The Walt Disney Co., after a more than two-year saga, has landed on its next CEO: Josh D’Amaro, head of the company’s theme parks and consumer products division.
D’Amaro will take over the top job at Disney from current CEO Bob Iger, who cumulatively has served in the post for nearly two decades. The Disney board on Tuesday announced the selection of D’Amaro, currently chairman of Disney Experiences, capping the media giant’s extended and closely watched succession drama. The 10 board members, including Iger, unanimously approved D’Amaro’s appointment as CEO at a meeting Monday afternoon.
D’Amaro’s appointment as CEO will be effective as of Disney’s annual meeting on March 18. At that point, Iger will transition to serving as senior adviser and a member of the Disney board until his retirement from the company on Dec. 31, 2026.
In addition to D’Amaro, the other top candidate on the Disney board’s shortlist was Dana Walden, who is now co-chair of Disney Entertainment. Disney said Walden has been promoted to a new role — president and chief creative officer — also effective March 18. Walden will report directly to D’Amaro.
Iger said in a statement: “Josh D’Amaro is an exceptional leader and the right person to become our next CEO. He has an instinctive appreciation of the Disney brand, and a deep understanding of what resonates with our audiences, paired with the rigor and attention to detail required to deliver some of our most ambitious projects. His ability to combine creativity with operational excellence is exemplary and I am thrilled for Josh and the company.”
Regarding Walden’s new appointment, Iger commented, “Dana Walden is an excellent leader who commands tremendous respect from the creative community. Given that creativity is at the heart of everything Disney does, she is a wonderful choice to serve in this new leadership role. In the years since Dana joined Disney, she has accumulated great knowledge about the many facets of our businesses and brands, and is very well prepared to be president and chief creative officer.”
D’Amaro has been with Disney since 1998, starting out at Disneyland. He has worked across a range of business, marketing and operations posts within Disney, from CFO of Disney Consumer Products Global Licensing to president of Disneyland Resort and president of Walt Disney World Resort. He was promoted to his current post as head of Disney parks and cruises, consumer products and Walt Disney Imagineering in May 2020.
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D’Amaro, 54, is seen as CEO in the classic Disney mold with nearly 30 years of experience on the retail side of Disney, giving him a visceral understanding of how children and families interact with the Mouse House brand. D’Amaro at present steers a $60 billion investment in an expansion of Disney’s theme parks around the world, including a new destination coming to Abu Dhabi. Before joining Disney, D’Amaro worked in Gillette’s finance department. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration/marketing from Georgetown University.
“I am immensely grateful to the board for entrusting me with leading a company that means so much to me and millions around the world,” D’Amaro said in a statement. “Disney’s strength has always come from our people and the creative excellence that defines our stories and experiences. There is no limit to what Disney can achieve, and I am excited to work with our teams across the company and brilliant creative partners to honor Disney’s remarkable legacy while continuing to innovate, grow, and deliver exceptional value for our consumers and shareholders.”
Disney’s board of directors, led by chairman James Gorman, was under pressure to execute a strong succession plan this time around — after the debacle that ensued when Iger previously handed the CEO baton to Bob Chapek, a Disney veteran who was promoted from the same perch that D’Amaro now holds. Chapek took over as CEO in February 2020, just weeks before the COVID pandemic turned global markets upside down and forced immediate and drastic changes in the way Disney operated. Iger stepped down as CEO but remained chairman overseeing creative matters for the company. That set the stage for an epic clash of strategic visions and executive egos that culminated in the Disney board ousting Chapek in November 2022 and Iger reclaiming the CEO role.
But Iger’s return had a time limit from the start. In October 2024, the Disney board committed to naming a CEO successor by early 2026. After the Chapek fiasco and increasing investor scrutiny on corporate governance issues (of which CEO succession planning is paramount), Disney’s board had little margin for error this time around.
Gorman said that throughout the CEO succession process, D’Amaro “has demonstrated a strong vision for the company’s future and a deep understanding of the creative spirit that makes Disney unique in an ever-changing marketplace.”
