Gretchen Colón is senior vice president of advertising sales and business development for Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) Latin America, Inc., and general manager of Fashion TV.
Based in Atlanta, Colón oversees a pan-regional sales team responsible for the advertising sales, marketing and promotional licensing of Turner’s networks throughout the region, including CNN International, CNN en Español, TNT Latin America and TCM, Cartoon Network Latin America, Tooncast and Boomerang, as well as: HTV, MuchMusic, Infinito, I.Sat, Space, TruTV and Fashion TV. Colón’s team also sells advertising for ten third-party regional networks that the company represents. She is also charged with TBSLA’s overall business development and strategic planning in Latin America, including joint ventures, business alliances, partnerships and new business development. In her role as General Manager of Fashion TV, Colón oversees the programming, creative services, new media, network operations, marketing and public relations of the network.
A Company veteran, Gretchen began her Turner career as an intern in 1994 in the London advertising sales division. She later joined Latin America ad sales, setting the foundation of the company’s teams in the region, and working from New York, Miami, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Buenos Aires before moving to Atlanta. Today, she is the Senior Vice President of Ad Sales and Business Development, and leads a team of over 200. She also heads FashionTV network and is responsible for its deployment from Argentina to the rest of Latin America.
An accomplished professional and mother of two, Gretchen strives to balance work and family while attending the demands of a hectic international travelling schedule that can take her one week to Hong Kong and the next to Mexico City. For Gretchen, it’s not enough to stand behind her team and encourage them, she values the importance of setting an example, to be willing to do what is asked from others. Gretchen is a woman who embraces diversity, something that she considers key in the growth of an organization: “One must encourage our teams to use their own styles of thinking and find their own ways of getting things done, promoting that they respect and learn from others, who think, and act differently from themselves.”
The ‘Globe trotter’ as some in Turner like to call her, Gretchen was named to the Corporate Elite of 2005 by Hispanic Business magazine, and was given an International Woman of Influence Award by GlobalEXECWomen in 2006, beating an impressive group of executives from prominent corporations such as UPS and Coca Cola. This year she was selected one of the 20 most influential Hispanic business women by Hispanic Business magazine. Among her most notable accomplishments during her career at Turner are: her leading role in the opening of three offices in Latin America, as well as the remarkable growth that her group has attained under her leadership, with a consistent growth of at least 22% every year since 2000.
Gretchen has also made her mark in an expanding portfolio of TV networks sold, from 3 to 18. Separately, since 2006 when Gretchen took over business development, her team has worked in the acquisition of the Imagen TV Company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This transaction represents one of the largest M&A deals in TBS International with a total investment of over $234 million dollars. Business development initiatives have resulted in leading market expansion in new territories such as Chile, Colombia and Venezuela.
Gretchen speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French fluently. She graduated from the American College in London and has an MBA from Richmond College in London.
