Toronto’s Portfolio Entertainment is building out its US team and brought on board Meghan Sheridan as executive director of development.

In the newly created role—Portfolio’s first full-time hire in LA—Sheridan will work closely with the prodco’s Toronto team to grow its slate of animated and live-action properties. She’ll report to SVP of content, Liliana Reyes.

Sheridan—the former director of original programming and development at Universal Kids and director of children’s entertainment at The Jim Henson Company—has credits on titles such as Top Chef Junior, American Ninja Warrior Junior, Norman Picklestripes and Nina’s World.

In addition to growing Portfolio’s network of creator, showrunner and writer collaborators, she will be tasked with identifying branded content projects that can be put into development, according to Portfolio.

The hire comes as Portfolio looks to broaden its development pipeline beyond preschool and the six-to-11 space. In October, the Lisa Olfman and Joy Rosen-led company revealed that it is expanding into adult-focused animation with Doomsday Brothers, a post-apocalyptic series commissioned by Corus Entertainment and produced with Montreal’s N12 Productions.

Portfolio is also in production on the upcoming animated preschool series Hero Elementary for PBS Kids. Its other credits include The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That! (PBS/Treehouse), DOKI (Discovery Kids) and Freaktown (Teletoon).

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