Juan Mora (journalist)

Propeller Strategies

After leaving the Americas Business Council Foundation, Mora did an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management | Northwestern University and before graduation started Propeller Strategies as a creativity-tank that supports conscious builders who are creating business models that can impact society in a positive way. Propeller Strategies adds value to the path of those entrepreneurs by giving she or he visibility, by providing new connections and/or by inspiring them to keep moving forward. l

PODER magazine

Before ABC*, Mora co-founded Page One Media, a content platform that launched PODER Magazine. PODER is a publication that provides the region's audience of influential senior business leaders and policymakers with in-depth editorial coverage and information on the U.S. Hispanic market and Latin America. Aside from the US and Miami editions, PODER grew to have local editions in Colombia, Mexico and Perú. Under a content distribution agreement, PODER also publishes a selection of articles from The Economist, a British-based weekly news magazine. The magazine has won the Grand Prize for Press Freedom, awarded annually by the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).

PODER magazine events

While at Page One Media, Mora led the efforts to start the PODER Forums. These were done with the idea of extending the magazine's cutting-edge content and exclusive insider-access by organizing a series of conferences. In this same vein, the PODER breakfast series and the PODER Awards were created as compliments to the PODER Forums. The forums served as a space to discuss Latin America's political, economical and social trends, while the PODER Business Awards recognized extraordinary contributions by Hispanic business leaders. Among the attendees who participated in these events were former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; former Editor in Chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott; former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak; Stephan Schmidheiny, founder of AVINA Foundation; Carlos Gutierrez, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce; David Rubenstein, President and Founder of The Carlyle Group; Colombian President Álvaro Uribe; former President of Chile Ricardo Lagos; former President of Costa Rica, Jose Maria Figueres; and the former Chairman of The Walt Disney Company, Michael Eisner. These events frequently partnered with important institutions and companies like National Geographic, Natural Resources Defense Council, Synergos, Columbia University, Georgetown University, the Boston Consulting Group and Allen and Co.

Mora handled all public and media relations for PODER Magazine and worked with the Chairman and Editor in Chief to implement the strategy and vision of the magazine's various internal committees.

The Americas Business Council Foundation

Mora envisioned creating a foundation that would undertake engagement with leaders in their communities. With support from Emilio Azcárraga, Chairman and CEO of Grupo Televisa, Mora co-founded the Americas Business Council (ABC) Foundation, an organization that identifies young leaders (ABC Fellows), giving them a networking hub and creating opportunities for them to meet with established leaders from their fields. In its initial two years, the foundation has brought together an eclectic group of young leaders from all over the Americas, including Cesar Conde, the current President of Univision Networks, and Felipe Kast, the current Secretary of Social Development in Chile. The ABC Fellows Program has given these young innovators the opportunity to meet Nobel Peace prize winners such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Vice President Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev and Mary Robinson; heads of state including Colombian president Álvaro Uribe and former President of Chile Ricardo Lagos; environmentalists such as Sylvia Earle and Jean-Michel Cousteau; and social entrepreneurs and philanthropists like Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Larry Brilliant.

The foundation also strives to inspire these emerging leaders to innovate by identifying and getting involved in "high-impact" projects such as A Ritmo de Cambio an initiative for social inclusion. The project was unveiled at the 2010 World Economic Forum in Cartagena, Colombia, and inspired Almacenes Exito – the country largest retailer – to support a social project in Palenque, a poor and neglected town in the Caribbean. At that event, the ABC was invited to present its project at the annual meeting in Davos 2011.

The ABC is also working on the creation of events to generate consciousness on the environment. The first of these is an expedition organized with National Geographic to the Coco Islands where ten leaders from the Americas will have the opportunity to dive and share time with American oceanographer Sylvia Earle.

Previous experience

Before PODER Magazine, while still at business school, Mora was named the first Managing Director of Revista Semana Online. He then went on to create Publicaciones Semana New Media unit and became its Managing Director.

Studies

Mora graduated in 2013 with an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He has attended leadership seminars at Harvard, Design Thinking at Stanford, and emerging exponential technologies at Singularity University. In 2011, he attended the Young Leaders Program at the Global Institute for Tomorrow (GIFT). He is a member of the Georgetown Leadership Seminar.

Community involvement

Mora became affiliated with Knight Foundation in 2008 a volunteer for the first round of the Knight Arts Challenge contest, where he helped grant more than $8 million to 31 arts groups. The contest is in its second round.

Mora is part of the Committee to Protect Journalists Leadership Council.

Other projects

In 2009, Mora was the Executive Producer of a short documentary about reconciliation by Jesse Dylan. In 2010, Mora co-produced “Una Cancion por Colombia” together with Mark Johnson and Enzo Buono the duo that launched the multimedia music project Playing For Change.