Ynon Kreiz

Origins and early life

Ynon Kreiz was born in Israel in 1965 and grew up in Ramat Gan, then studied economics and management at Tel Aviv University, graduating in 1991.

Work and career

He earned an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA in 1993 and, in the 1990s, set up Fox Kids Europe in London for Haim Saban, serving as its chairman and chief executive from 1997 to 2002. He went on to lead the Dutch production company Endemol from 2008 to 2011, and from 2013 the online video network Maker Studios, which Disney bought in 2014. In 2011 he became the founding head of a board of trustees, endorsed by the Israeli Olympic Committee, that raised money to improve the training of Israeli Olympic athletes; his wife, Anat Fabrikant, represented Israel at the Olympic Games.

He became chief executive of Mattel in April 2018 and its chairman the following month, when the toy maker was struggling, and set out to carry its brands into film and television. The first result, the film “Barbie”, released in July 2023, took more than one billion dollars at the box office and was the biggest film of the year. In 2023 and again in 2024 the Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles gave him its Industry Leadership Award.

In October 2026 he left Mattel to become co-chief executive, with David Ellison, of the combined Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery once the merger closes. No source states his Jewish identity in his own words: the Jerusalem Post named him in 2023 among its fifty most influential Jews, and Wikipedia says it on the strength of an article that does not, but an Israeli executive's biography has little reason to mention it.

He is here under the Israeli presumption the site adopted on 7 September 2026 and extended on 15 October 2026 to Ashkenazi surnames — a Hebrew given name, a life in Israel and a strong attested tie, here his leadership of the Israeli Olympic trustees — which is a presumption and not a declaration, and which any contrary source overturns.