Suzanne Underwald serves as the Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs for Scripps Networks Interactive’s Content Distribution and Marketing division. In her hybrid business/legal position, she plays a key role in overseeing and negotiating all distribution agreements for Scripps’ portfolio of lifestyle brands. Underwald leads the teams responsible for the account relationships with Comcast Cable, Cox Communications and new media distribution partnerships, including the company’s relationships with Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, Snapchat and Hulu. She also oversees all the attorneys responsible for distribution matters.
Underwald joined Scripps Networks Interactive in 2012, as lead attorney for the company’s Content Distribution and Marketing group. Prior to joining Scripps, she spent 17 years with Dow Lohnes, PLLC in Washington DC, where she was a partner in the firm’s Media and Information Technologies practice group. While there, she represented major entertainment and media companies on intellectual property and licensing and distribution matters, with a focus on cable affiliation agreements, digital media distribution contracts and technology licenses. In addition to being one of the principal outside attorneys for several cable operators in negotiating their network affiliation agreements, Underwald represented companies in the formation of strategic cable television and entertainment joint ventures, including acting as the lead intellectual property and content distribution attorney representing Harpo in the creation of OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network and Hasbro in its purchase of a 50 percent stake in Discovery Kids Network.
Underwald has been recognized as one of the "Most Powerful Women in Cable" by Cablefax and is an active member and past chapter president of Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT). She is also a graduate of the WICT Betsy Magness Leadership Institute (Class 25) and participated in the WICT Senior Executive Summit at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and in the Cable Executive Management Program at Harvard Business School.
Underwald earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC and her bachelor’s degree in political science and sociology from Rutgers College in New Brunswick, NJ. She lives in suburban Washington, DC with her husband, Carl Peterson.
