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Bela Bajaria has had an unimaginable nine-year run at Netflix. She joined in 2016 to supervise unscripted and scripted collection, led the streaming big’s push into reside occasions and sports activities, and labored her method as much as turning into the corporate’s chief content material officer.
However earlier than then, she has what she calls a “huge public failure” which turned out to be “the best studying lesson”: She was fired from her job as president of Common Tv after a five-year tenure and massive accomplishments, together with constructing a powerful comedy roster with prime creators like Tina Fey and Mike Schur.
“There’s wonderful books and quotes and all these things about [how] you study a lot from failure, and failure is necessary, and you are not attempting arduous sufficient should you’re not failing,” Bajaria instructed CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on the current 2025 Changemakers Summit in Los Angeles. “And all of that’s true, however then if you fail, no one needs to speak about it.”
There’s loads of gendered stigma that hold ladies from discussing their firings, Bajaria added, “as a result of we’re presupposed to be excellent” and a dismissal is “a blemish.”
The primary few months after her firing have been particularly powerful, she stated. She discovered it arduous to separate her private id together with her skilled standing and he or she puzzled if the arduous work she put into her profession was worthwhile.
Bajaria recalled pondering: “All these wonderful reveals, all these nice relationships I constructed; I handled individuals so pretty. We had a variety of success — it meant nothing.”
The precise response to her firing challenged that, she stated. “I rapidly realized, because the cellphone rang and I obtained job affords, and all people reached out, and folks have been actually supportive — all of it mattered. The best way I handled individuals, what I had performed, the impression I left — all of it mattered,” Bajaria stated.
“I knew I might all the time take a look at myself within the mirror and [think] I preferred what I had performed. I did not have any disgrace round what I did. I believed it was actually a fantastic, profitable run,” she added.
Bajaria was fast to notice that coming to phrases together with her firing, and discovering the upside of it, is simpler after almost a decade of distance. “The primary three months have been actually tough,” she stated.
“Looking back I’m so grateful that it occurred,” Bajaria stated. “I am not frightened of getting fired. It’s extremely liberating, really.”
Underneath Bajaria’s management, Netflix has develop into a vacation spot to look at reside occasions together with comedy specials, awards reveals, WWE programming and NFL video games.
Netflix movies and collection like “Bridgerton” and “Emily in Paris” have develop into international phenomena and boosted economies by hiring large crews and encouraging tourism to the reveals’ settings.
Final yr, Netflix obtained essentially the most nominations for a single studio at each the Oscars and the Emmys with 107 nominations throughout 35 collection, TV films and specials.
Disclosure: CNBC and Common Tv are divisions of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast.
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