Mike Rosellini
About
Over 20 years experience in digital media from editorial to business development to product and technology. Currently leading a 50+ person global team of product managers, agile program managers/scrum masters, UI/UX designers, full stack and native application engineers, dev ops and QA professionals. I report to the Chief Strategy & Business Development Officer at Hearst Television and have responsibility over an eight-figure P&L. My expertise is in collaborating with the C-suite to turn ideas into real-world outcomes for consumers. Deep experience in developing performant applications for native mobile, over the top and connected TV devices.
Philosophy
Always be delivering – my focus is on motivating teams to deploy software rapidly, tackle challenges relentlessly, iterate continuously and emphasize the needs of the customer, both internal and external. I also expect that members of my team, no matter how senior, stay close to the product and participate in authoring requirements and testing features. That’s something I personally practice and enjoy.
Experience
VP Digital Operations – Hearst Television
Jan 2014 – Present
Hearst promoted me to VP after the successes achieved in righting the digital ship. We’re reaching 40M+ US consumers monthly across our TV station digital brands on the web and native mobile. My team is focused on five product and engineering areas: Full stack (websites, CMS, APIs, microservices, serverless functions), dev ops (AWS, GCP, 100% containerized on K8s), mobile (native iOS and Android apps), OTT/CTV (native AppleTV, AndroidTV, FireTV, Roku, Samsung TV and LG TV apps) and AI/ML (proprietary news gathering tools and content personalization). I’ve successfully overseen strategy to execution for redesigns, greenfield services builds, ad tech integrations, data/analytics pipelines, security/privacy compliance, video players/encoding tech, all while maintaining high availability/uptime. Very Local, the latest platform launched under my leadership, is a local lifestyle streaming experience focused at “cord nevers” and broadband only homes, implemented as a native app across OTT/CTV devices. More details: verylocal.com/about. I’m currently chairing the NAB Digital Officers Committee, and previously served as Hearst TV’s board member for Pearl, a consortium of broadcasters focused on ATSC 3.0, the NextGen TV over-the-air transmission standard.
Director Digital Product Development – Hearst Television
Apr 2008 – Dec 2013
Hearst recruited me from CBS. Prior to my arrival, the division had historically outsourced the bulk of its digital operations, also having had an equity stake in an outside CMS company. This outsourcing approach led to profitability and product quality issues, which they hired me to help fix. I built the product and tech team from the ground up, striking the right balance of build vs. buy. Under my leadership, the team revamped the web product suite, launched native iPhone and Android apps. That work paid off, allowing one of the nation’s best known media brands to achieve record user growth and bumping the digital division into a level of profitability it has maintained and expanded for well over a decade. A key component of this successful turnaround was my ability to streamline vendor contracts and our exit from the equity stake in the outside CMS business.
Sr. Project Manager – CBS Interactive – CBS News Digital
Jul 2005 – Apr 2008
This was my proving ground as a product and project manager. We didn’t have product managers at CBS News Digital back then, it was an “all in one” for product and project. Here I learned the importance of driving roadmap outcomes as it related to reporting to investors and how to manage cost. During this time, I led CMS upgrades, multiple redesigns for cbsnews.com (we won EPpys and a Murrow for best network news site), one of the first geofenced news video streaming products tied to the Katie Couric Evening News launch, an entertainment news brand launch, and got to work on an early-stage SMS news alerting effort. CBS Interactive was an all in-house shop and the experience proved valuable for learning how to think about what to in-house vs. outsource.
Various Digital Editorial Roles - NBC Local
Apr 2001 - Jun 2005
My career began in digital editorial with various roles, first in DC at WRC and later in NYC at WNBC. My personal passion for computers and electronics led to my pursuit of a project management role at CBS and my pivot from editorial into product and tech. This was also an era that required HTML, CSS, JS, XML and debugging skills to excel in an editorial role on a website. I was better and more passionate about the tech than reporting, a good lesson in acknowledging weaknesses and embracing strengths.
Education
American University - BA, Journalism & Justice - 2001
Licenses & Certifications
Instrument Rated ASEL Private Pilot – Jun 2013 – 400+ hours
Endorsements: High Performance, High Altitude, Tailwheel
Aircraft Experience: C172, C400, DA20, DA40, SR20, SR22, SR22T, 8KCAB