About Bob Iger
In a June 2026 interview with CNBC marking the 10th anniversary of Shanghai Disneyland, Bob Iger described the park as a career highlight and said he felt "filled with pride" about the project. Iger recalled that competitors in China had said the park "will never work," but he said he "could not wait to prove that they were wrong." He stated that Disney has "succeeded over the years in putting politics aside" and sticking to its mission of entertaining people globally, adding that "pretty much no matter what happens, Disney does just fine." Iger also said his own future involves "truly enjoying life after Disney" and that he felt "really good about handing the company over to Josh" (his successor, Josh D'Amaro).
In a 2020 interview on the Goop podcast, Iger discussed leadership and communication, saying he discovered that "being direct is far more efficient and effective." He noted that women are "held unfortunately to a different standard" regarding directness and may be "a little less direct for fear that it's going to affect people's perception of them." Iger also outlined his strategic priorities at Disney: spending capital on high-quality branded content, using technology to improve products and reach consumers directly, growing globally, and succeeding at diversity and inclusion, which he described as having "a great business case."
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Bob Iger's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Bob Iger0:01
Executing against those priorities, because they're really important.
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Interviewer0:03
I've made the point many times and have in other campaigns as well, it is an enormous distraction, potentially, for management. Takes a lot of time. I assume that was the case for you as well.
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Bob Iger0:12
It did take a lot of time. I continued to spend a lot of time on those priorities. You have to still watch the films and engage with our businesses on what their strategies are, and execute against them. You can't take your eye off the ball, but another great subject or subject is introduced that it does dilute your time to some extent.
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Interviewer0:33
You got to travel. You got to get in front of shareholders, spend a good amount of time just thinking about it. Did it become personal for you? It involved Ike Perlmutter. You and I have talked about this in the past. There's no love lost between the two of you. Was it a personal kind of contest in some way beyond just the proxy contest?
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Bob Iger0:54
Look, on my side, no. Meaning, I was supporting the interests of the company, not my personal interests, and defending what the company and the board was doing as opposed to defending myself against criticism from Nelson and the people who are backing him. If you're asking whether it was personal on their side, you probably should ask him. He probably would say no. I think there probably was, to some extent, a degree of personal animus that was on the table here.
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Interviewer1:33
You fired him. He didn't like that.
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Bob Iger1:35
Well, we closed the Marvel offices, and it did result in Ike leaving the company, but I'm not going to put words in his mouth at all. I had my opinions about it all, but again, we were defending the company against the criticism of Mr. Peltz in this case, and I actually tried not to consider it a personal attack on me, because I didn't think that was really of great benefit to Disney.
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Interviewer2:06
But you're a very competitive person, and you wanted to crush them, didn't you?
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Bob Iger2:12
I wouldn't put it that way. If you're asking me whether I wanted the company to prevail, yes, because I knew exactly what was important to the company. I knew what we were doing, and I was extremely confident. I remain confident and very optimistic about what we're doing. And I just didn't think it was necessary to essentially bring Nelson Peltz on to the board, nor did the board feel that, given the fact that he didn't bring any new ideas, and he wasn't going to have an impact on the company that we deemed was going to be positive. There was a belief that it could be a distraction and end up being more destructive than productive.
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Interviewer2:55
I'm curious on that. There had been speculation that were he to have won a seat on the board, you might have accelerated your own departure from the company. Is that true?
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Bob Iger3:05
He didn't win a seat on the board, and I'm back to where I was before all this happened, which is spending 100% of my time on this company, and I'll just leave it at that.
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Interviewer3:13
It is instructive, though, to think about how you were thinking about things, the fact that it happened.
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Bob Iger3:18
It's important for the management team and working very closely with the board to have the ability, that includes the time, to focus on the most important matters. And anything that occurs that takes away from that, that distracts us in some form, is a negative. And so, as I said, his presence on the board, we
