RYOT Studio appoints former YouTube exec as chief business officer

RYOT Studio, the next-generation creative studio owned by Verizon subsidiary Oath, has appointed former YouTube executive Kathryn Friedrich as chief business officer.

Friedrich brings more than 20 years of digital advertising and media sales experience to the role and will be responsible for leading the global growth of RYOT Studio, which currently has a presence in 14 countries.

Previously, she was chief marketing and revenue officer at Arianna Huffington’s wellbeing company, Thrive Global. Prior to that she was head of global content monetisation at YouTube and has also held roles at Google, Hearst and Conde Nast.

At the same time Oath also appointed Karen Schmidt as vice president, head of B2B field marketing. She joins from American Express where she was most recently vice president, global head of sales enablement for the global commercial services division.

Oath is the parent company of brands like AOL, Yahoo and HuffPost. In the past week it also appointed former Dropbox chief financial officer Vanessa Wittman as its new CFO.