Izabella Wiley

Senior Vice President and General Manager, Central & Eastern Europe

Named one of the 50 most influential women in Poland, Izabella Wiley is a blue-chip leader in TV in Central Europe. As General Manager and Senior Vice President Poland, Central and Eastern Europe, Izabella drives new and exciting business growth for A+E Networks EMEA on the Continent. 

In February 2022 she launched HISTORY Play into Hungary, the company’s first streaming brand in CEE, while in Romania, Izabella’s team donates textbooks to high schools, drawing in a new audience to the network’s factual content. It’s this business acumen, forged over five years at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, that Izabella combines with a deep knowledge of the Central European markets. 

As well as championing the brand’s global hits, Izabella is immensely proud of successful local commissions, like 2018’s Once Upon a Crime where crime authors narrate stories of real murders and The Hunt for Baltic Gold in 2019, telling the weather-beaten tales of Poland’s daring amber miners.
Before joining A+E in May 2013, Izabella was SVP of Viacom International Media Networks. There, she brought the Comedy Central brand to Poland. Izabella also launched an HD channel for MTV internationally, drove their global efforts in developing 3D projects and brought Nickelodeon HD to Russia and Poland.

In her native Warsaw, Izabella is recognised as one of the foremost strategists in TV. Home & Market magazine put her in the top 50 most influential women in the country, something she was especially pleased with as she’s excited by all things interior design. And the recognition kept coming, being a finalist for the Businesswoman of the Year award by BRE Bank and Radio PIN, and winning the ‘Keep Walking’ prize as voted by Newsweek readers.

As a successful woman in business, she is keen to encourage others, as she sits on the Management Board at LiderShe, a Polish association of exceptional women who lead. In 2018 the WICT Network - a US organisation empowering women in media, entertainment, and technology – named Izabella as their Woman to Watch in the programmer category. She hosts the Women in Media Breakfast too, a recurring discussion forum exploring the changes and challenges women face in the industry. 

Izabella is also the ambassador for A+E Networks EMEA’s ongoing corporate social responsibility initiative, End Abuse Against Women, which aims to raise awareness and fundraising for the cause of domestic abuse across EMEA.

A wife, a mum, a bilingual TV aficionado; life for Izabella is full tilt. She says that her role as General Manager to half a continent sees her travel frequently but, she confesses, “rarely lightly”.