​Aurora hires Red Bull’s Dominique Cutts and overhauls senior team structure

Aurora Media Worldwide has announced Dominique Cutts as its chief content officer. 

In the newly created role, Cutts will lead on all Aurora’s content, with a focus on building up the company’s non-live slate across digital and short-form, branded and premium long-form documentaries.

She will also work in a strategic capacity across the live sports portfolio.

She joins as Aurora creates a new management team structure to position the business for the next phase of growth and development. 

MD Lawrence Duffy becomes CEO; director of operations David O’Carroll takes the COO role; and Lee Attreed moves from FD to CFO. 

Barry Flanigan continues as chief strategy officer, leading on business and strategy development. 

Cutts joins from Red Bull where she spent five years, firstly working brand-side on long-form content, including executive producing Sports-Emmy nominated The Last Ascent, before moving to Red Bull Studios, where, as head of unscripted, she looked after a slate of premium unbranded documentaries, including commissioning BAFTA-award winning The Real Mo Farah, and executive producing upcoming feature documentary The Reggae Girlz, directed by two-time Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy. 

Prior to Red Bull, Cutts worked in senior development roles across the factual broadcast industry, including at the BBC, Fremantle, Betty and Maverick, as well as providing consultancy services for Sport Relief, NEOM and a number of brands and creative agencies. 

Cutts will report to Aurora CEO, Lawrence Duffy. He said: “We have been hugely impressed by Dominique’s track record delivering high quality, narrative-led content. Her creative programming experience, commercial knowledge and development expertise are a great fit with Aurora’s strength in producing original and innovative, international content. The restructure of our leadership team reflects our focus on growing the business organically and through new opportunities.”

Cutts added: “In recent years, the collision of sport and entertainment has seen an explosion of storytelling across platforms. I am thrilled to be able to capitalise on this by joining the talented team at Aurora, who not only have a wealth of incredible relationships, but a real desire to push boundaries in both storytelling and creative execution.  At such a pivotal moment in the industry I am delighted to have the opportunity to build on Aurora’s strengths to create extraordinary, original and compelling films and to help shape a company that will continue to lead the field well into the future.”