Beyond Rights promotes Bickley to head of sales, appoints Rowley as VP

Sarah Bickley (left) and Joanna Rowley

London-based distributor Beyond Rights has promoted Sarah Bickley to head of sales, a role she will begin at the start of April to lead the team at Cannes content market MipTV.

In addition, Joanna Rowley, who has been a part-time consultant for Beyond for the past three months, will join the business on a permanent basis from May 1 as VP sales for the UK, the Nordics and Italy.

Bickley initially joined the Beyond Rights team in November last year as senior VP of sales, responsible for both the Nordic region and the digital exploitation of the company’s catalogue.

Following her promotion, Bickley will work more closely with CEO David Smyth to drive overall programme sales for the business and explore new strategies for maximising revenue from Beyond’s catalogue, which comprises 8,000-plus hours of primarily unscripted and kids’ content.

Prior to joining Beyond Rights, Bickley worked at Tin Roof Media, where she was responsible for the distribution operations of Blink Films and Outline Productions, which included helping to secure deficit funding for unscripted content. Before that, she spent more than 15 years at Hat Trick International, selling scripted, factual and formats to a variety of territories including Scandinavia, France, the US and Canada, as well as to global SVoD platforms.

Rowley, meanwhile, has been freelancing as a sales consultant for the past two years. Her most recent long-term role was as executive director at Fox Networks Group Content Distribution, prior to its acquisition by Disney. Before that, she spent time as a regional sales director for National Geographic Television International, as well as for its previous incarnation, Explore International.