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Matt Westrup

Chief Technology Officer EMEA

A+E Networks EMEA’s maestro of tech is Matt Westrup. He is Senior Vice President of Technology and Operations, leading the company’s digital innovation and transformation. 

Culture is king, he says. “It has always been a priority here which has allowed us to have the right conversations in the right way. It’s our values that give us the core strength to make decisions.” 

And Matt has made some crucial ones since he joined the Senior Leadership and EMEA teams in 2019. Not least his stewardship of the network’s channels into the cloud. He has led cloud transformations of the content supply chain and production, partnering with Amagi, AWS, Blue Lucy and SDVI among others to deliver next-generation content operation and post-production that’s fully remote - a flexibility that proved invaluable during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Matt said, “Our goal is to create effective, scalable and future-facing operations in the cloud.” 
A big believer that Technology is “90% about people”, he combines technological insight and executive know-how with an understanding of people, process and purpose, turning curiosity into enduring change.

Matt also oversees business and media operations for A+E Networks EMEA’s portfolio of 32 channels and 55 VOD platforms across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as technology support for the company’s 200+ staff.
He has always used tech to amplify talent. Earlier in his career, as Head of Operations at Travel Channel International in 2010, he was instrumental in the early adoption of progressive file-based HD workflows, remote playout and in-house post-production. Matt then became Director of Operations at lifestyle programmers Scripps Network overseeing the creation of their international operations hub before joining A+E in 2016 as VP Operations. He now manages everything ops-based from post-production and localisation to engineering and distribution, as well as delivering innovation and change across the business through technology-led projects.

Starting off as a researcher in the 1990s and then a lighting camera operator, Matt is now a key voice in the UK TVscape and a regular contributor to panel discussions. He sits on the advisory committees of industry associations DPP and IABM; is a member of the editorial board of academia-in-business publishers Henry Stewart; and is A+E Networks EMEA’s representative to the Albert Consortium, an industry organisation creating positive, environmental change in film and TV. Likewise, Matt has created positive change wherever he’s been. 
 

A photograph of Matt Westrup
A photograph of Matt Westrup