Jeffrey Katzenberg

Production · born 21 December 1950 · New York City, New York, USA

Jeffrey Katzenberg (/ˈkætsənbɜːrɡ/ KAT-sən-burg; born December 21, 1950) is an American media proprietor and film producer. He served as chairman of Walt Disney Studios from 1984 to 1994, a position in which he oversaw production and business operations for the company's feature films. Following his departure, he co-founded DreamWorks SKG in 1994, where he served as the company's chief executive officer (CEO) and executive producer of its animated franchises—including Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon—until stepping down from the title in 2016. He has since founded the venture capital firm WndrCo in the same year, which invests in digital media projects, and launched Quibi in 2020, a defunct short-form mobile video platform that lost US$1.35 billion in seven months.

Katzenberg has also been involved in politics as an election donor. With active support of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he was named "one of Hollywood's premier political kingmakers and one of the Democratic Party's top national fund-raisers". He served as a campaign co-chair for Joe Biden's 2024 presidential re-election campaign, and subsequently Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign.

Where to start: Spielberg (2017).