Sony Pictures Animation Taps Illumination’s Alison Mann for Creative and Strategy VP Role (EXCLUSIVE)

By Matt Donnelly

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Sony Pictures Animation has named Alison Mann as a VP of creative and strategy, Variety has learned exclusively.

Mann joins the Culver City studio from Illumination Entertainment, in a newly created role. She will report directly to president Kristine Belson

She will advise on film and series-based development across the Sony Animation brand. Mann will focus specifically on developing global-facing content and dialing up outreach to international  talent.

In her previous role at , Mann worked as a VP in talent. She began her career at Nickelodeon Animation Studio as a finance department intern while attending Columbia College Chicago. She continued at Viacom as talent recruiter. She has also worked at Disney Animation Studio, Zynga, Disney Interactive, and Paramount Pictures Animation.

Mann is also a co-founder and CEO of the BRIC Foundation, an organization that hopes to help create new access points for women and people from underrepresented groups and connect them with creative leaders and mentors in animation.

Sony Animation’s upcoming slate includes the original feature animation “Wish Dragon” with Jackie Chan and Constance Wu, a sequel to “Angry Birds,” and several projects in the Spider-Verse, including an all-female adventure. The animation studio won an Oscar last year for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”