Independent podcast company Blanchard House has appointed HBO’s former podcasting strategy director, Hassan Chaudhry, as the team's head of partnerships for TV and film relations.
Chaudhry is taking on the new role at Blanchard House directly from his previous role at HBO where he established and led the network’s podcast group behind award-winning companion podcast series like The Official Game of Thrones Podcast and HBO’s The Last of Us Podcast. With seven years of experience in media and entertainment, including previous roles in Warner Bros. and Discovery, Chaudhry will be responsible for growing and managing relationships between the company and film and TV networks.
Former editor of The Economist’s US politics podcast, Checks and Balance, Amica Sciortino Nowlan will also be taking on a new role at Blanchard House as managing director, with her previous experience leading and building the publication’s audio features team. Sciortino Nowlan is also an award-winning audio producer, having led the production of The Economist’s finance podcast, Money Talks, and has also had her series Trapped in Iran shortlisted for Podcast of the Year by the Foreign Press Association.
“We're so delighted to add Hassan and Amica to our growing team,” said Blanchard House co-founder and creative director Rosie Pye. “We’ve got an extremely busy year ahead, so to have new team members of this calibre is exceptional. We look forward this year to finally releasing some phenomenal shows with our brilliant partners.”
Blanchard House was founded in 2021 as a podcast company with the aim to “tell stories that have the power to endure” and has since won a number of awards for flagship shows that it has produced, such as The Times’ daily news podcast Stories of our times and Audible’s true-crime podcast Murderabilia. The production house has also announced that it will be releasing five more new shows this year with major distribution partners, including two new series with Audible.
The team behind Blanchard House comprises award-winning audio producers and respected journalists, including more recently award-winning former BBC foreign correspondent and author Emma Jane Kirb, who joined the team as a podcast producer in December 2022.
