EverWonder Studio has named Lizzy Roberti executive vice president of brand partnerships and business development, putting an executive with experience in sports, advertising, podcasting and media rights in charge of a growing set of commercial responsibilities.

The new role encompasses brand-partnership strategy, sponsorship planning, branded activations and the pursuit of additional business opportunities across EverWonder’s projects. Roberti is also set to develop partnerships around editorial work where a brand’s involvement can support and add to the underlying content, while overseeing sponsorship sales and related activations throughout the studio’s portfolio.

It is a job title with a notably wide remit, and its scope reflects the changing expectations around entertainment partnerships. Sponsors increasingly seek more than an ad placement around a finished show or film. Studios, meanwhile, are looking for arrangements that can be useful to audiences, financially meaningful to a project and appropriate to the editorial work itself. EverWonder’s decision to combine partnership leadership and business development under Roberti signals an emphasis on building those arrangements across several formats.

A commercial role built around content and experiences

EverWonder is an independent content studio backed by Jeff Zucker’s RedBird IMI. Its work includes television series and feature films, giving the company several potential paths for commercial collaboration: sponsorship around a series, branded events or extensions, rights-oriented opportunities, and partnerships that connect an advertiser with a specific topic or audience in a more integrated way.

Roberti’s responsibilities cover the process from strategy through activation. That distinction matters. A sponsorship sale is the starting point; activation is the practical work of making that relationship visible and valuable once it is in motion. Depending on the project, that can involve aligning a campaign with a program’s release, building a real-world experience, creating an editorially suitable supporting initiative, or coordinating the many parties required to deliver a partnership.

The position also explicitly includes commercial opportunities beyond conventional sponsorship. That leaves room for EverWonder to evaluate projects individually rather than treat every production as a standard advertising inventory package. The company can explore ways for a partner to contribute to, support or enhance a piece of editorial content, provided the fit makes sense for the production.

For viewers, the best version of that model is often relatively seamless: a partnership should complement the subject matter, give a project useful support and avoid overwhelming the story. For brands, the appeal is proximity to a program, personality or cultural conversation that reaches the people they hope to engage. The challenge is creating something credible enough that audiences see a relevant connection instead of an interruption.

Roberti arrives from LIV Golf

Before joining EverWonder, Roberti served at LIV Golf as senior vice president and head of content and media rights. That work placed her at the intersection of programming, distribution considerations and the commercial value of sports media—experience directly applicable to a studio seeking to expand opportunities around its catalog.

Her earlier roles span several parts of the sponsorship and content ecosystem. Roberti was vice president of sales at Barstool Sports. She also led partnership revenue strategy and operations for Audacy’s podcast studios, including Cadence13 and Pineapple Street Studios. Podcasting has become a particularly useful reference point for the kind of partnerships she will now be tasked with building: its ad business can involve host-read messages and traditional ads, but it also supports tailored sponsorships, live events and ideas rooted in a show’s distinct voice and community.

Readers interested in how audio personalities can extend their formats into live cultural events can see a related example in the Goneies’ evolution from podcast banter into a New York awards show. That kind of expansion illustrates why partnership leaders need to understand both the content itself and the wider experience that can form around it.

Roberti also spent 11 years on Major League Baseball’s integrated sponsorship sales team. Integrated sponsorship is especially relevant background for a post centered on collaboration rather than simple ad sales. It requires an understanding of how a sponsor can appear across a larger media environment while preserving the identity of the property. Her career began at Turner Entertainment and at WPP’s GroupM, now known as WPP Media, adding agency and entertainment-company perspectives to her professional history.

What an integrated approach can involve

Every partnership will depend on the individual project, its audience and its distribution. Still, the responsibilities assigned to Roberti point toward a set of connected considerations:

  • Brand fit: Determining whether a prospective sponsor has a genuine relationship to a project’s topic, format or likely audience.
  • Editorial alignment: Finding opportunities for a brand to help support content without making the editorial purpose feel secondary.
  • Sales and packaging: Building a proposition that can include sponsorship and activation rather than treating each element in isolation.
  • Execution: Ensuring a partnership becomes a coherent audience-facing initiative after the deal is made.
  • New business: Identifying commercial models that may not resemble a standard media sale, particularly as content and live or social experiences increasingly overlap.

None of these items automatically guarantees a stronger program. A partnership has to be designed with care, and the needs of a documentary, a series and a feature film may differ considerably. But Roberti’s cross-sector background gives EverWonder a leader who has worked with established sports properties, digital-media audiences, podcast studios and advertising organizations.

EverWonder’s current slate provides several formats to consider

EverWonder’s productions include Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model on Netflix and Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever on CNN. The studio’s feature output includes Hanging By A Wire, which premiered at Sundance, as well as Chris & Martina: The Final Set on Netflix.

Those titles indicate a slate that stretches across documentary-style television, personality-led work and feature filmmaking. The commercial possibilities in such a portfolio are unlikely to be identical from one title to another. A project tied to fashion, technology, sport, cultural history or a public figure can each offer a different route to relevant partners. The important word is relevant: the broadest deal is not necessarily the most useful one if it does not serve the content or reach an audience in a natural way.

Roberti is expected to work on editorial projects where brands can play a meaningful supporting role. That phrasing suggests EverWonder is focused not merely on attaching logos to releases, but on examining whether a partner can contribute value around the work. In practice, that could mean different things based on the subject and the final project; no specific initiatives or deals were detailed alongside the appointment.

Why the appointment matters now

Entertainment companies are operating in an environment where distribution, advertising, commerce and fan engagement frequently meet in the same project. Streamers, digital publishers, podcasts, sports properties and event businesses all compete for brand budgets. As a result, content studios are under pressure to make clear what distinguishes their audience relationships and why a partner should be involved.

A dedicated executive overseeing both brand partnerships and business development can help centralize that conversation. Instead of treating sponsors as an afterthought once a program is complete, a studio can consider potential collaboration earlier—while still needing to protect the creative and editorial requirements of the work. That balance is central to the role Roberti is taking on.

EverWonder chief executive Ian Orefice characterized Roberti’s combination of media and commercial experience as a strong fit for developing strategy around the studio’s content portfolio and its partners. Roberti, for her part, framed the opportunity around the increasingly blurred boundaries between content, brands and experiences, with an aim to create engagement that moves past traditional models.

Her appointment does not come with announced sponsorships, new productions or a list of brand partners. What it does provide is a clearer structure for how EverWonder plans to seek those opportunities. With experience ranging from MLB sponsorship sales to podcast revenue strategy and LIV Golf’s content and media-rights operations, Roberti will be responsible for translating a varied production slate into partnerships designed to work for both the studio and the brands that join it.