Telling Their Stories: Christy Haubegger Shines Light on Diversity in Hollywood

When an idea’s time has come, it can feel like a sudden tipping point. Today, diversity is an often-used buzzword in Hollywood, particularly after the success of films like Black Panther and Get Out. But for Christy Haubegger, JD ’92, diversity has been her life’s work. • “I realized a while ago that the impact I wanted to have was to really change who gets to tell stories and whose stories get told,” she says. This is the thread that ties Haubegger’s career together. “I’ve had a couple of different jobs, but I’ve only had one career.”

First, as the founder and publisher of Latina magazine, then as a producer of films including Spanglish, and now as a talent agent at legendary Creative Artists Agency, Haubegger has focused on the untold stories of women and people of color—putting them on magazine stands, in the writers’ room, and on the big screen. Now, as power brokers realize that diversity is actually good for the bottom line, opportunities for everyone are finally opening up. While some look at the financial potential, she is thinking about the stories.

“Assuming that talent is equally distributed, we’re going to uncover some great storytellers—people who haven’t had the chance to tell their stories. It’s an exciting time and, for me, an inspiring moment.”

Haubegger’s office at the CAA headquarters in Los Angeles is decorated with vintage posters of Latina stars, their scarcity in Hollywood mirroring her own. She is one of the few women of color in powerful positions in an industry still dominated by white males. But that’s changing.

“It’s funny. If you’d told me 22 years ago when I started at Latina that I’d be having the same conversation for the next two decades, I’d have said ‘No, no, no. People are going to totally get it by then!’ ” she says, laughing.

Haubegger didn’t know many Latina movie stars when growing up in suburban Houston. Of Mexican heritage, she was adopted as an infant by “tall blonds,” as she describes them, and brought up in a tight-knit family—encouraged to be proud of her heritage and to learn Spanish. “My parents told me I could be anything that I wanted but I never saw that reality on television or in magazines,” she says. She was an avid reader and loved theater but as an undergraduate at the University of Texas, she was drawn to politics. She became active, working for the Texas Legislature and volunteering for Ann Richards’ gubernatorial campaign.

“I had a strong sense of social justice and wanted to have an impact on the world. I just never thought those two interests, the creative and political, could intersect,” she says.

She went to Stanford Law School with the goal of pursuing public interest law. It was during a lunch for Joe Grundfest’s Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility class that Haubegger started to see a different possibility.

“He asked me what I was going to do with my law degree. And I said, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a public defender and I’m going to fight for the Latino community.’ You know, I was a 1L and I was going to change the world,” says Haubegger. But Grundfest, JD ’78, gave her some advice that stuck.

Telling Their Stories: Christy Haubegger Shines Light on Diversity in Hollywood
Christy Haubegger, JD ’92, at her CAA office in Los Angeles (photo by: Gregg Segal)

“He told me, ‘If you want to make social change, you can do it helping one person at a time. But if you want to make real change, get yourself into a boardroom and be part of the decisions that impact thousands of lives,’ ” she recalls. “I was like ‘Wow!’ That was a mind-blowing concept.”

Grundfest encouraged her to explore business classes, so Haubegger dove in—adding accounting, entrepreneurship, and more to her schedule. It was during an independent study project at Stanford’s GSB when the idea for a magazine directed at Latina women first came to her.

“I was a huge magazine reader growing up, and you’d never see Latina faces on a newsstand. It was a striking thing. So, I was a consumer, I was the target audience, I was that person who wanted to see that reality reflected back,” she says. “I felt very acutely aware of what I was missing.”

Telling Their Stories: Christy Haubegger Shines Light on Diversity in Hollywood 1
Stanford Law classmates celebrating at commencement including (left – right) Bart Decrem, Miles Ehrlich, Roy Swan, class president Christy Haubegger, Dawn Chirwa, and Maya Harris

Haubegger knew the audience—it was her. At the same time, data from the 1990 census was released, putting the population of Latinos in the United States at 22 million and growing, and national media declared it the decade of the Hispanic. Haubegger put it all together and the idea for Latina magazine was born.

“As we got closer to graduation, Connie Bagley, who taught at the business school and was a mentor for me, said, ‘You know, you really ought to try to start this magazine. This is a really good idea. If no one has done this, you should think about it.’ So, I was like ‘Okay, maybe I’ll try that,’ ” she says.

“We were all quite shocked when Christy announced that she wasn’t planning on practicing law at all and was going to launch a magazine,” says Michelle Alexander, JD ’92, author of The New Jim Crow, who has remained close to Haubegger since law school.

Alexander remembers meeting Haubegger before law school even started when they were waiting in line for their financial aid checks. “To really understand the kind of bravery that Christy had, you have to know that she, like so many of us, incurred enormous law school debt. And she was going to try to start a magazine in her tiny apartment when she had no actual experience in journalism or in publishing. And no startup money,” she says.

After a few years of very lean living, hard work, and some creative networking, Haubegger was introduced to Edward Lewis, the founder of Essence magazine, and she pitched the idea to him. Lewis liked it so much that he partnered with Haubegger to launch Latina.

“We put together the deal in 1995 and launched Latina in 1996, with a young woman on the cover who we thought might be big, Jennifer Lopez,” Haubegger says.

But there were significant challenges to overcome in building the magazine—particularly with advertisers.

