Participant Media Promotes Diane Weyermann to Chief Content Officer

By Dave McNary

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Participant Media has promoted longtime executive Diane Weyermann to the newly created post of chief content officer.

In her new role, Weyermann will focus on documentary film and TV, alongside department senior VPs Elise Pearlstein (film) and Miura Kite (TV), while working with CEO David Linde and the company’s newly announced heads of narrative film, Robert Kessel and Anikah McLaren, on future narrative content. She will continue reporting to Linde.

Weyerman joined Participant in 2005 and has been responsible for the company’s documentary feature film and television slate. She was promoted to president, handling film and TV documentaries, in 2017.

“Since 2005, I’ve been proud to call Participant my home and have had the great fortune to collaborate with seminal storytellers, whose powerful films have inspired audiences around the world,” Weyerman said in a statement.

“Diane has uniquely helped fulfill Participant’s mission over the last 15 years,” Participant founder Jeff Skoll said in a statement. “The only thing that surpasses Diane’s unassailable integrity is her extraordinary judgement on stories that matter. Her creative partnership, her unparalleled work ethic, her mentorship of others, her deep relationships with the filmmaking community — the list of talents goes on and on.”

Linde added, “No one else at this company has been such a pillar for achieving Jeff’s vision from the very beginning than Diane. Her work in documentary filmmaking – from ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ ‘Citizenfour’  and ‘Food, Inc.’ to ‘America to Me’, ‘American Factory’ and ‘Slay the Dragon’ – has not only shaped the DNA of this company, but also changed the very landscape of the documentary industry as a whole, redefining its potential for art and impact.”