Charter Expands Product & Strategy Team

In a series of moves that expands its product and strategy team, Charter Communications said it has hired three executives and promoted a fourth.

-Jason Wyrick has come on board as vice president, application development, where he will head up user experience development for all Charter's products. Wyrick joins Charter following ten years with Starz, where he most recently led the premium programmer’s digital platforms team.

-Justin Colwell has been named VP, wireless products, responsible for the MSO’s wireless strategy, including residential and public WiFi. Colwell most recently was VP, access network technologies at CableLabs’ Network Technology Department, and, before that, was part of Cricket’s national RF engineering team. Colwell is also late of AT&T/Cingular and USWest/QWEST Wireless.

-Basil Badawiyeh has been named senior director, media products and will be responsible for the media roadmap, product management and delivery of Charter’s advertising product suites. Badawiyeh most recently served as VP of product for multiscreen advertising at RGB Networks (recently sold to Imagine Communications), and has previously been with mediaNext Labs, Technicolor, Arris Group, and Adelphia Communications.

-Peter Brown has been promoted to VP, user experience and design, where he’ll head up development of consistent, state-of-the-art user experiences for Charter’s customer-facing products. He joined Charter in 2012 as director, user experience.

Wyrick and Brown will both report to Jodi Robinson, the former Starz exec who recently joined Charter as SVP, user experience design and development; Badawiyeh will report to Gary Schanman, SVP, video products; and Colwell will report to Carl Leuschner, VP, Internet/phone products.

Charter is expanding that segment of the company nearly a year after it agreed to a series of transactions related to the pending Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger that will increase Charter’s footprint and make it the second largest U.S. cable operator.

“We are thrilled to welcome these new leaders to our product and strategy team,” Rich DiGeronimo, Charter’s EVP, product and strategy, said in a statement. “Each brings valuable experience and a skill set that will be instrumental to Charter as we continue the design, development and deployment of innovative products that redefine the customer experience.”