As the head of Group Nine Studios, the parent company to media brands Thrillist, Popsugar, The Dodo, NowThis and Seeker, Mickey Meyer delivered a number of shows to Netflix, Animal Planet, Discovery and DisneyXD.

But most notably for the year, in April Mickey and Group Nine Studios received the OSCAR for Best Live Action Short for “Two Distant Strangers.” It was produced by Mickey and Group Nine’s NowThis media brand, and ultimately sold to Netflix. As a studio deeply committed to uplifting underrepresented voices, Group Nine prioritized investing in the film and bringing it to prospective buyers, as well as utilizing its massive social reach via NowThis to market the film to an even wider audience and drive them to Netflix.

This past year Meyer expanded Group Nine’s distributors, securing projects on Hulu, OWN, The Food Network, TLC, and Discovery I.D. for the first time.

Mickey and the studio developed projects that often utilized short-form mobile video platforms as an incubator for several of its hits. Mickey and the studio built large and loyal audiences on social platforms, then moved those audiences to a longer form version of the show on linear networks and streaming platforms above.

The studio did this most successfully with “Wizard of Paws,” a series that ran on the network Nat Geo Wild. The short-form videos that inspired the series received millions of views, including one video alone that racked up 77 million views across social platforms.

The studio used a similar approach to deliver “Generation Columbine” to STARZ. The film, a full-length documentary feature, was an extension of NowThis’ timely and moving on-the-ground coverage of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with which the brand’s young, socially conscious audience was deeply engaged.