After a satisfying career in broadcast journalism, Teri Arvesú looked around during the pandemic and protests over George Floyd’s murder and felt she had hit a plateau.
“I had topped out in terms of the impact I could make and was wondering how I could be a bigger part of transformational work,” Arvesú, who had been the WGBO Chicago news director and was then VP for content for Univision Chicago, recalled. “It came to me that my next job was not about a title — producer, then executive producer, then news director. But I was banging my head because I didn’t know what to do next.”
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Then came a phone call offering her a new role in the company’s Brand and Impact vertical as senior VP of social impact and sustainability for TelevisaUnivision and president of the Univision Foundation.
Both the sense of searching and the new role made perfect sense to those who know Arvesú.
Powerhouse Presence
Jose Tomas, chief administrative officer, TelevisaUnivision, and Edna Uribe, who was director of sales at Univision Chicago when Arvesú was there, both describe her as a “lifelong learner” and a force to be reckoned with.
“Her level of curiosity is genuine and admirable,” Uribe said. Added Tomas, “She absorbs new ideas and then executes on them.”
Tomas also called her “a ball of energy who does not stand still,” although Arvesú said she’s “super-aware” of always going full tilt and admits she tries to modify her passion and energy because “it even drives me crazy. I’m so freaking intense.”
Arvesú, whose parents were Cuban exiles who arrived here as children, grew up in Miami, studied journalism and ran newsrooms in Miami and Chicago. Her passion for journalism is tied to her love of democracy which is part of her heritage, she said, adding that she’s also a “geek about meteorology” and would watch hours of live weather broadcasting, “which made me feel like I was part of a community.”
Under her leadership, WGBO made history in 2014 by becoming the first Spanish-language television station to win a Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award for Outstanding Evening Newscast, Larger Markets. She loves Univision because it fits her identity as a “200 percenter, someone who is both 100% American and 100% Hispanic,” she said. “I live both those lives and I have never found in my ‘American’ life
a brand that means what Univision means to our community.”
About a decade ago, Arvesú nearly left to teach at the University of Miami and lead the student-run TV station but she stayed, in part, because Univision was creating a women’s leadership council, the first employee resource group. That chance to make a difference “sucked me in again,” she said. Arvesú has a master’s degree in management, and those studies emphasized leadership. She also credits her great-aunt, Carolina Calderin, who was a hospital CEO in Miami and broke through glass ceilings, but who also “gave so much and never turned anyone away.”
Doing More for Latinos
In Chicago, Arvesú launched a fellowship with DePaul University and the McCormick Foundation to prepare high school and college Latinos for careers in the media and she also started the city’s first radio show for bilingual millennials.
In her new role she feels she can do even more. One recent program helped push the film industry to develop more Latino directors. This year, she is focusing much of her energy on “Vota Conmigo” (Vote With Me), the company’s get-out-the-vote campaign. “That consumes me almost daily,” she said.
Arvesú said she relishes the ability to work on the philanthropic side through the company’s foundation, while also working to transform TelevisaUnivision itself. “I’m helping journalism build out a new business model,” she said. “I’m part of the board of the Journalism Funding Partners, which gets philanthropic dollars to underwrite reporting, and we’ve put over $2 million back in newsrooms. And while Univision’s brand has always been about community, I now oversee corporate social responsibility and diversity, equity and inclusion while the foundation allows me to create programs that take care of our community on the inside.”
