Joshua Adam BergerCBE (born 1966) is an American-born British business executive and producer in the media and entertainment industry. He is the founder and Chairman of Battersea Entertainment. Josh is also Chair of trustees at The BRIT School.
Berger was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE), in the Queen's 2012 Birthday Honours List for outstanding services to the UK's creative industries.
Early life and education
Berger was born in Los Angeles, California, to artist manager Shelly Berger and talent agent Elinor Berger. His godfather is American music impresario Berry Gordy.[1]
He attended Beverly Hills High School between 1980 and 1984. During that time, he directed, produced, and hosted television programmes aired over Group W’s cable network. He also produced a stage production of Oklahoma!, which starred fellow students Jon Turteltaub and Nicolas Cage, under the supervision of John Ingle, who was the head of the school's drama department at the time.[3]
Berger enrolled at Harvard College in 1984.[5] In 1986, he spent a gap year working at production and distribution company Lorimar-Telepictures (bought by Warner Bros. in 1989) in Los Angeles and New York, and at Silvio Berlusconi’s Rete Italia in Milan. While in Milan, he also worked for ad agency Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt, where he recorded the voiceover for the launch of Sanpellegrino’s One O One.[6]
While at Harvard, Berger was the publicity director for the university's theatre organisation, Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the oldest theatral organisation in the US.[7]
Career
After graduating from Harvard, Berger joined Warner Bros. in 1989 as a sales executive in the TV distribution division.[8] He then worked in a number of leadership roles in Paris, Madrid, and London, where he settled in 1996.
In London, Berger oversaw all of Warner Bros.’ TV activities, including equity investments and co-productions, for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions. During this time, he sat on the boards of CanalSatellite in France, Spain, and the Nordics, and was a founding director of e.tv in South Africa.[7]
In 2002, Berger became Warner Bros.’ first Country Manager, for the UK and Ireland, setting the template for a management model which integrates the disparate divisions in a territory under one leader and one corporate structure.[9] In the role, he was responsible for all Warner Bros.’ business activities in the region, including film distribution, Television distribution, home entertainment, video-games and consumer products, among others.
In 2013, Berger established the award-winning Warner Bros. Creative Talent programme to develop emerging talent from all backgrounds in the UK and Ireland, identifying a pipeline for the UK and Ireland's creative industries in film, TV, games and theatre.[15]
Berger has been a British citizen since July 2011, and is based in Battersea, London with his partner Danna Harman. He has two children.
Boards and memberships
Berger currently serves as the non-executive Chairman of The BRIT School.[21] The school has trained over 10,000 young people in music, theatre, dance, media production, and visual arts. The school's alumni include Adele, Loyle Carner, Tom Holland, Amy Winehouse, Cush Jumbo, and many other notable artists, and creative professionals working at leading companies including Apple, BBC, Facebook, Sky, and TikTok among many others.
Previously, Berger served as Chairman of the British Film Institute from 2016 to 2020 having been a BFI Governor since 2011.[22] In this role, Josh promoted the cultural and economic value of the creative industries, and championed the push for greater diversity in the screen industries, including the development and promotion of the BFI Diversity Standards.[23]
In 2022, Berger was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of York's School of Arts and Creative Technologies and also appointed as an Honorary Professor of the School.[29]
