Charmaine Fernandes

A creator & media strategist with 16+ years of experience across leading tech and media giants like Meta and Disney, in functions ranging from Product Marketing and Partnerships to Content Strategy and New product development, in India and Singapore markets.

Most recently at Meta, APAC, I specialised in building partner value by designing product priorities and disseminating scaled education to the go-to-market teams for enhanced business impact across Meta platforms. 

Previously, handled the growth (monetisation and time spent) of national and regional creators on Facebook | Instagram, was an integral part of the core team that launched Instagram's short form video surface 'Reels' as well as 'in stream ads' in India. 
Additionally, rolled out and increased adoption for the biggest tool for rights management and content protection for Facebook India.

Prior to Meta, worked with some of the leading television networks industry in content Programming which included strategy, planning and operations.

Singapore Visa status: Personalised Employment Pass (PEP) holder

Partner Product Marketing, Media & News, APAC (Jun’22 – Jan’23) - Singapore

Go-to-market lead in APAC for Media & News products and partners for Facebook and Instagram platforms

• Collaborated with Partnerships and global counterparts to drive core business goals: initiated product education efforts, developed customized recommendations for an ecosystem of Media & news partners, generating over USD 400Mn annually and 0-1 product adoption strategies
  • Leveraged prior experience to bring short form content expertise to media & news companies
  • Pacing at >100%+ goal achievement across partner cohorts
• Successfully led challenging go-to-market campaigns in the region; Collaborated with multiple global cross-functional teams and influenced product outcomes 
  • Launch of major feature changes in product: GTM expert for in-product changes enabling greater partner transparency; Led campaigns that optimized product adoption and incremental revenue 
  • Sensitive deprecations: Captured downstream impact and regional/ vertical nuances. Successfully advocated for partners to influence product’s deprecation timelines 
• Presented & facilitated product narrative in the region via internal enablement and industry speaking engagements. 
• Led half-yearly market feedback exercise for product in the region; collecting quantitative and qualitative feedback that accounts for market nuances, business use-cases and potential impact of asks, that will inform new and existing product strategy

Partner Solutions Manager – Creators & Entertainment (Feb’18 – Jun’22) – India

Deep exposure in Media business models and Creator Economy as a partner facing product expert for Meta

• Partner Management: Grew and handled a portfolio of over 200+ entertainment and creator partners to drive monetization, product adoption and watch hours/time-spent across Facebook & Instagram.
  • Achieved 100% HoH growth in H2’20 on key goaling metrics; mapped partner set became the fastest growing cohort in the larger media partnerships organization. With high impact in the first allocated region (East India), which was identified as the fastest growing cohort, further inherited responsibility of managing additional cohorts – North-west India, followed by national creators 
  • Grew Creator Monetization by over 200% in 2021 on YoY basis by designing and disseminating customised growth strategies for partners
  • Global recognition- Published case studies demonstrating partner impact across cohorts 
• Product expertise:  Sought after executive for multiple Meta products across all Media partnership verticals
  • Launched flagship Meta products in India - Creator Studio, In-stream Ads and Reels
    • Led product adoption via consultative solutions and data driven insights – onboarded ~600 partners with USD 25M USD impact in the first quarter
    • Took over additional role of product marketing in the region
  • Instrumental in designing the launch and execution strategy for ‘Reels’ in India 
    • Rank#1 globally across key metrics of short form video performance 
  • India lead for content management and rights protection – ensured scaled roll out and partner adoption of ‘Rights Manager’ – onboarded 100% of eligible managed partners within the first 6 months. Supervised IP protection efforts for the platform for key tentpoles like IPL, Cricket World Cup, Awards (IIFA, Filmfare), ensuring rights owners have utmost content protection 
  • Represented the platform externally to drive product education with the media ecosystem 
• Program management : Part of core 3-member team that set up a large-scale internal operations team supporting partner managers by building structures and processes for improved operational excellence; Program developed in India and then replicated globally
• Promoted to the next level in recognition of impact driven for the entertainment partner ecosystem

Viacom Media Pvt Ltd.                                                                                                                                        Feb’16 – Feb’18 

Programming Lead & Brand custodian

Managed a 3-member team; brand custodian for the English entertainment portfolio leading content strategy, evaluation, and revenue for the business

• Vh1 was the #1 English Channel in its genre in India for 2 consecutive years
• Exercised a hands-on leadership role, conceptualizing and implementing processes to increase efficiency and self-dependence for the entire team within the English channels portfolio

The Walt Disney Co. India                                                                                                                                   Oct’13 – Feb’16

Programming

Brand custodian for Disney’s flagship channels (Disney XD & Disney Junior), in charge of viewership management & revenue augmentation making it #1 kids’ channel in their respective categories, within 2 months of taking over

• Steered 90% increment in overall ratings by reforming content strategy basis performance metrics
• Formulated break strategies basis the environment and competition to improve ratings, with a focus on new show launches, achieving 160% targets in ratings

Star India Pvt. Ltd.                                                                                                                                                Aug’06 – Oct’13

Executive – Programming and formerly Marketing

• Formulated a data driven content plan for the free-to-air Hindi entertainment channel, Star Utsav leading it to become the undisputed #1 channel for 3 years; Content library management; ensuring 100% utilization
• Core team that launched Star’s regional Marathi language channel (Star Pravah); one of the biggest regional language channel launches’ at the time.

• Master’s in marketing management - Jamnalal Institute of Management Studies
• Bachelor of Management Studies – St. Andrew’s College, Mumbai