Mal Stares was born in Toronto, Canada but split her childhood between Germany, France and England. While majoring in English Literature at the University of British Columbia she started working in the Vancouver film industry. After graduating, she continued to gain experience in the business in a variety of positions before being accepted into the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC.

Following assistant stints at Millar Gough Ink and Mark Burnett's One Three Media, she joined former HBO exec Anne Thomopoulos as a scripted development executive where she worked on Outlander (Starz), Versailles (Canal+) and Black Box (ABC). She went on to help launch Scott Rudin's Los Angeles based scripted division, which had a deal with the Fox Networks Group, where she worked on What We Do In The Shadows (FX), Diagnosis (Netflix), and Barkskins (NatGeo). She then transitioned to BBC Studios, where she worked on shows set up with AMC, Netflix, FX, HBO, Showtime, Warner Bros. TV, Sony TV, and Snapchat, including Call Me Kat (Fox). She recently served as Vice President of International TV Production at Fifth Season (formerly Endeavor Content), leading the company’s expansion into Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. During her tenure, she successfully sold Amazon’s first Australian original series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart starring Sigourney Weaver, played a key role in securing deficit financing for notable productions such as BBC’s Queen of Oz, SBS’s Swift Street, and CBC's Run the Burbs, and set up Mammals at Amazon, written by Jez Butterworth and starring James Corden.

She is currently the SVP, Global Scripted at Blink49, working across the development and production of their current and upcoming slate of scripted content spanning drama and comedy.

Speaking on: Indigenous Screen Summit Pitch Forum #2: drama series