Boat Rocker Studios Expands Creative Team with New Hires

Boat Rocker Studios has added to its team Vanessa Esteves as senior director of creative affairs for kids and family, and Joey Case as senior director of creative affairs for unscripted.

Esteves will support the creative development, presales, current series and production of Boat Rocker’s original animation slate. She most recently served as head of production and creative supervising producer of development at Nelvana, where she guided series from concept through delivery. Over her career of 19-plus years, she has overseen award-winning and globally recognized brands such as Thomas & Friends, Max & Ruby and Ranger Rob.

In the newly created unscripted role, Case will support the creative development, presales, current series and production of Boat Rocker’s original unscripted slate. He most recently served as executive producer and development executive at Alibi Entertainment, where he spearheaded projects across the company’s slate. With more than 20 years of experience, he has numerous credits to his name, including serving as co-creator and executive producer of Smithsonian Channel’s How Did They Fix That?, Science Channel’s Underground Railroad: The Secret History and Discovery Canada’s East Harbour Heroes.

“Boat Rocker Studios continues to invest in best-in-class owned IP and expand our in-house creative expertise as we grow our slate of premium content,” said Jon Rutherford, president of global content and rights at Boat Rocker Studios. “We’re thrilled to welcome Vanessa and Joey to the team and are excited for them to help us continue to build our content creation and rights management business across our kids and family and unscripted divisions.”