Alexi Varanko

For over 25 years, Alexi Varanko has been a technology provocateur leading people, product, and technology transformation initiatives for travel, media, and entertainment industries. In his current role Alexi is the Vice President of Cloud & Data Transformation Engineering, for The Walt Disney Company.  His responsibilities include enabling teams in Disney to use technology and the cloud to engage customers, support employees, and enable the magic across the Company. This includes the implementation and adoption of Cloud, infrastructure, building core platforms, and shared services across the enterprise.

His early experience at Disney included work at Walt Disney Studios, where he helped reinvent the direct-to-consumer experience by helping to build and launch Disney Movies Anywhere — which evolved into Movies Anywhere today. He also managed technical support for movie production on-set for Disney live-action films, post-production support on the studio lot, supporting systems that enabled theatrical releases, and direct-to-consumer infrastructure systems for the studios. Now part of the Enterprise Technology organization, Alexi is responsible for helping to establish and implement strategic technology priorities and initiatives, including the Enterprise Cloud Program, Hosting Modernization, AI platforms, and championing DevOps, Reliability Engineering, Developer/Engineering Experience, Agile, and a Product mindset. In this role, he provides technical thought leadership and guidance in transforming his teams into an efficient, global service results-driven delivery team.

Before joining Disney in 2011, Alexi spent over 15 years in startup and corporate consulting in the healthcare, financial, new media, and computer industries. He has extensive experience building & running high-volume Internet e-commerce properties and leading innovative engineering projects that provide systems that deliver business value and cultivate results-driven teams. Some of Alexi’s previous experience includes positions at Microsoft & Experian and extensive international experience building and leading organizations across India, Ireland, Singapore, China, Chile, and Mexico.

Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, Alexi has lived “up and down” the entire western coast of the U.S. He currently resides in Seattle, Washington, with his wife and two children. He’s an avid outdoorsman who enjoys surfing, scuba diving, sailing, paddle-boarding, and cycling.