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Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, has played a pivotal role in the company’s evolution over the past nine years, leading its expansion into live events, sports, and shaping globally successful originals like Bridgerton and Emily in Paris. But long before her rise at the streaming giant, she faced a setback that she now describes as one of her greatest learning experiences, reported CNBC.
Before joining Netflix in 2016, Bajaria was fired from her role as president of Universal Television after five years marked by strong creative achievements, including forging partnerships with celebrated talents like Tina Fey and Mike Schur.
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‘Big public failure’
Speaking at the 2025 Changemakers Summit in Los Angeles, she called the experience a “big public failure,” but emphasized how much it taught her. “There’s amazing books and quotes and all this stuff about [how] you learn so much from failure, and failure is important, and you’re not trying hard enough if you’re not failing,” Bajaria said in conversation with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. “And all of that is true, but then when you fail, nobody wants to talk about it.”
She noted that the pressure to be flawless often stops women from acknowledging setbacks. “We’re supposed to be perfect,” she said, adding that being fired is seen as “a blemish.”
The months following her dismissal were particularly difficult. Bajaria struggled with the emotional fallout and began questioning her worth. “All those amazing shows, all these great relationships I built; I treated people so fairly. We had a lot of success — it meant nothing,” she recalled thinking.
However, the response she received from colleagues and the industry shifted her perspective. “I quickly realised, as the phone rang and I got job offers and everybody reached out and people were really supportive, it all mattered,” she said. “The way I treated people, what I had done, the impact I left, it all mattered.”
She took comfort in knowing she could be proud of her past work. “I knew I could always look at myself in the mirror and [think] I liked what I had done. I didn’t have any shame around what I did. I thought it was really a great, successful run,” she added.
While Bajaria acknowledged that “the first three months were really rough,” she now views the experience differently. “In retrospect I am so grateful that it happened,” she said. “I’m not scared of getting fired. It’s very liberating, actually.”
Under her leadership, Netflix has expanded its content offerings to include major live events like comedy specials, award shows, WWE programming, and even NFL games. The platform also dominated last year’s awards season, earning 107 nominations across 35 projects, the highest for any studio at both the Oscars and the Emmys.
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