Who will make outwardly film academy president Janet Yang successful?

By the end of July, security guards will change at the top of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the first time since August 2022.

The Academy’s day-to-day operations and employees (approximately 700 people spread across locations in LA, New York and London) have been overseen by a well-paid CEO, a position held by veteran fundraiser Bill Kramer since June 2022. He’s not going anywhere. However, members of organizations currently based in more than 80 countries around the world are led by unpaid presidents selected from 55 boards elected by colleagues, and academy members elected by colleagues. That role has been fulfilled by producer Janet Yang since August 2022. The 36th person, and the fourth woman and the second color to be selected for it since the establishment of the academy in 1927.

Yang was re-elected to presidency in 2023 and 2024, and almost certainly would have been re-elected this cycle again if she was allowed to seek it. However, given that she is about to complete her second three-year stint as governor, the term limit requires her to leave the board for at least two years (after which she is eligible to serve two more terms as governor, and as president for up to four consecutive years). And that means that the 2025-2026 academy’s board of directors (which solidified through elections and appointments in June) must immediately select a new top officer.

This seems like a fitting moment to reflect on Yang’s tenure.

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Yang, a daughter born to the Chinese immigrants, joined the academy in 2002, but was not particularly active within the organization until Chris Rock turned Asian children into a jokey ass during the 2016 Oscar TV broadcast. She then brought together dozens of fellow Asian academy members to bring an apology from then CEO Dawn Hudson and a commitment to going closer, relying on the academy’s leadership to make it even better.

The familiar ways Yang advocated for change, including inviting Hudson to a reception for members of the new Asian Academy in 2017, led him to ask members of the A2020 Committee, who was tasked with recruiting a diverse group of members of the filmmaking community to join the academy in 2018. In 2019, she was appointed to the board as one of three governors. This is a position created in the wake of #OSCARSSOWHITE and confirmed the highest inclusion in the board’s deliberations. And in 2020, she was selected by the board to chair the Membership and Governance Committee.

By the time casting director David Rubin was forced by term restrictions to vacate the academy’s presidency in 2022, Yang was praised enough to be acclaimed to be the successor to the massive Devon Franklin. And over the next three years, she has been moderating a period of relative tranquility at the Academy, especially in her close collaboration with Kramer, not only in the 2016 Oscars, but also in the 2017 Moonlight Landland Dispute, not just #oscarssowhite, but also in the creepy wake. The shocking Will Smith will slap him in 2022. A controversial decision ahead of the 2022 television broadcast that sparked rage from many members, not live or Oscars in less than eight categories. And in 2021 and 2022, the two lowest-rated Oscar TV broadcasts on record.

Yang inherited several headaches. For example, the Academy’s polarization “inclusion criteria” that Oscar must meet to qualify for a film approved in 2020 came into effect in 2024. In a 2023 social media post, her friend Michelle Yeau defended for the best actress Oscar for all at once, defending a new rule banning such support from the governor. And she and Kramer issued a weak statement in the aftermath of Palestinian filmmaker Hamdambaral’s attack a few days after he was awarded the Best Documentary Oscar.

But most of the time, during the Kramer/Yang era, they were very well respected by people inside and outside the academy.

During Yang’s presidency, several things happened that probably happened under one of the others. For example, the restoration of equal treatment of all categories of Oscar’s television broadcasts and the continued growth of the Academy Museum Gala has continued to grow into Yang’s museums, which nourished the West before Yang’s election, and before the Metogala museums existed to the West before the Metogala was honored to Yang.

But her personal stamp is evident in other ways. The number of members of the out-of-US-based academy, which began to grow in the aftermath of #oscarssowhite (paving the way for parasites to become the winner of the first Best Picture Oscars in English in 2020) spiked during her tenure (non-Americans account for around 25% of their membership). She and Kramer traveled extensively to personally raise these new members. For the first time this year, there was at least one non-American candidate in every category.

In 2023, she and the board implemented a larger theatrical release requirement for films to qualify for Best Picture in 2024, which was not particularly highly praised by streamers, but the theatrical experience champions were certainly highly praised, especially in the wake of the darkest days of the pandemic.

Decades later, without adding a new Oscar category, she and the board approved Oscars for casting in 2024 (first announced in 2026) and Stunts in 2025 (debuting in 2028). ABC, a longtime broadcast partner at ABC’s academy, will certainly prefer ceremonies with fewer categories and shorter runtimes, but the casting and stunt communities and their allies are delighted.

And perhaps most importantly, prior to the academy’s expiration in 2028 and the current deal for ABC, the ratings of Oscar’s television broadcasts under her watch doubled each year (from 16.62 in 2022 to 19.7 million and 19.7 million in 2024 to 18.7 million in 2023, Oscar joined the modern world by streaming live live in parts of Europe and in 2025. And the tone of Oscar’s rituals has become remarkably mean, more blessed and almost completely apolitical. All of this should help the academy’s negotiating position move forward.

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This brings us to the question of who will take over Yang.

Candidates for the academy’s presidency almost always come from an existing pool of executives. Jan’s final term officers were Howard A. Rodman (Vice President/Secretary), Donna Guilliotti (Vice President/Treasurer), Lynette Howell Taylor (Vice President), Leslie Barber (Vice President) and Devon Franklin (Vice President). Gigliotti and Franklin are out with Yang. Rodman, Howell Taylor and Barber leave.

Thr, Rodman, a screenwriter and former president of Writers Guild of America West, learned 25 years ago, was a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts earlier this year. And Canadian composer Barber is best known for his work with Kenneth Lonergan (she won the 2000s and relied on 2016’s Manchester by the Sea). (Candidates must be nominated by a fellow governor by the end of the day on Thursday.)

So the overwhelming expectations among insiders are many of them excited by their prospects – Yang’s successor will become Howell Taylor, a widely preferred, respected and respected Indian producer (e.g. Half Nelson in 2006, Blue Valentine in 2010, Captain Fantastic in 2016) and Studio Films (EG 2018 is the best picture new a sath aa sath aa sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sath a sa

Howell Taylor, who became a member of the Academy in 2014, certainly handles the job. She produced the 2020 Oscars telecast with Stephanie Allane. He was elected to the board later that year. For the past three years, he has chaired the board’s awards committee, which has been integrated into planning all aspects of the Oscar style. (The 2024 TV broadcast was awarded four Emmys, including the Best Live Variety Special for the first time, and the 2025 TV broadcast was nominated on Tuesday by six people, including the same honor.)

He is originally from Liverpool, England, and moved to Hollywood at the age of 22, Howell Taylor is only 46 years old. If elected, she will be the first president of an academy born outside the United States for the first time in 28 years (Frank Lloyd of Scotland, Frank Capra of Italy, Jean Herfurt of Denmark, and most recently President of Canada), and the youngest academy in 70 years (since George Seton took office at the age of 44).

She has a full plate. She and her husband, co-CEO Graham Taylor of Season 5 (formerly Endeavor content), has three young children. The family recently lost their home in a wildfire in Palisade in the Pacific Ocean. And she has the film “The Roofman of Derek Cian France.” However, she is known to be insatiable. Understanding the Academy and Oscar’s internal work, he may run to the ground. And then, in a year, you only have to serve for a year.