The CEO role at Disney has been in flux since 2021, when then-CEO Bob Iger retired. His first replacement was Bob Chapek, who held the position for two years before being fired. Iger took up the role at that time but is now looking to step down again, and this time, his shortlist includes Dana Walden. According to a special report by CNBC, Walden may be the top name.
Walden’s entertainment history has been bold and successful. Before moving to Disney, she led divisions that created shows as diverse as the thriller “24,” and the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.” Among her recent credits since moving to Disney is the whimsically dire “Only Murders in the Building.” Walden’s advocates point to her track record as evidence of her excellent business sense, lifting many properties with long-term success.
However, Walden has her detractors who see her successes as group efforts and wonder if she would have the business chops to succeed as the head of an international corporation that includes theme parks, resorts, publishing, and even educational arms. One former coworker of Walden’s, who spoke to CNBC on anonymity, said, “She’ll be eaten up by real investors. Does she have the necessary depth of business knowledge? She can learn, but you can’t have someone teach you decades of finance, business, and tactics in a year or two.”
Advocates dismissed this attitude as incorrect at best and a misogynistic stereotype at worst. Jennifer Salke, the current head of Amazon Studios and a one-time colleague of Walden’s, said, “There’s something about looking at female execs where questions are asked that would never be asked of men. Can they scale? Can a creative person be a business leader? I find that to be a huge bugaboo. She’s in charge of billions of dollars of assets, but she’s not capable of being a business leader?”
Some also suspect that sentiments against Walden could partly come from a grudge held by some Disney employees toward former Fox employees. In 2019, Disney undertook a $71 billion acquisition of Fox assets, which involved moving many employees to Disney.
“At some point, everyone running anything was something before that,” said Peter Chernin, the Fox Entertainment Exec who first moved Walden from Fox’s corporate communication division to its TV production division. “Anybody they choose will have never been the Disney CEO prior to that.”
It isn’t lost on Iger that Walden would be Disney’s first female CEO, and this is reportedly something that Iger is keeping in mind. Iger considers his previous pick to have been a mistake. During Chapek’s tenure as CEO, Disney underwent a troubling period at the box office and in high-profile legal battles. In one example, Disney became entrenched in a feud with the Florida state government, which resulted in the loss of special privileges that Disney had enjoyed on 25 thousand acres of land devoted to Disney World theme parks and resorts. Iger may feel that having a role in the historic appointment of Disney’s first female CEO could help to rectify the error that was Chapek’s appointment.
