She influences what 300 million people stream each night. From being raised by grandparents as an undocumented immigrant to becoming Hollywood’s most powerful woman, she’s rewriting the book for global entertainment.
When Bela Bajaria stepped onto the dance floor at Netflix’s Emmy celebration last fall—swaying in a brightly colored, flowing skirt and an off-the-shoulder sheer black blouse as Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” filled the room—she embodied something rare in Hollywood: a top executive who openly celebrates success rather than merely tolerating it.
Variety, which captured the moment, described Bajaria moving “with easy fluidity,” dancing alongside programming executives Peter Friedlander and Jinny Howe and communications chief Emily Feingold. Most senior executives avoid the dance floor at company parties. Bajaria did not. As Annie Lennox’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” played, Team Bela savored one final victory lap—marking Emmy wins for Baby Reindeer, The Crown, Ripley, and more.
“Who am I to disagree?” Lennox sang. Not Bajaria. She understands better than most how much fortune—and strategy—has shaped her rise.
That blend of good fortune and calculated brilliance has made the 55-year-old British Indian-American executive what Forbes recently called “Netflix’s Queen of Screens,” and arguably the most powerful content leader in entertainment history. As Netflix’s Chief Content Officer since January 2023, Bajaria oversees all television and film programming across every language and market, managing an annual content budget of roughly $17 billion.
In practical terms, she decides what more than 300 million Netflix subscribers around the world watch on any given night. The series she has greenlit—Squid Game, Stranger Things, Wednesday, Bridgerton, The Queen’s Gambit, La Casa de Papel, Lupin, Sacred Games, Kingdom—have become global cultural phenomena, shattering language barriers and redefining what entertainment can look like in a truly international era.
From Zambia to Torrance: An Unlikely Beginning
Bela Bajaria was born in 1970 in London’s Borough of Brent to parents of Gujarati descent. Her early childhood unfolded across continents—split between London and Zambia—reflecting the broader journey of her family within the Indian diaspora of East Africa, where her extended relatives had long-established roots.
“My family is Indian, but my parents and their family were all born and raised in East Africa,” Bajaria told a publication in a 2016 LinkedIn profile. “We really moved here for the American dream. In the late ’70s, you could come to America and you could be anything.”
When Bajaria was four, her parents moved with her brother from London to the U.S. West Coast to pursue business opportunities. But after overstaying their visas, they became undocumented immigrants—setting off a painful chapter of separation. According to Wikipedia and the 2016 profile, young Bela was sent back to Zambia, where she was raised by her grandparents while her parents worked to legalize their status.
She reunited with her family in Los Angeles in 1978 at the age of eight and enrolled in local public schools—an arrival that marked both a reunion and a fresh start. Her parents eventually built a livelihood running car washes, businesses Bajaria later described as “cutthroat and competitive,” environments that quietly instilled discipline, resilience, and an unyielding work ethic.
As a teenager attending Torrance High School and later Rolling Hills High School, she worked weekends as a cashier alongside her sister, absorbing firsthand lessons about labor and perseverance.
“I felt like I had an amazing strong family foundation—it was very rooted and very grounded,” Bajaria recalled in the 2016 interview. “My parents came to America, to Los Angeles, without really knowing anyone. They started a life from scratch. I felt pressure—not pressure really, but drive.”
Looking back on her ascent, Bajaria often reflects on the generational distance her success represents. As Variety has noted, she frequently points out how much has changed in her own family in just a few generations—since the days when her great-grandmothers were forced into marriage at ages 13 and 14.
Miss India Worldwide 1991: An Unexpected Detour
After graduating from high school, Bajaria was encouraged by a friend to enter beauty pageants, according to Wikipedia—an idea she initially approached with curiosity rather than ambition. “I thought it would be fun to discover Indian culture on my own terms, through my own identity,” she told a publication in a 2016 LinkedIn profile.
What began as an experiment quickly escalated. Bajaria won the Miss LA India title, followed by Miss India USA, before being crowned Miss India Worldwide in 1991. The experience proved transformative in ways she had not anticipated.
“I met Indian women from all over the world,” she recalled in the 2016 interview. “It was so interesting, and we had a similar bond.”
According to IMDb, the title gave Bajaria early visibility in the entertainment industry. But while pageantry opened doors, her ambitions were never centered on being in front of the camera. From the start, her focus remained firmly behind it—on shaping stories rather than starring in them.
Her early years were divided between London and Zambia, where her extended family had deep roots within the East African Indian diaspora.
