Drake heads sales at Firstlight Media
September 13, 2021
Chris Drake, who has driven adoption of innovative streaming products for more than 20 years, will spearhead the industry’s latest shift – to cloud-native platforms – as Senior Vice President, Global Head of Revenue for Firstlight Media.
Drake will lead Firstlight Media’s global sales efforts to help Tier 1 content providers and distributors deploy world-class streaming and entertainment platforms built on the company’s Gen5 architecture and deliver best-in-class user experiences, engagement and monetization. Gen5 enables rapid time-to-market for platforms that are scalable, extensible, agile and highly-performant, as well as future proofed to accommodate changes in technology or consumer demand.
“Chris Drake has been ahead of the streaming technology curve throughout his career,” said Paul Pastor, Chief Business Officer and co-founder of Firstlight Media. “His deep and collaborative relationships with customers, his ability to build customer-centric sales teams, and his grasp of how best to wield Gen5’s massive potential all will benefit the industry by accelerating deployment of cloud-native platforms.”
Drake joins Firstlight Media from Verizon Media, where he has been global vice president, media and entertainment with responsibility for all aspects of the company’s broadcast, media, sports and operator businesses. Previously, he had spent two years as vice president, business and corporate development with Telestream and 10 years with thePlatform and Comcast Technology Solutions, where he ultimately became vice president, business development and strategic sales. He began his sales career with streaming media pioneer Real Networks.
“More dynamic, interactive, and personalized experiences coupled with the increasing role of data and the agility and power of the cloud are driving the next wave of growth and evolution of OTT,” said Drake. “With the accelerated pace at which the OTT industry is evolving and the need to quickly adapt to and embrace change, Firstlight Media is uniquely positioned to address these trends to help the media organizations capitalize on that future.”
Firstlight Media’s Gen5 architecture is designed to build and run scalable applications in the cloud using cloud-native technologies, including containers, microservices, a service mesh, APIs, and immutable infrastructure. The Gen5 technology stack provides significantly better performance, a modular approach for feature expansion, continuous delivery for rapid iteration, and built-in scalability, observability and security.