Ruben Garcia
Ruben Garcia
Founder and CEO, MOSAICO
Ruben Garcia is an accomplished executive with over a decade of experience creating and leading innovative strategies that drive equity and inclusion for underrepresented voices across the media and entertainment industries - both in front and behind the camera. He recently launched MOSAICO, a Latino-focused culture and impact agency dedicated to expanding the cultural and social impact of Latinos globally, and MOSAICO Impact, a charitable fund that support several programs and initiatives to build community among Latino thought-leadership and support more authentic narratives across across media and entertainment.
He recently served as an Executive and Co-Head of Cultural Business Strategy at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), a media, entertainment, and sports agency based in Los Angeles. In this role, he collaborated with company and industry leadership to conceptualize and implement strategies to accelerate creative and business growth opportunities for the agency’s diverse clients. As an Executive in the Foundation department, Garcia also advised agency clients on their pro-social and charitable activities in support of a range of critical and timely issue areas. His clients included Anthony Ramos, Becky G, Eugenio Derbez, Al Madrigal, Kendrick Sampson, America Ferrera, Edward James Olmos, Michael Cimino, Will Packer, Meena Harris, Laurence Fishburne, Ricky Martin, Tabitha Brown, and Karla Souza, among others.
Garcia played an integral role in guiding the company’s overall inclusion and equity efforts to create sustainable change within the agency and beyond. Among his primary responsibilities was the management and growth of CAA Amplify, a powerful platform designed to generate transformational business and cultural change by connecting and leveraging the collective influence of thought leaders and cultural changemakers of color from media, entertainment, sports, brands, and social justice.
Under his leadership, Garcia expanded the platform beyond its annual, invitation-only summer convening to offer several in-person and virtual experiences, including the CAA Amplify Town Halls, special livestream events intended to inspire action around critical social issues including racial equity, education, and civic engagement. The first was held in June 2020 following the murder of George Floyd and featured leading voices including actress Yara Shahidi, former President and Director-Counsel of NAACP Legal Defense Fund Sherrilyn Ifill, NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade, actor Kendrick Sampson, writer and director Justin Simien, and Ford Foundation President Darren Walker. The livestream reached over 12,000 unique viewers and remains one of the most-watched CAA Amplify events to date.
As a leader for Cultural Business Strategy, Garcia worked across the agency to ensure agents and executives had the tools, resources, and information they needed to accelerate opportunities for their clients, particularly those from underrepresented or historically marginalized communities. In addition to providing critical insights on diverse consumers to agency clients and business partners, he managed the agency’s slate of corporate partnerships, engaged with studio and network partners to support a variety of industry-wide inclusion initiatives, implemented internal systems to drive cultural competency, and commissioned custom data reports to show the impact of inclusion on the business of entertainment. In 2020, he led a collaboration with the UCLA Center for Scholars and Storytellers to expand their Authentically Inclusive Report (AIR) to measure the impact of representation on key business metrics, including box office performance, awards, and critical acclaim. The report was featured during a mainstage presentation at the 2020 Hollywood Reporter Inclusion Summit.
In addition, Garcia actively created and supported several programs to support the agency’s evolving inclusion and culture objectives. In 2013, he helped lead a cross-agency effort to launch CAA Amplify: Next Gen, a networking and professional development event to foster the growth of future diverse industry leaders. He also oversaw CAA’s Creators Summit series, professional development experiences for content creators hosted in partnership with major industry events and partners, such as the American Black Film Festival (ABFF) and GLAAD. In 2017, he helped lead efforts to host the first Writers’ Boot Camp, a daylong workshop to help emerging writers from diverse backgrounds accelerate their creative careers within television. In 2022, he led a team of internal colleagues to host the Non-Fiction Producers Boot Camp, a first-of-its-kind event specifically for those working across the non-scripted space.
He is the Creator and Founder of La Cena, a signature, multi-city dinner series designed to connect Latino talent, artists, executives, and community leaders. The program is part of his mission to build an engaged, inter-disciplinary network of the foremost leadership from the community and activate shared expertise to drive progress for Latinos globally.
In the past year, La Cena events were hosted in Austin, Miami, New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles alongside partners including the NFL, Verizon, Tequila Don Julio, Siete Family Foods, United Talent Agency, and Equis. One of his most recent events brought together an impressive group of Latino creative talent, marketing leaders, and athletes during Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas. In January 2024, Garcia produced La Cena: Los Angeles, a special gathering of over 175 guests from across the film and television industries for an evening to celebrate the progress in Latino representation and storytelling. The event, sponsored exclusively by Equis, received coverage on The Talk, The Hollywood Reporter, and Vogue Mexico.
Last summer, Garcia led an effort alongside other leading Latino-focused media organizations to publish the “Support Latino Creatives” open letter to support Latino actors and writers whose projects were impacted by the unprecedented SAG-AFTRA and WGA double strikes. Recognizing that creators of color would be deeply affected by the work stoppage, the letter, which was signed by over 25 cross-sector organizations, issued a call to action to audiences to support the upcoming releases of films and television shows to ensure that stories from or featuring Latino talent were not overlooked. The letter was covered across several outlets, including The LA Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, and Latino Rebels, among others.
In that spirit, Garcia managed the Blue Beetle Battalion campaign to raise awareness for the film and encourage audiences to show up during opening weekend. Among his efforts, and with support from individual donors, corporations, and non-profit organizations, Garcia quickly executed a program just days before the release that raised over $40,000 to purchase and donate tickets to moviegoers across the country to watch the film at their local AMC Theater.
Prior to joining CAA in 2011, Garcia worked at Paramount Pictures and The Walt Disney Company. A native of San Diego, he is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in Sociology.