I believe that being a woman is a superpower.
My name is Carolina García and I am the director of original series at Netflix.
The woman deciding what you watch
What I do is I help pick hopefully the best shows to bring to audiences
and I work with creators and writers to bring those stories to life,
to hopefully create something that the world will love and enjoy.
Carolina has worked on shows including Stranger Things…
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina…
Atypical…
and Raising Dion.
If we had a crystal ball all of the shows that we programme would be the biggest hits
in the world.
Unfortunately, it’s really hard to predict what is gonna strike and what is going to
feel,
what is going to puncture the zeitgeist.
So what I really rely on when picking shows is my intuition, my heart and my instinct.
So when someone’s telling me a story, if I’m moved by that story, there’s no algorithm
in the world that’s going to be able to predict that human movement in me.
Part of my job is to help people feel seen, safe and good about themselves or their lives
or at least feel that connection to someone else.
And so I have a big responsibility in making sure that I provide that for other people
in how I programme.
Carolina was born in Argentina as the youngest of three siblings.
Her parents moved their family to the US when she was still a child.
When we got to America my dad said: ‘OK, we’re American, we are going to speak English
and this is how we’re going to learn and be part of a culture and assimilate into the
culture’.
And at home our family was, obviously, very Argentinian.
So I spoke Spanish and English at home, Spanish with my mum and grandma and English with my
dad.
And it was a beautiful thing and I’m so grateful to have grown up obviously, speaking
two languages.
But growing up, I think Latino immigrants, I’ll speak personally, you just want to
fit in.
You just want to be part of the Americana and really, be the same as everyone else.
I remember growing up, I have a pretty cool name, my name’s Carolina and I always was
like: ‘Why can’t my name just be Sarah or Jessica?’
Or whatever the American name was because I really wanted to fit in.
And now I’m like: ‘Oh Carolina, that was your superpower’.
‘Being who you were was your superpower’.
‘You did not have to be anyone else’.
A recent study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative…
found Hispanic or Latino characters were 4.7% of Netflix leads…
despite making up about 18.5% of the US population.
Netflix says it is investing $100m to improve inclusion and diversity.
It’s important to have examples and visible examples of people that look like you doing
things that you aspire to do and to be.
Growing up if I saw a Latino on screen they were a gardener, a maid, a nanny, a migrant
worker
which those are all noble and fine professions but you never saw a Latino as a doctor or
a lawyer or whatever, a mum.
So part of it is making sure that in the casting we are representing a full breadth of who
can do what role.
So part of my job is to pay it forward and to open the door and create new opportunities
for Latino excellence to come through the door and foster that talent.
Carolina is a trained ballet dancer and keen singer…
but opening up about her passions has not always been easy.
I grew up a dancer, I grew up a singer but when it came time to go into the professional
world I put that all away.
Because I thought, I’m a serious executive, I must be taken seriously.
As a woman I have to be a certain way and I have to do things a certain way otherwise
I’ll get laughed at.
And so I really hid that entire part of me for 15 years maybe.
So I decided that in order to be a great executive and be great at my job, I couldn’t be a
robot.
I had to make sure that my life outside of work was fulfilled and I was doing something
that filled up my soul cup.
That was really important to me and that brought me back to life.
Carolina hopes she can lead by example…
and help to make the boardroom a more accessible place.
I think women especially, and I know this is true for me growing up, I always wanted
to think like one of the guys.
It used to be there was only one seat at the table for a woman and women were often trying
to make way for themselves to be that woman.
And now we’ve created more seats.
And it’s not at the expense of anyone else but it really is just about opening up opportunity
for other people to come join the table.
Honestly the more the merrier.
Like, why not?