Netflix Created by Initiative

January 12, 2023

To identify talent, NHMC joined forces with Netflix and five other leading organizations who are at the forefront of creating access to underrepresented creators within the industry: CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment), Native American Media Alliance, The Black TV and Film Collective, Outfest and Inevitable Foundation. Each organization nominated candidates from their own writers’ programs and Netflix selected the final recipients.

The program is designed to ensure underrepresented and historically excluded talent are set up for success beyond the writers’ room. The development deals provide these writers with the opportunity to go through the studio development process and hone their projects alongside Netflix executives from the series and film teams. Additionally, all series writers will be invited to participate in a showrunner training lab designed to provide the essential skills needed to successfully run a Netflix series.

Zoila Amelia Galeano

Zoila (Zoilita to her large Honduran family) knew since she was a toddler that she would be in show biz. One of her first paths in Hollywood was in post-production on scripted series at Warner Bros and Paramount studios. Later she jumped into reality television, where she worked as a Supervising Producer and Story Producer on such shows as Project Runway, Paris Hilton’s My New BFF and American Choppers. 

Life was sweet, but she secretly dreamed of becoming a writer. The idea of leaving her established career seemed scary, but then she became a stepmother to two teenage girls and a young woman. After that, nothing scared her. So, she gave up her glamorous life in post-production (not to mention the steady paycheck) to pursue her passion. She was accepted into the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s Writing Program, the CBS Mentorship Writers’ Program, NBC’s Writers On The Verge and the ABC/Disney Writers’ Fellowship. She won Baby First’s Rising Creators Project selling her animated pre-school children’s show Team Abuelita. 

She was staffed on the Hulu series East Los High, the bilingual series RPM Miami for Mun 2 and The Fosters for Freeform. She also wrote a freelance script for Hallmark’s Good Witch, sold a YA chat fiction story, “Deranged Marriage” to Snapchat subsidiary Hooked and wrote an Untitled Quinceanera feature for Focus Features. 

She created a YA series with Brat TV called B-Team and wrote a freelance script for the animated preschool sitcom Rosie’s Rules. She also became a playwright in 2020 with her first piece for stage titled Not Your Mamà’s Period which debuted on Period Piece, a virtual play about periods and the people who get them. Her newest play Foodie is scheduled for publication by Next Stage Press as part of a new anthology coming in 2023

Jeffrey Nieves and Emily Eslami Nieves

Jeffrey Nieves and Emily Eslami are writers on Seasons 1, 2, and 3 of Syfy’s Resident Alien. They also served as Executive Story Editors on Season 1 of the upcoming Paramount+ show, Wolf Pack. 

Jeffrey and Emily are a Puerto-Rican and half-Iranian married writing team. They write grounded sci-fi, and love to explore characters caught between warring identities. Jeff is a member of the WGA’s Latinx Writers Committee, and Emily is a member of the Middle Eastern Writers Committee.

Diego Moreno

Diego Moreno is a Pascua Yaqui and Mexican American screenwriter from Tucson, Arizona. His 2016 Native Horror Short, My-A-Knee, won the Alexander Laing Memorial Award for Best Screenplay. In 2018, Diego received a BA in Film and Media Studies from Dartmouth College where his honors thesis, My Heroes Have Always Killed Cowboys, focused on portrayals of Native Americans in contemporary film and television. 

After undergraduate, Diego received his MFA from the screenwriting program at the Institute For American Indian Arts. Most recently, Diego was accepted into the 2021 SKINSFEST Native TV Writer’s Lab, the 2021 National Hispanic Media Coalition Series Scriptwriters Program, the inaugural 2021 Mentorship Matters TV Writing Program, and the 2022 SKINSFEST Native Showrunner Program. 

Diego’s first staff writing position came in late 2021 with season two of the Spectrum Originals/Paramount TV Western Crime Drama, Joe Pickett.
National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) is a woman-led 501(c)(3) non-profit civil and human rights organization that was founded to eliminate hate, discrimination, and racism toward the Latino communities.
© 2024 National Hispanic Media Coalition // communications@nhmc.org // o. (626) 792-6462
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