Peter Gerard

About Peter Gerard

I drive growth of dynamic media technology businesses, with particular interest in film, music and arts. As Vimeo\'s GM of Entertainment, I led strategy, product, curation, engineering, operations and marketing for Vimeo\'s Originals, SVOD, TVOD, and free content on web, TV and mobile.I\'m proudly from Missouri, where as a teenager I made my first award-winning documentary, published 2 books and founded the Bargain Basement Film Festival.After a year at USC, I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland to study film & photography. I lived there for 13 years, working as a film producer and a freelance graphic designer and web developer. Around the time I left university, I finished Just To Get A Rep, my first feature documentary for international festival and television distribution.I founded a production company, Accidental Media, and produced and directed a range of documentaries, music videos, and short films, and earned a list of awards including a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award.Simultaneously, I built dozens of websites and web-apps, including a winner of an e-community prize, the homepage for an Oscar-winning production company, an interactive mapping service that predated Google Maps, plus the premier online community for documentary professionals (The D-Word).I combined my film and tech skills and founded Distrify to pioneer “direct-to-fan” digital film sales by inventing a shareable movie trailer that included a built-in buy-button and the easiest affiliate rewards system ever. I ran the company for four years.In 2013, I won the British Council’s Creative Entrepreneur Award and was named in the h.Club 100 list by The Hospital and The Guardian Culture Professionals Network.In 2014, I joined the team at Vimeo, where I was promoted to Vice President and then to General Manager of Entertainment.I am regularly invited as a jury member, keynote speaker or panelist at film festivals (Cannes, Sundance, Amsterdam, London, etc.) and to teach film/series workshops.

Experience

1. Strategic Advisor

   Adventr

   Dec 2024 — Present

Education

• University of Southern California

  Film Studies and Computer Science

  1999 — 2001

• Edinburgh Napier University

  BA, Film & Photography

  2001 — 2004

• MIT Sloan School of Management

  Certificate, Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies

  2014 — 2014

• The University of Edinburgh

  Film Studies and Economic & Social History

  2000 — 2001