Juan Mora is a U.S.-based social entrepreneur with business interests in digital media and publishing who is the founder and President of the Americas Business Council (ABC*) Foundation, a nonprofit organization chaired by Emilio Azcarraga, CEO of Grupo Televisa which provides a platform to influence and support the region's emerging leaders to bring about positive change in their communities.
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Before ABC*, Mora co-founded Page One Media,[1] 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).
While serving as President of 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 a series of quality executive 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, NRDC, Synergos, Kissinger McLarty Associates, 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.
Following a successful track record with the magazine and its world-class forums, Mora envisioned creating a foundation that would take the next step: real engagement with leaders in their communities. With support from Emilio Azcarraga, Chairman and CEO of Grupo Televisa, Mora 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.
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.
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 currently in its second round.
Knight Arts | Witnessing the Transformational Power of the Arts