Neeraj Khemlani is a vice president of Hearst and the executive vice president and deputy group head of Hearst Newspapers. With more than 3,000 employees across the nation, Hearst Newspapers publishes print and digital products for 24 dailies and 52 weeklies in cities including Houston, San Francisco, San Antonio, Albany, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut.
Before joining Hearst Newspapers, Khemlani served as president and group head of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, the operating group responsible for Hearst’s cable network partnerships at ESPN and A+E Networks, digital video entertainment and music streaming businesses such as Complex Networks and Kobalt Music, video production through NorthSouth and comics syndication and character licensing operations at King Features Syndicate.
He continues to serve on the boards of A+E Networks, A+E EMEA, Complex Networks, Kobalt Music and NorthSouth Productions.
Previously, Khemlani served as Hearst’s chief creative officer, where he worked across the company’s global brands and with its creative teams, managers and group heads to innovate the best possible products, content offerings and user experiences on every platform. Before that, he served as executive vice president and deputy group head of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, where he focused on growing the company’s nonfiction television production activities. He began his career at Hearst in March 2009 as vice president and special assistant to the CEO for digital media. He reported directly to then-CEO Frank A. Bennack, Jr., and he managed the promotion and coordination of digital content transformation across the company.
Prior to Hearst, Khemlani was vice president and general manager of Yahoo! News & Information as well as head of Yahoo! Originals. In this position, he managed the business and products of Yahoo! News, Tech, Weather and Education, original video productions across the Yahoo! Media group and the editorial programming for Yahoo! Finance, as executive editor.
From 1998 to 2006, Khemlani was a producer for CBS News’ 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II. Prior to that, he was at ABC News, where he produced segments for Nightline, Good Morning America, Peter Jennings Reporting and ABC News Specials. He has won numerous awards, including a 2004 Emmy nomination for business reporting, a 2003 Emmy nomination for best interview, the 2002 Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting and a DuPont Award in 1995 for his participation in ABC News’ coverage of the war in Bosnia.
Khemlani began his career as a newspaper reporter, stringing for The New York Times and The Post-Standard in Syracuse, New York, while in college. Khemlani holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where he graduated with honors, and a bachelor’s degree in communications from Cornell University, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Cornell Daily Sun.