Nancy Dubuc

Early life and education

Dubuc was born to Robert H. Dubuc Jr. and his wife Carol. Her parents later separated and remarried, giving Dubuc step-parents. She was raised in Bristol, Rhode Island and graduated from Boston University in 1991 after rowing on the school's Division I crew team. Her mother ran one of Rhode Island's most successful catering companies. Calling her "a hard-driving, entrepreneurial woman", Dubuc credits the "directness" and strong opinions of her mother as inspiring her own leadership style. In 1997, she married Michael Rashid Kizilbash, a copyeditor. She has a son and a daughter.

Career

Dubuc briefly worked in NBC's publicity department before leaving to become a producer at The Christian Science Monitor and the Boston television station WGBH-TV. She later joined the History Channel and became the channel's director of historical programming. There, she convinced the network to adapt an episode of Modern Marvels into a full series called Ice Road Truckers, which became History's then highest-rated program.

She was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the American media company A&E Networks in June 2013. Part of her role involves overseeing the cable networks History, A&E, and Lifetime. Under her leadership, the company has delved into offering reality shows such as Duck Dynasty as well as other shows that garner large ratings and significant media attention. In 2013, Bloomberg called her "the show picker with the hottest hand in cable television". That year, Fortune included her on its list of 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. She has also been named to The Hollywood Reporter's annual Power 100 list four times, from 2011 to 2014.

In 2016, Dubuc was listed on Vanity Fair's New Establishment List, described as 100 “Silicon Valley hotshots, Hollywood moguls, Wall Street titans, and cultural icons.”