Boat Rocker Studios on Tuesday announced it has added two executives to its kids and family and unscripted creative affairs teams.
Vanessa Esteves joins Boat Rocker Studios as senior director of creative affairs for the independent studio’s kids and family division. Based in Toronto, Esteves will support the creative development, pre-sales, current series and production of Boat Rocker Studios’ original animation slate. She reports to Gia Delaney, senior vice president of global sales and content for kids and family.
Esteves most recently served as head of production at Nelvana and supervising creative producer at Corus Entertainment, where she guided series from concept through delivery. Over her more than 19-year career with Corus, Esteves oversaw award-winning and globally recognized brands such as Thomas & Friends, Max & Ruby and Ranger Rob.
Joey Case is joining Boat Rocker Studios’ Toronto office as senior director of creative affairs for unscripted. In this newly created role, Case will support the creative development, pre-sales, current series and production of Boat Rocker Studios’ original unscripted slate. He reports to Natalie Vinet, senior vice president of global sales and content for unscripted.
Most recently, Case served as executive producer and development executive at Alibi Entertainment, overseeing projects across the company’s slate. With more than 20 years of experience as a producer, showrunner and writer, Case has numerous credits to his name, including serving as co-creator and executive producer of Smithsonian Channel’s How Did They Fix That?, Science Channel’s Underground Railroad: The Secret History, and Discovery Canada’s East Harbour Heroes.
“Boat Rocker Studios continues to invest in best-in-class owned IP and expand our in-house creative expertise as we grow our slate of premium content,” Jon Rutherford, president of global content and rights at Boat Rocker Studios, said in a press release announcing the new executive hires.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Vanessa and Joey to the team and are excited for them to help us continue to build our content creation and rights management business across our Kids & Family and Unscripted division,” Rutherford said.
The expansion of Boat Rocker Studios’ creative team follows the independent entertainment company’s internal reorganization in January, and the management buyout of the studio by partners Ivan Schneeberg, David Fortier and John Young in August 2025.
Photos of (l-r) Vanessa Esteves and Joey Case borrowed from their respective LinkedIn profiles
