Brown Bag Films Unveils New Leadership Structure

Brown Bag Films has announced a new leadership structure, a refreshed brand identity and a new innovation division.

Cathal Gaffney, co-founder of Brown Bag, has taken on the newly created role of chief innovation officer to lead the new division, BBF Labs, while retaining his role as managing director. Caitlin Friedman has been promoted to executive VP of global production and current.

Friedman will now oversee global production across Brown Bag Films’ studios in Dublin, Toronto and Bali. She will also continue to develop and produce select Scholastic properties in an executive producer capacity.

“This role is about bringing the studio together as one global team,” Friedman said. “Brown Bag Films has an extraordinary creative foundation, and I’m excited by the challenge of building on that—supporting both owned IP and service work, and making sure creative vision carries cleanly through every stage of production as we expand into new formats, audiences and partnerships.”

Regional production leadership remains intact, and Darragh O’Connell, co-founder and creative director, continues to oversee creative direction across the studio’s slate.

Brown Bag Films has also launched BBF Labs, a new innovation division focused on advancing how animation is created, produced and delivered. Through BBF Labs, Gaffney will guide the studio’s AI strategy, define its innovation roadmap and develop new production workflows designed to support quality, speed and sustainability.

“Innovation has always been a part of our DNA, but BBF Labs represents a deliberate investment in making it a core pillar of how we work,” Gaffney said. “This is about building the future of the studio—developing new pipelines, integrating emerging technologies like AI responsibly and emerging artists with tools that help them work more creatively and efficiently. Our goal is innovation that’s practical, transparent and artist-first.”

Brown Bag Films is also introducing a brand refresh—its first significant update in more than three decades—to better reflect how the studio works today and the breadth of the projects it now supports.

“The brand refresh reflects the studio we are today and the direction we’re heading,” explained O’Connell. “There’s more in the bag—more range, more ways of working and more stories we’re excited to tell. It signals our commitment to evolving creatively, investing in innovation, broadening our reach to include older-skewing audiences, while staying grounded in the craft and collaboration that define Brown Bag Films.”