Experience

FETV - Family Entertainment Television

• United States
• Broadcast Media Production and Distribution
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Vice President

  • Mar 2020 - Present



Discovery Inc

• United States
• Entertainment
• 700 & Above Employee

• Senior Vice President

  • Aug 1990 - Mar 2020

  Maria Kennedy leads one of the largest Direct Response teams in the industry at Discovery Communications. Kennedy, who began her career as a Sales Assistant in 1990, oversees the Discovery DR division which has grown to 13 U.S. Networks. Maria was an integral player in launching the Paid Programming division on three of those networks. She was the first to offer five-minute avails on the Discovery Networks which she calls “Mini-Mercials” that began airing 12 years ago. Maria also established in-house selling responsibilities for the U.S. Hispanic Networks, DESP and La Familia for both the long and short-form business. Maria has served as a board member for the Electronic Media Marketing Association (EMMA). She is also a long standing member of the Response Advisory Board, and has served on the Board of Directors for the Electronic Retailing Association (ERA), on both the Executive and the Nominating committees. In addition, she has written and contributed to hundreds of industry trade articles for both ERA and Response and served on over 20 industry panels as both a panelist and a moderator. Her career highlights include: the launches and rebrands of TLC, BBC, Travel Channel, Planet Green, Wings, Discovery Home and Leisure, Discovery Kids, Discovery Kids Syndication block (in partnership with NBC), Investigation Discovery, OWN, SCI, Velocity, AHC, Destination America, Discovery Family and Discovery Life. In 2011, Kennedy was the first seller to offer advertiser friendly packages to DR clients leading Discovery to be one of the first networks to sell VOD successfully. Under her leadership, the team is now selling TVE, VR, Native and other Digital 360 packages. In 2015, Maria was inducted to the Direct Response Hall of Fame voted in by the members of DRMA.



Viacom

• United States
• Entertainment
• 700 & Above Employee

• Sales Assistant

  • 1988 - 1990