‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Producer World of Wonder Hires Discovery, OWN & Rolling Stone Execs

EXCLUSIVE: RuPaul’s Drag Race producer World of Wonder has made a number of senior hires on the back of five Emmy wins and expansion into new mediums.

The independent production company has hired execs from Discovery, OWN and Rolling Stone as it plots its next stage of growth.

Matt Vafiadis has joined as SVP Development from Discovery, where he was VP Production. There he worked on Gold Rush. He reports to Chief Creative Officer Tom Campbell. Former OWN executive Maitee Cueva has joined as SVP of Current Series and Programming; Ryan Slattery, who was formerly SVP of Production & Development at multi-platform network Collab has joined as SVP of Digital Content and Rolling Stone’s former head of digital sales Matt Habib has joined as Head of Brand Partnerships.

The hires, some of which have started over the past few months, come as the Million Dollar Listing producer scored five wins and 12 nominations at last year’s Emmys. The company also launched its own SVOD service WOW Presents Plus and also ran RuPaul’s DragCon, which welcomed over 100,000 attendees.

World of Wonder is currently producing the 12^th season of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles, the 10th season of Million Dollar Listing New York, Dancing Queen for Netflix and Bravo’s Backyard Envy, plus ABC primetime special I’m Coming Home and RuPaul’s recently announced daytime talk show for Fox. RuPaul’s Drag Race is also set to be remade by BBC Three in the UK and the competition format launched a podcast.

“We have experienced steady year-on-year growth for the past 15 years, largely thanks to the amazingly talented executives we’ve already had on staff. we’re thrilled to add to our WOW family,” said World of Wonder co-founders Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey. “We look forward to taking on the creative challenges of a continually changing industry landscape with these experienced and dynamic additions to our team.”