Claudia Restrepo is a video producer, director and writer who is best known for her work on Buzzfeed’s “Pero Like”. Born and raised in Missouri, Restrepo never examined her relationship with the entire Latinx community. It was until she came to Los Angeles to attend college and started getting involved with other Latinx communities that she realized the positive impact this community could have had on her childhood. After studying and practicing acting and academic writing, she discovered her true passion in writing roles for Latinx individuals like herself. Restrepo recalls, “It just enriched my soul and made me feel better like I was actually doing something to write stories for myself and my friends who also are like people of color. That has just carried me so much further than trying to audition for a work that was not for me. ”

Working at a digital space and launching Buzzfeed off-spin channels on Youtube like Pero Like, Buzzfeed’s projects aimed at making “content that resonates with English-speaking Latinxs.” Restrepo expresses her pride and excitement about the progress they have achieved, stating “we are all making sort of like block content. We are always working on sort of long term like bigger scripted and unscripted projects.” Furthermore, Restrepo has been able to see the impact her work has had on mainstream media, “it has been great to see us grow as a brand and I feel like we are finally at the space where we have the skills and the audiences to get to start these individual channels, and really interact more with the audiences and have more direct impact with people to the Youtube space.” As a result, Pero Like gains great viewership and some of the videos have even reached over 9 million viewers. “People comment and seem engaged. Most people that I meet are young women that watch the channel, and it’s for everybody, but the majority of our viewership is young women and you get emotional when you just see a lot of 14 years old girls are like ‘we love it! I wanna do that!’ ”

Restrepo initially started her journey with NALIP through a writing workshop as a student member. She attended the Diverse Women in Media Panel in 2014, which greatly inspired her writing career. Last year, she presented for a workshop with director Marvin Lemus for directing in a digital space. She describes the experience as “I think everyone has a moment in their career where like ‘oh, I think I know what I am talking about’, and that is sort of the workshop for me. Doing the workshop feels like the full circle moment, which is that I feel like I’ve ripped the words of this organization for a while that to get to stand on the stage and share this knowledge with inspiring content creators. It does sort of feeling like a family watches you grow.”

When addressing NALIP’s #WeAreInclusion campaign, Restrepo explains that the campaign speaks to her on two different levels. “It says to me that there is a seated table and we are holding it for you, like we want you to be part of this industry. But also, the Latino experience is so fast and different but we are all this together. I think sometimes it can feel singular, like your experience to your culture or your background, but we are all in this team and we are all here supporting each other. That’s what it means to me.”