(Newswire.net — October 17, 2023) — Diego Ávalos, Netflix’s vice president of content for Spain, Portugal, and the Nordics has achieved success because of his creativity and ability to identify and cultivate content that resonates with viewers. He has also mastered the business side of his roles.
Starting with a strong foundation, including a bachelor’s degree in business and operation management information systems from Santa Clara University, Ávalos has gone on to demonstrate his business acumen for major brands including Yahoo and Deloitte. While each of these experiences presented its own challenges, his ability to hone in on what is most important to his teams and his audiences has helped drive forward both his career and the people around him.
His experiences in both life and business have taught Ávalos that three of the most important areas of business advice involve embracing technology, taking advantage of opportunities that come your way, and always prioritizing the customer.
Diego Ávalos: Innovators Stand To Gain by Embracing Technology
Since early childhood, Diego Ávalos has had a fascination with technology. While growing up in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, his family became one of the first in his community to have a home computer, gifted to them by an uncle who worked in Silicon Valley. This sparked an interest in how technology could further his creative pursuits and storytelling. After completing his undergraduate degree, Ávalos took a position as a consultant for Deloitte, helping companies discover new ways to leverage technology and processes to reduce enterprise risk at scale. This called directly back to his college studies, which focused on a blend of business and anthropology. “I knew I wanted to be in both business technology and solve issues, but I also was very interested in the study of humanity and human nature,” Ávalos says.
Since then, he has seen the rise of technology as companies like Yahoo evolved to diversify their content and product offerings. Joining Yahoo as head of business development and content in the late 2000s, Ávalos had a front-row seat to see how fast-acting changes driven by new technologies could appeal to wider audiences on the global platform. As he led research and product launches for products in the U.S. and Latin American Hispanic markets, he “focused on growing and creating a content strategy, content partnerships,” he says.
Ávalos embraced the industry’s innovation and helped bring Yahoo Latin America from a purely text-and-photo-based platform to one that incorporated video and original content. As he found other brands more quickly adapting and innovating, he decided to take his career to the next level, accepting a position with Netflix, which was a burgeoning streaming platform at the time.
Today, Netflix’s Diego Ávalos marvels at how technology can be used to “have more information to make better decisions.” He believes that advancements in technology have helped bring people and communities together without regard to physical boundaries or limitations. He also looks for new ways to use technology to enhance storytelling, believing that innovation can help brands create more connections and expand their reach beyond what they thought possible.
Taking Advantage of the Opportunities That Come Your Way
In addition to leveraging technology to innovate solutions and careers, Diego Ávalos also encourages others to embrace opportunity when it comes knocking. He learned this at a young age when he was enraptured with learning and a drive to succeed, as his parents helped to fund his move to the United States, giving him a better opportunity to learn and set forth on a career path. During this time, he lived with his host family, the Mansels. Carolyn Mansel, in particular, made an impression on Ávalos.
“I lived with them when I moved to the U.S., with her and her husband,” Ávalos said. “She passed away a number of years ago. She was somebody that became almost like a second mother to me.”
He said Carolyn Mansel, like his parents, encouraged him to follow his passion. He also said she emphasized two things he will never forget. One was to get as much information as possible about everything, even things he wasn’t particularly interested in because you never know what information will become useful later. Second, she encouraged him to create as many opportunities for himself as possible, adding that once an opportunity comes along, he should always look forward, not back.
“She always said, when you see a rocket ship, you just get on. You don’t ask which seat. You don’t ask where you’re going. You see a rocket ship, and you get on it,” Ávalos said. This mentality helped him become willing to take risks and make career jumps that others may have shied away from. With confidence in his transferrable skills and personal drive, he had the courage to reinvent himself time and again while refining his career to reflect his ambitions.
This approach also helped him move into his role with Netflix, where he found his passion for storytelling and combining it with a great internet platform. He became successful by going with his instincts while applying the connections he found between technology, media, and storytelling. This helped him bring a number of successes to the screen for Netflix, including the hit series Money Heist (Casa de Papel), which originally aired on a local network television station in Spain. Seeing the potential in the show, he jumped at the opportunity to not only bring the series to Netflix but also fund its expansion for several seasons. The result: Money Heist went on to become the streaming platform’s most-watched series worldwide.
Prioritizing Consumer as a Leader and Creative
While leaders may have their own perceptions of what will succeed in their market, Netflix’s Diego Ávalos calls out the need to be in tune with audiences and consumers to find what will actually succeed. He credits his own “ability to think strategy and not just content, and knowing audiences” with his success in bringing Netflix’s non-English language content to the forefront with the communities that could benefit from it the most.
Keeping target audiences top of mind is imperative for leaders such as Ávalos who work in industries with direct-to-consumer products and content. “You have to put your own personal taste aside. You need to think of the audience. I think that’s a big challenge normally for people,” says Ávalos. This doesn’t mean he isn’t a fan of his own projects, which have included the production and release of the first original international Netflix series, Club de Cuervos (Club of Crows), as well as Through My Window (Atraves de mi Ventana) and The Snow Girl (La Chica de Nieve). These efforts have achieved success beyond their regional or localized markets. While they were produced in Spanish, audiences worldwide have come to appreciate them for the stories and messages they carry.
These efforts have required Ávalos to have an aptitude for identifying Spanish-language content that represents the storytelling styles of local cultures while bringing those stories to the world at large. He has noted that these programs are not only accessible to people in Spain but to the more than 500 million people who speak Spanish worldwide. As Netflix and Diego Ávalosrecalibrate their content strategy on a regular basis, he points to prioritizing viewers as a motivating factor, something that all leaders can take note of. “We need to do everything differently — because it needs to be better every day for our members,” he said.