Veteran producer Liz Gateley leaves Spotify and launches Damsel Media

Announced today, Liz Gateley, former Head of Development, Originals at Spotify Studios and Head of Programming at Lifetime, has left Spotify to launch Damsel Media, a new television, film, direct-to-consumer, and digital media production company focused on Gen Z. The entity will lean into the culture-defining stories Gateley is known for with a focus on premium content for female YA audiences. Over the past two decades, Gateley has created and produced groundbreaking content across the industry including: Laguna Beach, The Hills, 16 & Pregnant, Teen Mom, Teen Wolf, Surviving R. Kelly, Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You’re a Girl), which won the Oscar in 2020 for Documentary Short, as well as developing the scripted series YOU.

Most recently, Gateley helped contribute to the exponential growth of the Spotify platform. In February 2019, Gateley joined Spotify as employee number four of the Original Podcast Studios team, and in her first year bought Wind of Change, a co-production with Pineapple and Crooked Media, as an exclusive original for Spotify. The critically acclaimed series won the Webby in 2020 for Best Podcast of the Year. She oversaw the overall Warner Bros./DC partnership deal with Spotify, launching the global sensation Batman Unburied, which was adapted in 8 languages and launched in 9 countries, reaching #1 on the Spotify Podcast Charts around the world. Additional series in the partnership included Harley Quinn & The Joker: Sound Mind, with Christina Ricci, and The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark, starring Hasan Minhaj. Gateley also worked alongside Kim Kardashian on her first podcast on criminal justice The System: The Case of Kevin Keith. Gateley led Spotify’s most recent push into video across the platform, developing What Now? With Trevor Noah currently in its second season. Gateley spearheaded the creation of Spotify Pictures, which adapts podcasts and IP from the platform into a visual medium, launching RapCaviar Presents as a documentary series for Hulu and The Horror of Dolores Roach, starring Justina Machado, for Amazon Prime. Gateley’s love of longform storytelling and her unique experience across streaming and network television to develop provides an incredible background to produce, not only for Streaming platforms, but to work with brands and AVOD platforms.

“I am so grateful for the past 6 years at Spotify, not only because of the talented people I got to work with, but the tremendous amount of learning while developing projects with incredible creators within a fast-growing, dynamic company,” said Gateley in a statement. “Now it’s time for me to return to my love of longform storytelling and my passion for making premium content for young audiences with Damsel Media.”

Gateley has signed with CAA and with Tara Senior & Todd Weinstein at Weinstein/Senior. Upon announcement, Damsel Media has partnered with 32 Flavors and Haymaker East on the company’s first two projects. Casting is underway on both.

About Damsel Media

Damsel Media is a newly launched production company that specializes in creating premium entertainment tailored to YA Audiences. The company develops culturally relevant and groundbreaking content across multiple formats, including television, film, direct-to-consumer streaming services, and other forms of digital media. The company aims to inspire the next generation of female viewers by delivering high-quality stories that resonate with and reflect their experience.

About Liz Gateley

Liz Gateley is an Oscar-winning producer who has transformed brands like Spotify, Lifetime and MTV by leading her teams to create some of the most culturally impactful content of the past two decades. Her career took off when she created Laguna Beach and produced its spinoffs, The Hills and The City, followed by dozens of brand-defining hits at MTV. When she went on to run Lifetime Television, she added YOU, UnREAL, Surviving R. Kelly, and Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You’re a Girl) which won the Academy Award for Documentary Short in 2020. After spending the last 6 years at Spotify launching the Original Podcast business, Gateley is now returning to her love of television and film, launching Damsel Media, a production company focused on female content for Gen Z and Millennials. She is a disruptor and one of the few executives to oversee content for both broadcast and streaming platforms with a deep understanding of both the scripted and unscripted genres. Gateley possesses the rare combination of excellent creative taste, business acumen and deep relationships across the entertainment industry.

