Today's guest, Olexa Hewryk, is Vice President and Head of Animation at Sesame Workshop.

Starting his career as an animator, he has since directed, produced, and now oversees a broad portfolio of animated content — from Sesame Street itself to YouTube originals and Roblox activations.

A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, he's the recipient of four Daytime Emmy Awards and has shaped shows including Esme & Roy and Little Einsteins.

Olexa's journey is rooted in a childhood love of cartoons at his grandparents' house and children's books (Curious George being his first obsession). At RISD he switched from illustration to animation after a winter session course revealed that animation combined everything he loved — children's books, theatre, and set design.

A formative post-grad year in Kraków, Poland immersed him in Eastern European animation, whose slower storytelling pacing and dark absurdist humour has quietly influenced his work ever since.

He speaks passionately about why preschool content matters and about Sesame Workshop's non-negotiable commitment to curriculum-driven content: "our goal is to create content that helps children become smarter, stronger and kinder."

He's candid about AI, describing himself as personally curious but emphatic that it plays no part in current Workshop productions.

"If kids are not enjoying the content, the curriculum is ineffectual."