YMA Names John Rooney Head of Awards of Excellence Jury

John Rooney has been tapped to be the president of the Youth Media Alliance’s (YMA) English-language Awards of Excellence jury.

Rooney started working in children’s television in Canada in the late ’90s working with YTV. He later became the company’s director of programming and helped shape the Corus Kids & Family brands. He then transferred to TELETOON, where he served as director of programming and launched Cartoon Network in Canada. More recently, Rooney joined the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International (TAAFI) as program director for their TAAFI 2019 Festival. Currently, he serves as a consultant advising on content strategy, programming, development and curation. He has been a member of the YMA Awards advisory committee for several years.

The English-language Awards of Excellence nominees will be announced in early April. Sponsored by CBC/Radio-Canada and the Shaw Rocket Fund, the event will be held on May 29 at CBC Glenn-Gould Studio in Toronto.