After her pageant win, she spent several years running a nonprofit that supported children in impoverished countries. But her ambition lay in entertainment. “I wasn’t immersed in American pop culture,” she said, “but I was always drawn to the idea of storytelling on a grand scale.”
The Education of a Content Queen
Bela Bajaria graduated from California State University, Long Beach in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts in communications. A year later, she joined CBS as an assistant in the network’s movies and miniseries department—an entry-level role that offered little glamour but ample opportunity.
Bajaria seized it with intensity. She read every script that crossed her desk and spent long hours in CBS’s basement videotape library, studying classic films to make up for what she saw as a gap in traditional Hollywood cultural literacy.
“I read every script, got to know all the executives, and followed their development work,” she recalled. “I didn’t have a grounding in classic film history, so I spent hours in CBS’s basement videotape library studying old movies.”
Her curiosity and drive were evident from the start. Nancy Tellem, the former president of the CBS Entertainment Group, told Variety that Bajaria stood out early as both a creative force and a leader.
“She’s unbelievably effective as a creative executive and as a manager,” Tellem said. “When you’re overseeing movies and miniseries, it would be easy for the work to become a formulaic development process.”She never did. She was always curious, always looking to grow the department, always pushing her shows beyond what would have been expected.”
After a brief stint in management at Warner Bros. Television Studios, Bajaria returned to CBS in 1997 as a director. Following the January 2002 departure of longtime CBS Movies and Miniseries senior vice president Sunta Izzicupo—under whom Bajaria had worked since the mid-1990s—she was promoted first to vice president and later to senior vice president of the department.
“When you’re running the department, you’re managing people,” Bajaria told a 2016 interviewer. “And I had proven myself with some higher-profile movies,” including Joan of Arc.
As television movies began to decline, Bajaria once again demonstrated her adaptability. According to Wikipedia, she requested a transfer to CBS’s production studio to focus on developing cable series—a strategic pivot that anticipated broader shifts in the industry. She went on to serve as Senior Vice President of Cable Programming for CBS Television Studios.
Making History at Universal Television
In 2011, Bajaria joined Universal Television as executive vice president and was soon promoted to president of the studio, according to USC Annenberg. With that appointment, she made history as the first woman of color to lead a major television studio.
That same year, Comcast acquired NBCUniversal and installed Robert Greenblatt as NBC’s entertainment president. According to a 2016 profile, Greenblatt asked Bajaria to take over NBC’s television studio—a move rooted in their earlier collaboration.
“He had produced Elvis, the miniseries, for me,” Bajaria recalled. “So it was Elvis that brought us together. Because I like building things, this was the dream situation.”
At NBCUniversal, Bajaria became a driving force behind a slate of successful series, including The Mindy Project, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Chicago Fire. According to The Coca-Cola Company, where Bajaria later joined the board, she also helped revive NBCUniversal’s once-dormant television studio, restoring it to prominence after years of inactivity.
The Firing That Changed Everything
Then came 2016—what Bajaria would later describe as her “greatest learning lesson.”
That year, she was fired from her role as president of Universal Television. A LinkedIn profile published just four months after her abrupt departure noted that she was “leaving her post,” offering no public explanation for the circumstances.
The setback, Bajaria later said, reshaped her approach to leadership and resilience. Rather than treating it as a career-ending blow, she used it as a moment of reassessment.
She went ahead with a previously planned family safari to Tanzania, using the time away to clear her head and reflect. During that period, she reached out to Ted Sarandos—then Netflix’s chief content officer—who had earlier advised her not to accept another job without speaking to him first.
“I Just Hire Smart People—and You’ll Figure It Out”
Ted Sarandos had already worked closely with Bajaria during her time at Universal Television, acquiring several of her shows and taking note of her instincts. According to Forbes, it was Sarandos who pitched her a role at Netflix—one that would involve launching the company’s unscripted programming division while also overseeing content licensing.
“I was like, ‘Okay, so everything you’re offering me—I’ve never done those things,’” Bajaria recalled to Forbes. Sarandos’ response was disarmingly simple. “‘Yeah. I just hire smart people, and you’ll figure it out.’”
She did.
Bajaria joined Netflix in November 2016 as Vice President of Content, tasked with leading the streaming platform’s expansion into unscripted programming. Sarandos later told Forbes that her success stemmed from her willingness to deeply understand the organization rather than impose preconceived answers.
“She took the energy and time to really figure out Netflix—what makes things work and why,” he said. “Who does what, and how do you get to them? It was that relationship-management piece, which is so hard to do in this town.”