“I remember going to a hair care company in the Midwest, and I was told that I was the first Latina person they’d ever met. And I was asked by a newsstand distributor if I thought there would be a higher level of ‘shrink’—meaning people stealing the magazine from newsstands. Did I think that was likely? And should they adjust their order? I had conversations you would not believe.”

Haubegger and the small but growing team at Latina overcame those early challenges and the magazine was a big success—and it is still going strong. But the prejudices she encountered stayed with her.

“Those were the hardest things I think because it’s the place where stereotypes become an impediment to your business and that is crazy,” she says.

“When I think about what I wanted to do, it wasn’t really just to be in the magazine business, it was to tell our stories and show our faces and celebrate who we are and what we’re capable of,” Haubegger says. So her next move, into producing films, was a natural step with the skills developed launching and publishing Latina transferable to Hollywood.

“Publishing and filmmaking are actually quite similar. You’re supporting the storytellers—making it possible for them to do their jobs,” she says. “And, to learn from Oscar-winner Jim Brooks on Spanglish was great, you know, you’re at the highest level of expertise and storytelling.”

After Spanglish, the talent agency CAA offered to create a role for her, so she decided to try it. “I had no idea I would be here 13 years later,” she says.

As a successful agent, Haubegger has leveraged the relationships she had built at Latina and in film, bringing stars like Eva Longoria, Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, America Ferrera, and Shakira to CAA. And she uses her law degree often with frequent negotiations and problem solving. But with the title of Diversity Expert, she also has a mission to focus on diversity and broaden the reach.

Soon after joining CAA, she conducted the first census of the agency’s clients to see how many were people of color—surfacing that information and shining a light on the challenge. And over the course of her 13-year tenure at CAA, they have increased the number of clients of color from about 23 to more than 400. They also focused on production talent, helping to bring a more diverse group of people into the jobs that lead to scriptwriter.

“The writers determine who the characters are and whose stories are told,” she says. “One of the things that’s been really exciting about it is that, in my tenure, we have transformed the pipeline. So we’ve been investing a lot in that mid-career development of our clients.”

And as she did at Latina, Haubegger started to challenge the biases of conventional wisdom. Two years ago, she and her colleagues built a database, bringing together data about films released since 2014, including the composition of audiences, budget, and genre. So far, they have gathered information on about 560 films and have tagged some 5,600 actors by ethnicity.

“What we’re able to show is that a film with a 30 percent or more diverse cast will outperform one with a largely white cast—at every budget level, in every territory, domestic or worldwide,” says Haubegger. And they’re taking this information out on the road—sharing it with studio executives and casting directors.

“It just doesn’t make sense to leave money on the table when you know that the population is shifting or that a specific audience is the one that loyally goes to the movies or loyally watches a certain number of television shows every night,” says Niija Kuykendall, senior vice president, production at Warner Bros. “I’m a creative executive in this business and what I do and what my colleagues do, no matter what ethnicity or gender, is to advocate for projects that we believe in. Christy’s work allows me and my leadership to point to it. It provides proof and a business case.”

“This is what is so beautiful about Christy’s work. She is fully committed to providing platforms and pathways for women of color and marginalized people to be able to tell their stories and pursue their dreams.”

– MICHELLE ALEXANDER, JD ’92, AUTHOR OF THE NEW JIM CROW

And that hard work is paying off.

“She has really been shifting the way people think about diversity, first by putting it in the forefront— and framing it as an opportunity, not an obligation but a business opportunity,” says Kuykendall.

So, Haubegger is helping to upend conventional wisdom in Hollywood.

“We represent the writer of Black Panther, Joe Robert Cole. And now he’s the hottest writer in town. That’s exciting to me. It also matters when movies like Coco are received well in China. Coco was a huge hit there—one of the biggest American movies ever in China,” Haubegger says.

While diversity at the movies is finally gaining acceptance, Haubegger is also focusing on diversity of her colleagues in the industry. Last summer, she organized and hosted CAA Amplify, a convening of 150 multicultural leaders in the industry that brought together clients, buyers, and leaders in sports, music, branding, digital, and television.

“I thought we should all know each other, to be a more connected community,” says Haubegger. The lineup of speakers included Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rhimes, Stevie Wonder, and Ana Navarro and David Drummond [JD ’89, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Alphabet Inc.]. Even ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, JD ’90, was there—interviewed by Kerry Washington.

“Amplify is the most amazing event that I’ve been to in my career,” say Kuykendall, who considers Haubegger a friend. “I have loved seeing her become a leader on this, activating us—saying now’s the time, politically the landscape is changing, asking how do we support each other, how do we leverage our power, how do we shift the culture of this town?”

“This is what is so beautiful about Christy’s work. She is fully committed to providing platforms and pathways for women of color and marginalized people to be able to tell their stories and pursue their dreams,” says Alexander.

And while there is still work to be done, barriers are falling as perceptions change, slowly but surely.

“We believe that the thing audiences really crave is innovation. And stories with diverse characters seem innovative compared with the alternative. So I think that there’s never been a better time to be who we are than right now,” says Haubegger. “If you consider, for example, the fact that, of the thousand biggest movies produced over the last decade, only 4 percent were directed by women? Oh, my gosh! Think of all the stories there are to tell!”