The Harlem Globetrotters brand is going for a slam dunk by hiring 20-year Nickelodeon exec Bronwen O’Keefe as its first-ever global head of content.

O’Keefe, has been consulting with the Globetrotters since spring 2022, will now head up content strategy for the brand and Herschend Entertainment Studios. She’s tasked with developing original IPs, as well as managing existing content and overseeing the creative side of the Harlem Globetrotters global tour. O’Keefe’s mission is to create a whole new slate that spans animated series, docs and scripted and unscripted formats for the basketball team and Herschend’s broader entertainment portfolio.

Based in New York, she reports to Keith Dawkins (also a Nickelodeon alum), who is president of the Harlem Globetrotters and Herschend Entertainment Studios.

The Globetrotters are an exhibition basketball team that claims to have played in more than 120 countries and entertained nearly 150 million fans. The team was formed in 1926, and has already crossed over into television in a 1970s Hanna Barbera animated series for CBS called Harlem Globetrotters. And NBC is currently airing live-action series Harlem Globetrotters: Play it Forward.

O’Keefe also has a beefy Herschend portfolio to work with that encompasses theme parks, aquariums, camps and animated series Chuggington and Splash and Bubbles, which it co-produces with The Jim Henson Company.

Before consulting with the Globetrotters and Herschend, O’Keefe worked at Nickelodeon for 22 years, most recently as an EVP overseeing live-action content.

She left Nick in 2018, and founded her own company (Two Bears Productions) to consult on development, production and content strategy, and produce live-action and animated projects for kids and families on a freelance basis.