Thai Randolph

Thai Randolph has built her career at the intersection of content, commerce and community. An award-winning marketer, business leader and architect of a next-generation entertainment company, Thai has been named to Variety’s Women of Impact list, Entrepreneur’s Women of Impact list, AdAge’s 40 Under 40 list, Variety’s Silicon Valleywood Impact Report, Cynopsis’ It List, Cynopsis’ Top Women in Media, and Multichannel News Wonder Women in Streaming “Women to Watch.”

Most recently, Thai led the deal that merged Kevin Hart’s two entertainment companies Hartbeat Productions and Laugh Out Loud to form the global, multi-platform media company HARTBEAT and raised $100M from Abry Partners to fuel its growth.

She now leads the new entity as CEO, having previously held positions as President & COO of Laugh Out Loud and COO of HartBeat Productions. In her role at LOL, Randolph brought top tier entertainment, brand and distribution partners into the company, growing it from its original AVOD vision to a full service business with an expansive distribution network, marketing, experiential, branded content, digital and social capabilities. She co-led Laugh Out Loud’s capital raise and partnership deal with NBCUniversal’s Peacock, structured the deal that brought LOL’s Comedy in Color franchise (featuring 300 diverse comedians from 30 different countries) to the Just for Laughs Festival, expanded LOL Audio’s offerings by partnering with Simon & Schuster to bring the franchise to audiobook format, and expanded LOL’s programming on SiriusXM/Pandora. In 2021, Randolph led the launch of Women Write Now — a first-of-its-kind screenwriting fellowship developed in partnership with the Sundance Institute and LOL (now HARTBEAT) to champion the next generation of black women in comedy through mentorship, advocacy, production, and exhibition.

Continuing her mission to carve out spaces for overlooked - yet influential - voices in the industry, Randolph and co-founder/actress Tika Sumpter also launched Sugaberry in March 2020, an audio-first media company for and by black women.

Randolph is frequently invited to speak as an industry thought leader at high profile events such as Cynopsis’ Big TV Conference, Digiday’s Content Marketing Summit, Future of Television Conference, The Wrap’s TheGrill, Variety’s Inclusion and Entertainment Summits, BANFF World Media Festival, CES, Digital Entertainment World, Adobe’s Digital Marketing Conference, YouTube's Publisher Summit, and Streaming Media East.