Omar Essack
Chief Executive Officer
Primedia Group
BA (English Literature & Drama)
Post Grad Diploma in Education
Management Advancement Programme in Media and Entertainment IESE Business School
Executive Education: Effective Strategies for Media Companies Harvard Business School
Omar’s media career spans 30 years, covering a range of roles including that of radio DJ, TV news and current affairs anchor, radio producer, director and writer. He became the youngest Managing Director of a private radio station (East Coast Radio) in South Africa in 1998 at the age of 32, where he worked with his team to make East Coast Radio the first regional million listener station in 1999. He was promoted to an Executive Director position on the board of Kagiso Media in 2004. He joined Primedia Broadcasting in January 2017 as its CEO, before being appointed CEO of the Primedia Group in April 2018.
Omar has written about the media environment and radio for US, European, Indian and South Africa media and marketing publications. He has presented at conferences in India, Dubai and South Africa and worked as a strategic management facilitator and lectured on managing media businesses in South Africa, India, Vietnam and Thailand. He also judged the European Radio Awards at the NAB in Barcelona in 2007. His strategic leadership of East Coast Radio is the subject of a chapter in a book entitled ‘Managing Media Businesses: A Game Plan to Navigate Disruption and Uncertainty’ edited by Professor Mike Rosenberg of IESE Business School (Barcelona) and Philip H. Seager with contributing author, Dr. Iris Firstenberg from UCLA Anderson School of Management (California, USA).
Connect with Omar on LinkedIn
