Kirstine Stewart (born c. 1968) is a media executive and author who is currently the Head of Shaping the Future of Media at the World Economic Forum. She was formerly the head of English language services at the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (french: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a federal Crown corporation that receives funding from the government. ...

, vice-president of media at

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

, and chief revenue officer of Tribalscale. Stewart was born in Canada to British emigrants who came to Canada in the 1960s. She is the eldest of their two daughters. She attended Milton District High School, where she was named an Ontario Scholar at age sixteen. Stewart earned a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

in 1988, majoring in English with a minor in business. Stewart is married to

Zaib Shaikh Zaib Shaikh (born May 25, 1974) is a Canadian actor, writer, and director. He was named Canada's Consul General in Los Angeles, California in October 2018. Career Shaikh has appeared in '' Metropia'' and ''Little Mosque on the Prairie'', and as ...

, the former star of ''Little Mosque'' and the current consul general of Canada in Los Angeles.

Career

Stewart first became prominent as head of programming for

Alliance Atlantis Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. (commonly known as Alliance Atlantis and commonly shortened to simply Alliance or Atlantis and formerly traded as TSX:AAC) was a Canadian media company that operated primarily as a specialty service operato ...

cable channels, including

HGTV HGTV (an initialism for Home & Garden Television) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The network primarily broadcasts reality programming related to home improvement and real estate. As of February 2015, appr ...

Food Network Food Network is an American basic cable channel owned by Television Food Network, G.P., a joint venture and general partnership between Warner Bros. Discovery Networks (which holds a 69% ownership stake of the network) and Nexstar Media Group ...

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...

and

BBC Canada BBC Canada was a Canadian English language specialty channel that mostly broadcast television series originally produced by the BBC, the public-service broadcaster of the United Kingdom. The channel was owned by Corus Entertainment (80% & manag ...

. Before that, she worked in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

where she headed up international television broadcasting for

Hallmark Channel The Hallmark Channel is an American television channel owned by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., which in turn is owned by Hallmark Cards, Inc. The channel's programming is primarily targeted at families, and features a mix of television movies and ...

s worldwide. She then joined the

in 2006 as executive director of programming for

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French-l ...

. Known as Kirstine Layfield at the time, she later returned to using her birth surname, Stewart. Her tenure with CBC Television was noted for popular series such as ''

Little Mosque on the Prairie ''Little Mosque on the Prairie'' is a Television in Canada, Canadian television sitcom created by Zarqa Nawaz and produced by WestWind Pictures, originally broadcast from 2007 to 2012 on CBC Television, CBC. Filmed in Toronto, Ontario, and Indian ...

'', ''

Dragons' Den ''Dragons' Den'' is a reality television program format in which entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of venture capitalists in the hope of securing investment finance from them. The program originated in 2001 in Japan, where it is k ...

'', ''

The Tudors ''The Tudors'' is a historical fiction television series set primarily in 16th-century England, created and written by Michael Hirst and produced for the American premium cable television channel Showtime. The series was a collaboration among ...

'', ''

Battle of the Blades ''Battle of the Blades'' (or ''BOTB'' for short) is a Canadian figure skating reality show and competition that airs on CBC Television. The show originally aired for four seasons between 2009 and 2013. It was revived for a fifth season in 2019. ...

'', ''

Murdoch Mysteries ''Murdoch Mysteries'' is a Canadian television drama series that premiered on Citytv on January 20, 2008, and currently airs on CBC. The series is based on characters from the ''Detective Murdoch'' novels by Maureen Jennings and stars Yannick B ...

'' and ''

Being Erica ''Being Erica'' is a Canadian comedy-drama television series that aired on CBC from January 5, 2009, to December 12, 2011. Created by Jana Sinyor, the series was originally announced by the CBC as ''The Session'', but was later retitled ''Bei ...

'', which revived the network's primetime ratings after a number of years of decline. On April 29, 2013, Stewart resigned from her position with the CBC after accepting a position at Twitter. She led Twitter's expansion into Canada, and moved to New York where she successfully oversaw North American partnerships across all verticals. On September 20, 2016, Stewart left her position at Twitter to join the content publisher Diply as their chief strategy officer. Under her stewardship, Diply was named an EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year, won NextMedia's Digi Awards Company of the Year, and ranked first in Deloitte's Fast50 Tech Growth Companies in Canada. On January 30, 2018, it was announced that Stewart had joined TribalScale, a global innovation firm headquartered in Toronto. She presided over the launch of TribalScale Venture Studios. Stewart's book ''Our Turn'', published by Random House in 2015, is a national best-seller about leadership. She also formerly sat on the board of Kognitiv, theScore, and

WOW Entertainment is a development department within Japanese video game developer Sega that also previously existed as Wow Entertainment and AM1 spent most of its early existence under the leadership of Rikiya Nakagawa and developed a number of arcade games f ...

. Stewart was also a member of the

DMZ Advisory Council A demilitarized zone (DMZ or DZ) is an area in which treaties or agreements between nations, military powers or contending groups forbid military installations, activities, or personnel. A DZ often lies along an established frontier or bounda ...

, and a mentor for theBIGPush.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stewart, Kirstine Canadian television executives Women television executives Living people Canadian Broadcasting Corporation people Twitter, Inc. people University of Toronto alumni Businesspeople from Toronto Canadian women business executives Year of birth missing (living people)