as general counsel.
The company may be best known for being co-founded by billionaire Frank Giustra in 2011, and having Giustra on its board until he left in 2023 following a conflict with the company's largest shareholder, Voss Capital LLC. Voss, at the time, Giustra said in 2023, was trying to replace Thunderbird’s board with members who “had much less expertise in the content sector than current board members.”
Thunderbird bills itself as a full-service, multi-platform production, distribution and rights-management company that produces scripted, unscripted, and animated programming for digital platforms.
A news release said Berkowitz has accepted "a new opportunity," but did not relay what that is. Berkowitz has yet to update his LinkedIn profile with any new employer.
“I am so proud of everything Atomic and Thunderbird have achieved," Berkowitz said in the news release. "This is just the beginning for the company, and with such an incredibly talented and accomplished leadership team in place, and so many excellent productions on the go, I cannot wait to see how it continues to flourish and thrive.”
