Leslie Roy Moonves (/ˈmuːnvɛz/; born October 6, 1949) is President and Chief Executive Officer of CBS Corporation.
Moonves served as co-president and co-chief operating officer of Viacom, Inc., the predecessor to CBS Corporation, from 2004 until the company split on December 31, 2005. Prior to that he had been in a series of executive positions for CBS since July 1995. Moonves has also been a Director at ZeniMax Media since 1999.
He became chairman of CBS in February 2016.
Moonves was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Josephine (Schleifer) and Herman Moonves, and grew up in Valley Stream, New York. He attended Valley Stream Central High School and went to Bucknell University, graduating in 1971. In his sophomore year he switched his major from pre-med to Spanish and acted in a few plays; following graduation in 1971 he moved to Manhattan to pursue a career as an actor, but after he played a few "forgettable" TV roles he decided to pursue the business side of television instead.