D’Amaro “has an outstanding record of business achievement, collaborating with some of the biggest names in entertainment to bring their stories to life in our parks, showcasing the power of combining Disney storytelling with cutting-edge technology,” Gorman said in a statement. “The board believes he is exceptionally well prepared to guide this global company forward to serve our consumers around the world and create long-term value for shareholders.”
The intense scrutiny around Disney’s succession was unavoidable given the company’s status as the world’s biggest media company and the cultural heft and financial influence it garners from its global theme parks and experiences operations. The Disney moniker has more brand value and name recognition with consumers around the world than any other Hollywood brand.
For Walden, her appointment as Disney’s chief creative officer will have ripple effects across the teams she currently oversees. She came to Disney in 2019 after the company completed the acquisition of 21st Century Fox, taking the helm of Disney’s TV studio operations before she was elevated to overseeing all TV and streaming (other than ESPN) in 2022 after fellow Fox executive Peter Rice was ousted from the top TV role. Walden has long ranked as one of the most prominent and successful executives in TV, having steered Fox Broadcasting Co. and the powerhouse 20th Century Fox Television studios.
The certainty that Iger wouldn’t be staying past 2026 put top Disney executives in a fishbowl — none more so than Walden. The prospect of Walden becoming the first woman to take the helm of Disney put even more focus on the exec, whose portfolio at present is wider than most other studio chiefs. It encompasses ABC Entertainment, ABC News, ABC Owned Television Stations, Disney Branded Television, Disney Television Studios, Freeform, FX, Hulu Originals, National Geographic Content and Onyx Collective. In addition, Walden has been Disney’s single-most instrumental player in building out the Disney+ and Hulu streaming services, and the units under her command provide a significant portion of the content that fuels the platforms.
Gorman, former CEO and chairman of Morgan Stanley, was named board chairman in October 2024 and is known to have spent most of his time focusing on the succession question. His status as a Hollywood outsider was seen as putting him in a good position to evaluate Disney’s options without being swayed by preexisting relationships. Iger’s most recent employment contract expires at the end of 2026 and it would have been widely seen as a failure of leadership if the board did not have a successor in place well before.
The Disney board is not believed to have given serious consideration to bringing in an outsider to replace Iger. The company is enormous and complex, with operations around the world and as disparate as hospitality, technology, engineering, R&D, creative development, film and TV production and distribution, video games and consumer product sales. It would be hard for any outsider to wrap their arms around the company in time to be an effective CEO. As the clock ticked down to 2026, it became clear that the successor would come from inside Disney, because an outsider would not have enough time to be an apprentice under Iger to learn the ropes.
In recent months, industry speculation grew that the board favored D’Amaro for the CEO job. That was magnified by the sector-wide struggles of the film and TV businesses, which made Disney’s parks and experiences and consumer products units the single biggest drivers of revenue and profits. However, Disney’s film and TV products provide most of the storytelling sizzle that drives consumer products and keeps the attractions at the parks vibrant and relevant to new generations. As such, the board is believed to have worked to create a TV and film portfolio of unprecedented size and scope to entice Walden to remain the company’s content-focused leader.
In announcing Disney’s year-end 2025 quarterly results on Monday, Iger said there was “healthy competition” between D’Amaro’s parks division and entertainment business, led by Walden and co-chair Alan Bergman.
“We have a healthy competition now at our company in terms of which of those two businesses is going to essentially prevail as the No. 1 driver of profitability for the company,” Iger said. “But I’m confident that both have that ability, meaning both have the ability to grow nicely into the future, given all the investments that we’ve made and the trajectory that we’re on.”
Iger also offered his thoughts on the next Disney CEO’s agenda. “In the world that changes as much as it does… trying to preserve the status quo is a mistake, and I’m certain that my successor will not do that,” he said. “So [the new CEO will] be handed, I think, a good hand in terms of the strength of the company, a number of opportunities to grow and also the exhortation that in a world that changes, you also have to continue to change and evolve as well.”
From Variety US