Jeff Valdez

One of the first to recognize the power of Latinos on television, Jeff made history when he launched SiTV in 2003; America’s first English Language Latino themed cable network. SiTV is currently in over 20 million households and boasts a lineup of award winning original programming, much of it created and developed by Jeff himself. To date, sixty-five major advertisers from Fortune 500 companies are among SiTV’s top level client list. Jeff oversaw all operations in the critical first two years of the network and continues to serve on the board of SiTV.

In 2007 Jeff was named as Co-Chairman of Maya Entertainment, along with industry veteran Moctesuma Esparza. Maya Entertainment is a Latino media content company providing full service motion picture distribution and production. Also in 2007, he joined forces with legendary filmmaker David Zucker of Zucker Brothers and founded Sandbox Entertainment. Sandbox is producing a series of G and PG Latino themed family movies. He was recently named Chairman of Quepasa Corp./Quepasa.com (NASDAQ-QPSA) a bi-lingual social network aimed at US and Latin American markets.

Destined for a career in Entertainment, Jeff is 100% self taught, a true product of the school of life and has been featured in several books and articles about successful entrepreneurs whose success follows a similar story. His experience with the Latino market has brought him several notable speaking engagements for a variety of conferences, organizations and Fortune 500 companies.

Jeff has received a number of accolades from the industry and was named on of CNN’s “Top 50 People Who Matter.” He has also received “The Racial Harmony Award” from the Center for Ethnic Understanding, and was included in the “Top 50 Minorities in Cable” by Multichannel News and the “Top 10 Players in the U.S. Hispanic Media Market” by Ad Age.

Additionally, the NAMIC awarded him the “Quasar Award” for his groundbrealing success with SiTV and was also named one of the “Top 50 Marketers in America” by Advertising Age.