Earlier this year Avid announced Kenna Hilburn as its new senior vice president of product. Recently Hilburn was promoted to Avid's new Chief Product Officer, succeeding Tim Claman, who is leaving the company. Hilburn begins her new job on Oct. 1.
Hilburn—who joins several new members of Avid's leadership team, including Tom Sharma, its new CTO and new Chief Customer Officer Dominic Constandi—has more than 17 years of experience leading product and business operational teams in the digital media and marketing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industries. A former television producer, Hilburn started her career at a national lifestyle network before moving into the digital commerce space, where she built and led video strategies for major retailers like Petco. Most recently, at Marigold, she spearheaded cross-functional product operations, addressing customer pain points and business goals.
At Avid, she will lead the product management teams, ensuring a unified and strategic approach to product development.
In an exclusive interview with TV Tech at the 2025 IBC Show in Amsterdam, Hilburn and Claman discussed the changing media environment and Hilburn's background which led her to Avid.
“I was a TV producer for a couple of years, and then kind of thought what was happening on the online digital video space was interesting so I stepped into the vendor side, working for a bootstrapped startup that was doing the first shoppable videos for social media,” she said. “This was before Instagram, before you could click through to a website, or to a product page.
“They were the first to do it within the online video space, and I was on the customer side, and built up the customer team,” she added. “I worked directly with retailers, helping them build out their video programs to figure out what's the best way to produce their content and then make that content readily available on their website, and then ultimately be able to make sure that those assets were being monetized and strategically fitting the purpose in which they were missing to create their video programs.”
How did she end up at Avid?
“I love storytelling,” she said. “I wondered…maybe I'll go work for Netflix now that I have this tech background,” adding that “I learned how to cut on Media Composer at the television and film program at Pepperdine University, so I feel really humbled and honored to be here and be the one to lead the team.”
With the rise of the “content creator” phenomenon spurred on by social media, Hilburn thinks she’s arrived at almost an inflection point for the broadcast industry, which is constantly on the lookout for new distribution and content channels.
“I feel generally that that dynamic has changed,” she said. “I think broadcasters have woken up to the reality of the change in the way viewers consume content and where they—and generationally—where they go to to get the content, and they recognize that they have to change how they present themselves to the world in order to continue to have relevance.”
Every company is becoming a media company, and every company is essentially broadcasting. As a technology company, of course, we want to serve the broadest range of market segments we can.
Moving from the linear world to an on-demand model has been a goal of media companies for years but Hilburn thinks broadcasters are focusing more on the need to transition to a more digital model.
“That whole model or the mindset [of linear] has really changed for broadcasters,” she said. “They're thinking, ‘how do we become digital media companies first, and how do we tell our stories and get our stories to the right audiences on the right platform, rather than having this mindset that we've got to get linear TV?'”
“Instead of focusing on the basics of traditional linear TV, they really are changing the way they're looking at their companies, and it's affecting how they're mobilizing their resources and operationalizing their teams,” she said.
Considering its long heritage, Avid would be well within its right to consider it among the original content creation companies and Hilburn acknowledged the company’s legacy and its potential to help bridge the gap between broadcasters and the content creators.
“A significant portion of our business already comes from individual audio creators, and we have a direct commercial relationship with them. They tend to buy through our web store, and so we're already very successful on the audio side,” she said, “On the video side, more of our business tends to be with larger enterprise customers, i.e. studios and broadcasters and the ecosystem that supports them, including such service providers like post production facilities.
“But I do think that over time, these delineations between like media companies and just general enterprise… that's going to blur, because every company is becoming a media company, and every company is essentially broadcasting. As a technology company, of course, we want to serve the broadest range of market segments we can.”
Claman emphasized the importance Avid will always place on the enterprise market, regardless of any new markets it pursues.
"I think there are enough challenges to be solved in the near term for our existing customers, on the Individual creator and on the enterprise space, that what we're bringing to market and our roadmaps are currently hyper-focused on solving those challenges for our customers,” he said. "But also with the bigger picture in mind, which is…content is consolidating across the space, so we're trying to be very strategic in the moves that we're making to make sure that it's helping our current markets continue to modernize as technology is accelerating, but also keeping that broader view and making sure that if we go down this path, it's not cutting us off from where we see the market going.”
With the launch of Avid Content Core Data Platform announced just prior to IBC, Hilburn discussed how it’s designed to bring together disparate silos of content into one managed data set across a common core.
“There's a lot of data historically locked up in these data silos, in particular metadata,” she said. “There's all the text for stories, there's the rundowns, the genealogical links to all the sources that were used to make those stories. Customers also have a MAM, a library of durable assets, but without the context of what story they may have been used in. And then we have full tech, which is the planning tool. I've got human beings, cameras, trucks and edit bays, and I'm managing those resources and workflow.
"All these disparate data silos really haven't been brought together into a cosmic view, and that's prevented customers from not just exploiting their content, but really understanding not just the value of the content, but also the efficiency of their teams and how best to evolve their operations to either become more more effective or more efficient," Hilburn added. "Other industries have gotten much more data driven, and those insights are readily available. But in our industry, historically, it's been like, the data has been kind of segmented and compartmentalized. And so with Content Core, our goal is to to leverage AI to bring the data driven insights into view for customers from these disparate sources, not just Avid sources.”
Tying audio and video assets together in a centrally managed platform for production through metadata is a constant challenge, particularly in the traditional media space. But Hilburn is hopeful about Avid’s approach in Content Core, particularly in an age where AI is helping to accelerate the process.
“Our goal is to have a unified view of disparate data, and synthesize from that those data sources, like unique insights that help drive broadcasters and all of our customers be more more effective in their mission," she said. "MAM's have historically been big, monolithic libraries of content, maybe with some orchestration around them, but they were very cumbersome with fixed schemas, and rigid data models.
“What we're talking about is something that's very different; it's more of a data mesh architecture, and really embraces a diversity of data formats, and yet still brings them together in a way that informs the business. And this is analogous to what's happened in other industries. It just hasn't really been done yet in media, so it's very exciting.”
