Any shortlist of Hollywood’s most important executives would be woefully incomplete without a nod to Netflix’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria. After two decades at CBS and NBCUniversal, she joined the streamer in 2016 to spearhead Netflix’s charge into reality TV. Within a few years, her remit expanded to include all non-English-language programming. Now, Bajaria is responsible for dictating and overseeing Netflix’s industry-defining global content strategy. 

Netflix, of course, is the dominant player in the streaming wars. In fact, Puck’s Matt Belloni recently wondered if Netflix’s advantage over its competitors had grown so much that the streaming wars could rightly be declared over. The platform now has 250 million global subscribers, in part thanks to Bajaria’s achievements: among them, turning Squid Game-style international content into global hits, and producing what she calls “gourmet cheeseburgers”—programming that strikes just the right balance between premium and commercial. For a streamer hoping to “replace all television,” in the words of co-C.E.O. Ted Sarandos, Bajaria’s skill set is essential.