Disney Streaming hires Netflix’s Devika Chawla, Meta’s Arun Chandra for senior posts

Disney Streaming, which operates the Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+ services globally, has tapped two tech veterans — Devika Chawla from Netflix and Arun Chandra from Meta — for senior roles.

Chawla (above left) joins Disney Streaming next week as senior VP of lifecycle engineering, after nearly a decade at Netflix building out global customer communication products and teams. Most recently, she served as director of engineering, messaging and contact, at Netflix.

Chawla will lead Disney’s initiatives to “optimize customer journeys, interactions and retention” for Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+, the company said. In the role, she will head strategy and road map for all global customer communication, working closely with the group’s data team along with business and regional leadership in EMEA, LATAM and APAC regions. Chawla will report directly to Sean Curtis, senior VP of services and data engineering at Disney Streaming.

Chandra (above right) joins Disney Streaming this week as senior VP of viewer experience. He previously spent four years at Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram), where he was most recently VP of scaled operations. Chandra will helm the company’s viewer experience teams, partner management operations, support channels, and audience insights for subscribers across Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+. Chandra will report directly to Alisa Bowen, executive VP of business operations.

The two execs are the latest leadership hires from big tech companies to join the Disney Streaming team in the past year. In March, the group named Jeremy Doig, an 18-year Google veteran, as CTO. Disney Streaming last summer hired Ajay Arora, formerly at Netflix and Amazon, as SVP of product, commerce and experimentation.

Chawla, in a statement provided by Disney, said: “I’m very excited about the huge potential and impact of elevating consumer lifecycle experiences across Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+ globally. The opportunity to build world-class teams, technologies and products for this scale that amplify the stories created at Disney is tremendous. I look forward to experiencing the magic and adventure at Disney.”

Chandra commented, “I am proud to join Disney, a company that continuously innovates to delight customers in both the digital and physical worlds. It’s incredibly exciting to have this opportunity to scale up our best-in-class viewer experience team for Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+ and deliver an exceptional experience for all our viewers across the globe.” Yahoo! News