Gateley was employee No. 4 of the podcast team at Spotify when they expanded into the format and she has been part of the leadership team driving the immense growth of Spotify over the past 6 years. Starting in 2019 as Head of Creative Development, Liz created a startup studio within Spotify and out of the gate won The Webby Award for Best Podcast of the year in 2020 for Wind of Change. Liz also attracted some of Hollywood’s biggest talent into the podcast space, including David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight), DC Comics/Warner Bros., Bad Robot and Kim Kardashian. She developed Batman Unburied with Goyer, which starred Winston Duke, Hasan Minhaj and Gina Rodriguez. It launched globally in 9 languages and was named Best Podcast of 2022 by Variety. Since her promotion to Head of Originals in 2022, every original podcast has hit the #1 spot on Spotify, besting The Joe Rogan Experience, including Batman Unburied, Kim Kardashian’s The System, Harley Quinn & The Joker: Sound Mind, The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark. In 2023, when Spotify pivoted its content strategy towards talk and video, Gateley led the development of What Now? with Trevor Noah which launched at #1 on both Apple and Spotify and was recently renewed for a Season 2. Gateley has also expanded Spotify’s original content to reach beyond podcasts, creating Spotify Pictures, under which she adapted The Horror of Dolores Roach into a television series with Blumhouse for Amazon Prime. She also produced RapCaviar Presents, adapting Spotify’s hip hop playlist into a docuseries for Hulu.

Prior to Spotify, Gateley was EVP Head of Programming at Lifetime Television where she oversaw Original Scripted and Unscripted Series along with over 100 Lifetime Original Movies a year while managing a programming budget of $1.2 billion. While at Lifetime, she transformed the channel from a “women in peril” network to a “women in power” premium player, developing YOU, Surviving R. Kelly, and Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You’re a Girl) as her three final projects. Her first series launch, UnREAL, won the Peabody Award. As a follow up, Gateley wooed one of television’s biggest showrunners, Greg Berlanti, by ordering Lifetime’s critically acclaimed thriller, YOU, straight to series--a first for Lifetime--and bringing in Netflix as a co-producer. She transformed the Lifetime Original Movie brand into diverse stories of empowerment, including Emmy-nominated Flint, Surviving Compton: Dre, Suge & Me (The Michel’le story), I am Elizabeth Smart and Cocaine Godmother: The Griselda Blanco Story, starring Oscar winner Catherine Zeta Jones. Gateley also developed the non-fiction hits The Rap Game and Bring It! while expanding the Project Runway franchise with its spinoff Project Runway Junior. In 2015, well before #MeToo, Gateley led a company-wide mandate to hire more women and diverse talent behind the camera resulting in 86% of its directors being women. Because of her achievements at Lifetime in equity and inclusion, Liz was invited to be a founding member of ReFrame.

Gateley worked at MTV for a decade starting in 2003 and, after creating Laguna Beach and The Hills, oversaw a slate of hits that defined the network, including Teen Wolf, Jersey Shore, 16 & Pregnant, Teen Mom, America’s Best Dance Crew, Human Giant, Run’s House, Wild ‘N Out and Ridiculousness. She was tasked with building MTV’s scripted business from the ground up, launching Skins, Awkward, and Hard Times of RJ Berger as its first slate of projects. Gateley discovered dozens of new artists, giving actors Dylan O’Brien and Aziz Ansari their first TV series along with giving writer-creators Seth Grahame-Smith, David Katzenberg and Lauren Iungerich their first showrunning gigs. In 2009, as EVP Head of Development, Gateley led MTV to its biggest ratings turnaround in network history.

In 2010, Barry Diller and Ben Silverman gave Gateley her chance to run her own shingle, backing her production company, DiGa, which she co-founded with then President of MTV, Tony DiSanto. There, Liz continued to push the zeitgeist, adapting Scream into a series for MTV and producing the docuseries Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life, which exposed Kesha at her rawest during the beginning of her battle with Dr. Luke, while continuing to Executive Produce Teen Wolf. Because of their quick success, in 2014, Gateley & DiSanto sold DiGa to ITV.

Gateley has been named to countless leadership lists, including The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Power 100, Variety’s Power of Women 100 Impact List, Entertainment Weekly’s Annual “Hot List" and was named one of New York Magazine’s “Influentials.” The programs she has developed have moved culture and disrupted the television landscape forever.

Liz got her start as a mailroom trainee at The William Morris Agency and, prior to that, practiced law in both New York and Los Angeles after attending Loyola Law School. She grew up in Palos Verdes, CA, which was her inspiration for Laguna Beach, and attended UCLA as an undergraduate. Liz currently lives in New York City with her husband, Greg, and their three children Isabella, Gabby & Finn.