Christy Tanner is a tech and culture visionary who, throughout her career, has transformed some of the world’s most recognizable brands into formidable competitors and enduring market leaders. As the head of multiple divisions for CBS Interactive, Tanner successfully built teams with the strategic acumen and operational agility to turn extinction-level threats into growth opportunities. And she did it by partnering with the technology competitors who sought to disrupt her industry’s marketplace. An early collaborator with Apple, Netflix and Hulu, Tanner established technology alliances that created mutually beneficial new business opportunities and customer value. At CBS, she spearheaded the launch of more than 15 early-to-market streaming services in sports, entertainment, and public affairs, several years before other major players in the space followed suit. Tanner draws from her experiences as an innovation powerhouse to share essential principles for how any organization can leverage outside-the-box thinking and its own proprietary information to operationalize innovation and create a culture of continuous transformation where teams are equipped to pivot in the face of disruption, and unlock new opportunities to thrive and lead their industries into the future. 

Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, Tanner engages audiences with eye-opening insights that emphasize culture as the single-most important element for business growth. As she shares, by creating spaces where everyone on the team — regardless of title or function — is empowered to contribute their ideas, it multiplies the possibilities for arriving at business breakthroughs that win with customers and turbocharge growth and profitability. In addition to collaboration and transparency, early technology adoption has always been an important pillar in Tanner’s approach to business evolution. In a world where organizations will continue to be disrupted by AI and other emerging technologies, Tanner urges groups to embrace the innovation potential they present — just as she did with her teams — and demonstrates how they can identify the technologies that will help them be faster, smarter, and better at creating the best possible product for customers, while expediting growth. 

For eight years, Tanner headed the Media and public affairs divisions for CBS Interactive, overseeing all aspects of the digital businesses and content, including the massive growth of global and local streaming services for CBS News Digital. Under her leadership, CBS News Digital became the number one-ranked streaming information service. Prior to CBS Interactive, she was the CEO of TV Guide Digital, where she reinvented the product for mobile and social audiences and created mutually beneficial, business-boosting partnerships with the emerging tech giants that were disrupting the media landscape and shaking the foundation for the market’s legacy corporations. Before that, she held senior executive roles with Lionsgate, The Washington Post Company, Wolters Kluwer, and Reed Elsevier.

Today, Tanner serves as an advisor to global companies, including BBC, Univision, Outside, PBS, and Altice, as well as global startups such as Swerve Sports and Alda, with whom she collaborates to understand their business goals and support them in developing winning blueprints for their business strategies, cross-platform operational tactics, mergers and acquisitions, and sustainable innovation models. Her insights on innovation, disruption, culture, and digital transformation are frequently cited in leading media outlets, where she shares proven strategies for how organizations can solve problems and create a lasting positive impact and competitive advantage.

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