Latina CEO discusses being few among many in profession

Editor’s note: This story first appeared on palabra, the digital news site by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

When I first interviewed Carrie Lozano three years ago, she had just been appointed Director of the Documentary Film and Artists Programs for the Sundance Institute. She had come to Sundance after kick-starting the International Documentary Association’s Enterprise Documentary Fund and leading the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund.

Today, Lozano’s experience and leadership skills are again winning recognition. She’s four months into her new role as President and CEO of ITVS – the Independent Television Service, a non-profit organization funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. ITVS provides extensive support to independent filmmakers and co-produces their nonfiction work on “Independent Lens,” “POV,” “American Masters,” and “FRONTLINE,” which are distributed globally by PBS.

Juxtaposed against the media and entertainment industry statistics I’ve studied over many years, Lozano’s ascent is a big deal: In the media industry, the percentage of Latino executives is disproportionately low. According to the 2021 U.S. Government Accountability Office Study on Workforce Diversity, only about 4% of Latinos hold senior or executive management positions in media, while Latinos make up 18.7% of the country’s population.

In my 2020 interview with Lozano, she reflected on the fact that she was one of the first creatives of Latino heritage to take a leadership role in the documentary space.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to have opportunities and I kind of just seize them as they come, with the goal of not only challenging myself but also understanding that I am a woman of color and that there aren’t many of us in these positions,” Lozano said at the time.

By then, Lozano, a Southern California native and fourth-generation Mexican American, already had an impressive resume. The University of California, Berkeley…