The results came quickly. According to USC Annenberg, Bajaria’s early Netflix wins included critically acclaimed unscripted series such as Queer Eye, Nailed It!, and Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, as well as scripted hits like Never Have I Ever and YOU—signaling the breadth of her creative reach from the start.
The Global Gambit
Within two years, Bajaria’s remit expanded again. According to Forbes, she took on oversight of international content, helping transform Netflix from a U.S.-centric streamer into a truly global studio.
By 2019, according to Wikipedia, she was leading all local-language series worldwide—placing her at the center of Netflix’s strategy to produce stories that could travel across borders, cultures, and languages.
The move proved revolutionary. According to USC Annenberg, Bajaria went on to oversee teams behind a slate of international hits, including Elite (Spain), The Witcher (Poland), Lupin (France), Dark Desire (Mexico), Sacred Games (India), Kingdom (Korea), Blood & Water (South Africa), and Sintonia (Brazil).
“Opening non-English local offices around the world has been such an amazing opportunity,” Bajaria told Variety. Today, according to the publication, she sits atop a vast global operation—hundreds of programming executives across 27 countries charged with greenlighting series and films in 50 languages.
In 2020, Bajaria was promoted to global head of television at Netflix, taking responsibility for all television content worldwide. In that role, she led teams behind some of the platform’s biggest successes, including Squid Game, Stranger Things, Wednesday, Bridgerton, La Casa de Papel, and Cobra Kai.
The Ultimate Promotion
As Bajaria’s influence at Netflix grew, so did Ted Sarandos’. According to Forbes, Sarandos was elevated to co-CEO in 2020. Three years later, Bajaria succeeded him as Netflix’s Chief Content Officer.
Netflix’s official investor relations materials confirm that Bajaria was appointed Chief Content Officer in January 2023, reporting directly to Sarandos and joining the company’s senior leadership team.
The scope of the role is unprecedented in modern entertainment. According to multiple sources, Bajaria now oversees all television and film programming for Netflix across every language and market, managing an annual content budget of approximately $17 billion. She drives the strategic decisions behind what gets made, how it’s marketed, and increasingly, which formats and storytelling models the company pursues next.
The Live Programming Revolution
Bajaria has been central to Netflix’s push into live programming—a fundamental shift for a platform built on on-demand viewing.
Under her leadership, Netflix forged a landmark long-term partnership with World Wrestling Entertainment, bringing WWE’s flagship weekly program Raw to Netflix subscribers worldwide. She also secured rights to NFL Christmas Day games for the next three years, signaling Netflix’s intent to compete seriously in live sports and event programming.
The most talked-about live experiment arrived in 2024 with the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson boxing match. According to Forbes, the bout—pitting the 27-year-old influencer against the 58-year-old former heavyweight champion—was widely dismissed as “the most boring sporting event of 2024.” Yet it shattered streaming records, drawing an estimated 108 million live viewers globally, with roughly 65 million watching simultaneously at its peak—making it the most-streamed global sporting event in history.
Bajaria also secured The Roast of Tom Brady and other high-profile live events, fundamentally expanding Netflix’s definition of programming and signaling that the company’s future would not be limited to scripted series and films alone.
The Hit Machine
Under Bajaria’s content leadership, Netflix has dominated both the Emmy Awards and the broader cultural conversation. According to Forbes, the anthology series Beef won eight Emmys in 2024 and has since been reimagined for a second season with an entirely new cast.
Other successes under her watch have become global phenomena:
Squid Game (South Korea), Netflix’s most-watched series ever
Wednesday, which shattered viewership records for an English-language series
Bridgerton, which redefined the period drama for a global audience
The Queen’s Gambit, which sparked a worldwide resurgence of interest in chess
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which became one of Netflix’s most-watched series despite widespread controversy
Bajaria has consistently framed her strategy around audience connection rather than prestige alone. As she told Variety, her guiding question is simple:
“I want our shows to resonate with people. That’s what I’m always looking for. Did people love it? Did they stay and watch? Can we make something that you’ll love so much, you’ll talk about it and tell your friends? That’s really the thing.”
Recognition and Influence
Bajaria’s impact has been widely recognized both within the entertainment industry and beyond it. She was named to TIME’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in 2022 and has appeared on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list for multiple consecutive years, beginning in 2020 and continuing through 2024.
In 2024, Bajaria was elected to the Board of Directors of The Coca-Cola Company, an appointment that took effect immediately and expanded the board to 12 directors—further underscoring her influence beyond media and entertainment.
Bajaria is married to writer and producer Doug Prochilo. They have three children—two daughters and one son—and live in Los Angeles.
