Mariana Santos is a portuguese entrepreneur who started a global community to empower women in media around the world.

Founder and CEO of Chicas Poderosas, a global community with hubs in 18 countries that promotes female leadership and generates knowledge to shape the future of the media, one chica at a time, 5500 chicas and counting. This project started in 2013 in Chile then had its first leadership summit in 2015 at Stanford.It has the support of reputable global companies such as Google, Open Society Foundation and the United Nations, which have pledged over 500.000 USD to the forwarding of women’s leadership in media with Chicas Poderosas

Mariana developed and runs an accelerator for women led independent media organizations in Latin America having mentored and coaching start-ups and their funders, to become sustainable ventures.

Mariana is a public speaker and moderator on topics ranging from media innovation, women empowerment through technology and leadership.

Alumni of JSK Journalism Knight Fellowship at Stanford, 2015.

Until 2016, Director of Interactive and animation at Fusion Media, a joint-venture between Univision and Disney ABC.

Knight Chair of Innovation at Florida International University in 2015/16.

2014 ICFJKnight International Journalism Fellow, where she worked all across Latin America in major newsrooms and with independent journalists.

Mariana Santos is a visual storyteller, who did groundbreaking work as a member of the interactive team at The Guardian in London. A trained animator, she pioneered the newsroom’s use of motion graphics to make data stories more compelling. She leads design thinking workshops to increase multidisciplinary approach to storytelling, and she is a leader in community transformation and digital training.