Both Sarah and Christine join a very select group of the most influential female leaders in the global cinema industry, published by Celluloid Junkie to coincide with International Women’s Day.
Celluloid Junkie launched the list in 2016 to highlight the major role played by female leaders in the film industry and this year widened the selection pool to include the vendor, concession and service sectors of cinema, as well as exhibitor relations candidates from the world of theatrical distribution.
In a partnership with Film Journal International, Celluloid Junkie’s ‘Top 50 Women in Global Cinema’ list will also be featured in the magazine’s May issue.
Christine’s achievement is well-deserved recognition of her drive and passion for Vista. In naming her to its list, Celluloid Junkie says, “It is hard to do justice to the wide-ranging nature of Vista’s global empire, both in terms of companies, countries, clients and coverage of the world’s leading cinema software company. Driver of the global presence of the Vista Group brand, Christine [Fenby] is the public face of Vista… across seven headquarters, nine regional partners in 80+ countries, all from Auckland, New Zealand (though at heart a self-confessed South Islander “every time”). Rather than focus solely on cinema or only on distribution, Fenby is responsible for making sure the entire industry is aware of Vista’s wide range of complementary products, which overlap between production, distribution, exhibition and even cinema patrons. Fenby is praised for her drive, passion and for being guardian of the Vista Group brand.”
Christine first became involved with Vista in a consulting capacity in 2010. Joining full-time in 2012, she led that year the re-brand of Vista Entertainment Solutions, Vista’s founding and our largest company. With the support of her team and wider colleagues, she has taken the profile of the company from strength-to-strength aligning it to match the global leadership and majority large circuit market shareholding that Vista Entertainment holds. When Vista listed in 2014, Christine led the design, development and positioning strategy of the new Vista Group brand that is parent to our eight businesses today. In the short period since, the global film community has deep awareness of Vista Group and the depth of innovation that is implicit in our product offerings. In parallel, Vista Entertainment Solutions revenue has increased 20% each of the past four years without interruption.
Christine understands our product suite from the perspective of the opportunities it possesses to meet our customers’ needs and wants. The strategic marketing initiatives she leads are in tune with realising those opportunities for Vista and our customers and the contribution of the marketing mix that the Vista marketing team has deployed is evidenced in our record of growth.
In naming Sarah Lewthwaite to its list for the SECOND time, Celluloid Junkie stated that “There may be no bigger evangelist for the use of data analytics in the cinema industry than Sarah Lewthwaite.” We couldn’t agree more; Sarah has 20 years of experience in the global cinema industry – prior to joining Movio, she was Vice President of Marketing for Cineplex Entertainment, Canada’s largest exhibitor and a Vista customer. From London, she oversees business development across the entire EMEA region helping many of the world’s leading cinema exhibitors to build and leverage their moviegoer data using Movio’s marketing data analytics and campaign management solutions. Sarah’s knowledge of Movio products and benefits is formidable and the standard of her customer relationships exemplary. The contribution from she and her team, to Movio’s exponential growth in 2017 is without question.
Sarah recently joined the Board of Governors for the CTC, the global cinema technology network, based in London. She is a tireless ambassador at conferences and cinema gatherings for the better use of Big Data to gather insights about cinema audiences and convert them into campaigns that promote higher cinema attendance. Her position as a thought leader in data marketing and analytics for the cinema industry has made her a sought-after (and fantastic) industry speaker, panellist and blogger.
Here at Vista, we’re proud to celebrate the diversity of our entire team and the fact that we have so many amazing women working here. We’re proud that of our latest annual intake of university interns, more than half were talented young women. It speaks volumes about Vista’s commitment to gender diversity and equality that one of our 2017 interns said about her internship at Vista: “I’d ask women not to be convinced of the bad stereotypes of the tech industry we often hear about. My experience at Vista couldn’t have been more diverse – from the people I’ve come to know and work with, to the knowledge I’ve gained. After all, our differences are what make companies like Vista strong.”
We think both Christine and Sarah would agree with our intern – congratulations to both of them and may they keep up their great work.
