Recently awarded with an Innovation and Inclusion Award by the Digital Diversity Network, Mauricio Mota is the founder and co-president of Wise Entertainment. He served as executive producer of East Los High, an award-winning drama series that earned 6 Emmy nominations during its run on Hulu for its realistic portrayal of Latino high school students. The show is the streaming platform’s longest-running original series.

Mota began his career as an entrepreneur at the age of 15 when he developed a storytelling board game with writer Sonia Rodrigues, which he sold door-to-door all over Brazil. It is now present in over 5,000 schools. It later became a YA book collection and has been used by many Forbes 500 companies and the United Nations to foster creativity and innovation among their leaders. The game’s patent was used as the foundation for a literacy social network employed by 700,000 kids in public schools across Rio.

Later, Mota became a serial entrepreneur, pioneering multi-platform content by designing and creating products and IPs for TV channels, movie studios, and advertisers globally. Mauricio was the first Latin American to speak at the Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT. He has been a judge on many international juries, such as Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Festival of Media, the Emmys, and the One Show. Mota represents the 4th generation of one of the most important Latin American storytelling legacies and has helped his mother re-shape the estate created by his grandfather, Nelson Rodrigues, who is considered the Brazilian Shakespeare, into the largest and most diverse IP estate in Latin America. Most recently, he designed the School of Series, a TV series/IP development lab that will shape the next generation of showrunners and content creators in Brazil, and which trains 800 writers and producers.

He sits on the boards of A Call to Men (a national violence prevention organization), Center for Third Space at the Annenberg School (an institute focused on shaping the next generation of business leaders), the PGA’s Diversity Board, Scripted (an online marketplace for screenwriters), and Young Storytellers (a non-profit focused on mentoring low-income students through storytelling). Mauricio has also spoken for national and international audiences, including the White House Fellowship, the State Department, and the World Bank. 

Speaking on: The Future of Indies; Meet a Decision Maker; Distributor Deep-Dive: international financing and content trends (Diversity of Voices Programme)