Company also surpasses full-year goal of 250,000 consumer Personal Plan subscribers
Udemy , a leading AI-powered skills acceleration platform, announced the appointment of Zane Vella as the company’s Head of Content, Instructor & Creator Strategy.
The appointment of Vella comes as Udemy continues to accelerate its strategic transformation, having surpassed its 2025 goal of reaching 250,000 paid Consumer Personal Plan subscribers well ahead of year-end. This milestone underscores Udemy’s focus on driving subscription growth. During Q2 2025, Udemy Business and Consumer subscription offerings accounted for 70% of total revenue.
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As Udemy executes its strategic transformation, Vella will lead the evolution of Udemy’s global content strategy and instructor/creator ecosystem, while overseeing two critical growth levers: curating high-impact content aligned to global skills demand and building a modern creator/instructor partnership model. He brings extensive experience as an executive leader with a background spanning education, digital media production, and digital product development.
“Zane brings a unique combination of learning expertise, creator ecosystem experience, and product innovation leadership that perfectly aligns with our vision,” said Hugo Sarrazin, President and CEO at Udemy. “His proven track record of building interactive platforms and scaling creator partnerships will be instrumental as we seek to further expand our marketplace, enhance content quality, and accelerate our subscription growth across consumer and enterprise businesses. We’re thrilled to welcome him at this pivotal stage of our transformation.”
Vella’s career includes serving as CEO of Sessions College, an online school of digital media and design, and nearly six years in leadership roles at Comcast, including vice president of product and technology, and vice president of audience development and innovation. He founded and led Watchwith, a leading interactive video platform acquired by Comcast, and has served on the board of directors at Smashcut, a next-generation learning platform specializing in customized media-based online programs since 2021. Vella started his career in education as a creative producer and exhibit designer at the Exploratorium in San Francisco where he helped pioneer the use of livestreaming and interactive media in education.
“Udemy is exceptionally well-positioned to drive innovation across content and interactive learning formats on a global scale,” said Vella. “The relationships we have with our more than 85,000 instructors are key to our vision for the future of learning and skills acceleration, which is both human and AI-powered. I am particularly excited to work with Udemy’s talented team to develop new creator partnerships that drive engagement and growth.”
