Our Lil Incubator Won An Oscar

When we are lucky in life, we feel positively connected to our experiences - both personal and professional - indefinitely. Long after the end dates LinkedIn displays for my roles, I personally find myself still proudly saying "we" when I speak about them.

And for all of my "we"s, the biggest ongoing source of pride from my media career is the OneFifty incubator I co-created at Time Warner.

OneFifty disrupted the way content was developed, complementing existing Warner initiatives and leveraging its artistic and cultural partners to create new access points for creativity and elevate stories with social impact. Put another way, we gave seed capital to incredible storytellers to support their ideas and help set them up for successful pitch meetings at our divisions: HBO, Turner and Warner Bros.

Having had the incredible opportunity to co-create OneFifty with Lisa Garcia Quiroz from idea to inception, I had a front row seat to a master class in resilience. As we navigated a seemingly endless stream of "no"s and "not now"s from many senior executives, Lisa taught me to reframe them as "not that way." And then we got creative to get OneFifty off the ground our way.

Since the company wasn't going to carve out new dollars for this, despite our CEO's blessing, we knew we could still make it happen ourselves. So we did. By repositioning my entire small-but-sufficient-to-launch corporate budget toward OneFifty.

The name, OneFifty, was inspired by the $150 the original Warner brothers needed to buy a kinetoscope, their first entry into the world of entertainment. In that same spirit of small investments yielding great things, OneFifty was born.

For seven years, this lil engine that could not only survived several company-wide reorgs but also thrived in the midst of them. From Time Warner to WarnerMedia to Warner Bros. Discovery, OneFifty kept on incubating, innovating, and elevating storytellers onto bigger and bigger stages through both content creation and acquisition.

And twice, that was the Oscar stage. In 2021, OneFifty had its first nominee, a live short called White Eye. And a year later, in 2022, OneFifty won its first Oscar for Drive My Car. In that moment, as I sat on my couch watching, my heart skipped a beat as I - alongside hundreds of millions of others - heard a very public "thank you OneFifty."

There is something extra special seeing a small seed I helped to plant years ago grow infinitely bigger and better with the right visionaries. Deeply grateful to Axel W. Caballero, Alex Gutierrez, gabrielle glore, and Lamonia Deanne Brown for steering this beyond my wildest dreams, although something tells me that what was beyond my wildest dreams was something Lisa knew was meant to be.

To all the original artists and all the Chairman's Challenge alum who were part of this from Day One, each of you helped to build something that is truly industry-changing - one small investment at a time.

And while my understanding is OneFifty has paused for now, the website is still up, so I'm hopeful it will reboot soon. As Indiewire wrote shortly after the Drive My Car win, "if you’re rooting for an ecosystem that supports filmmakers at early career phases, you’ll want to knock on wood that [OneFifty] is one aspect of the WarnerMedia empire that survives the merger with Discovery."

And whatever happens going forward, OneFifty will forever be a proud piece of my past. A reminder to always invest in our dreams and visions, and to trust - like the original Warner brothers did a century ago - small investments can bring very big things to life.

Hopeful this piece nudges you to consider one small investment you can nurture for yourself today. And if it did, please share. Together we can inspire one another.