Guillermo Sierra

Guillermo has designed, developed, branded and launched free and pay television channels, as well as digital OTT services, in multiple territories in the United States, Europe and Latin America. He has broad management skills including programming, acquisitions, scheduling, marketing, technical operations and revenue generation from affiliates, advertisers and viewers. Guillermo has professional relationships with content suppliers, producers and television networks worldwide. He has also executive produced over 1,000 hours of content in multiple genres including current affairs, news, entertainment, lifestyle, children, factual, music and reality. Guillermo has been a judge for the International Digital Emmy Awards in 2011, 2012, and for the International Children’s Emmys in 2018. He is a frequent speaker at television and media conferences internationally.

Guillermo is currently the Head of Television and Digital Services for Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network (HITN), a non-profit organization dedicated to advance the educational, cultural and socioeconomic aspirations of the US Hispanic Community. In that capacity he is responsible for the content, operation, distribution and revenue generation activities of HITN TV, a national pay television network that reaches over 40 million homes. In addition, Guillermo is in charge of HITN’s digital strategy including the company’s SVOD and OTT platforms HITN-Go and Edye, the first Pan-American subscription video-on-demand preschool service that is currently available in the United States and in all countries of Latin America including Brazil, and currently has over 3.5 million subscribers. Guillermo is also responsible for overseeing the operations of the health-information portal VidaySalud.com, one of the largest of its kind in Spanish-language globally.

Previously, Guillermo was the General Manager for BBC Worldwide Channels for Latin America and US Hispanic. He had direct responsibility over the channels BBC Entertainment, CBeebies and BBC HD across the region.

Guillermo was Senior Vice President, Chief Content Officer of Vme Media, the company responsible for producing and distributing America’s fourth largest Spanish language broadcast network, Vme, which launched in 2007 and had a reach of over 88 million TV Households, including 80% of America’s Hispanic TV Households. The network broadcast as a free over-the-air digital television channel in partnership with over 40 public television stations. In addition, it was retransmitted by cable in each of those markets and nationwide by satellite and Telco services. Guillermo was responsible for designing and implementing the content strategy of the network. He directly supervised all programming acquisitions, original productions and scheduling. He also managed the digital strategy for the service and multiple other areas including research, on-air promotion, marketing, and technical operations. Guillermo also designed, launched and managed the pay TV preschool service Vme Kids.

Prior to joining Vme, Guillermo was the Senior Vice President of Content for Spanish Broadcasting Systems. In this role he led overall content strategy for a new U.S. Hispanic network.

Before that, Guillermo was Vice President of Content for Discovery Networks Latin America/Iberia, where he oversaw all aspects of programming, acquisitions, production, marketing, on-air promotion, creative services, language customization and production management for nine brands produced and distributed in Latin America, Spain and Portugal including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Kids, Travel Channel and several others, two of them in joint venture with the BBC. Guillermo also participated in the development and production of programming for Discovery Channel in the U.S. He also developed the concept and branding for Discovery Turbo worldwide.

Guillermo spent seven years at Latin American Pay Television Services (LAPTV), a partnership formed by Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and Metro Goldwyn Mayer. In LAPTV he held several increasingly senior level positions, including Vice President of Networks.

Earlier in his career in Mexico, he held several positions at Grupo Televisa’s pay television operations, which included Head of Marketing for Cablevision.

Guillermo has an expertise in children’s television having participated in the design, launch, and operation of multiple networks dedicated to this target audience. In 1992 as Marketing Director for Televisa’s Cablevision in Mexico, Guillermo was responsible for the launch and introduction to the Mexican market of Cartoon Network. During his tenure as VP of Networks for LAPTV, Guillermo worked very closely with the company’s studio partners and distributors in developing a constant offering of family and children’s content including international megahit franchises like LucasFilms’ Star Wars and Dreamworks’ Shrek. As VP of Content for the Discovery Networks Latin America / Iberia Guillermo had direct responsibility for the management and growth of Discovery Kids, at the time, the top preschool service in Latin America. In this capacity he acted also as a co producer in Sesame Workshop’s Plaza Sesamo. As Chief Content Officer at Vme, Guillermo designed and managed a daily six-hour block of top quality preschool content that became a signature for the network and that later evolved into the 24-hour stand-alone pay TV channel Vme Kids. During his tenure as General Manager for the BBC Networks in Latin America and US Hispanic, he managed CBeebies, the BBC’s global preschool brand. Currently, Guillermo manages Edye, HITN’s SVOD service that features world-class content from The Jim Henson Company, WildBrain, 9 Story and Studio 100, among others. Guillermo has been a speaker at specialized children’s television international conferences including Kidscreen, and a judge for the Children’s category at the Emmys.