YouTube’s Pedro Pina to deliver Edinburgh TV Festival’s MacTaggart lecture

The executive oversees YouTube’s business, creator, and content ecosystem across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, leading the platform’s relationships with digital creators through to broadcasters and film and TV studios.

Before YouTube, Pina spent over a decade at YouTube’s parent company, Google, as a Global Client Partner, where he drove engagement with European advertisers including Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestlé, LVMH, VW, and BMW.

He has also held leadership roles at McCann Worldgroup, France Telecom, Yum, PepsiCo, and P&G, working across territories including the US, Brazil, Spain, and his native Portugal.

Pina is also a celebrated champion for inclusion. He has been named the world’s top LGBT+ executive role model on the OUTstanding 100 Global List; twice recognised by the British LGBTQ+ awards as one of the UK’s most influential and inspirational leaders; and was recently appointed to the board of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

“To be invited to give the MacTaggart lecture is an incredible honour, particularly at a moment when our industry has such a profound opportunity to redefine itself,” Pina said. “Television has always been celebrated by its ability to connect us, and today, we are living in the most diverse and flourishing creative era in human history.”

He continued: “The viewers haven’t vanished – they are more engaged than ever, they’re simply ready for us to meet them on their own terms. By bridging the unique storytelling of premium broadcasting with the democratic, expansive power of platforms like YouTube, we can unlock an extraordinary new chapter. I look forward to welcoming leaders to Edinburgh to embrace this future with optimism, and to building TV’s next golden age, together.”

The festival’s Advisory Chair, Adam Hawkins, said: “I’m incredibly excited to welcome Pedro to the festival. He is at the vanguard of the next wave of television. I think Pedro’s MacTaggart will be provocative, inspiring, and a much-needed reset in how we think about the industry we all love.”

Pina follows a long line of MacTaggart lecturers, including James Graham, James Harding, Michaela Coel, Dorothy Byrne, Ted Turner, Armando Iannucci, Rupert Murdoch, Dennis Potter, Jon Snow, Elisabeth Murdoch, David Olusoga, Louis Theroux, Jack Thorne, and Emily Maitlis.

At the 2025 Edinburgh TV Festival, Adrian Pennington observed that British TV is in the midst of generational transformation and, for better or for worse, is ever more directly affected by the global TV industry. Discover more here.