Amid financial turmoil, LAist appoints former Univision exec as new CEO

Alejandra “Alex” Santamaria, a media sales veteran who most recently served as interim president/general manager and VP, Director of Sales for Univision Los Angeles, has been named president and CEO of LAist.

Santamaria takes over a nonprofit media organization that’s been struggling financially in recent years and has laid off staff two years in a row due to budget shortfalls.

Herb Scannell, LAist’s previous CEO, announced his retirement from the company in September and left the organization in April after five years.

LAist is the public-facing name for Southern California Public Radio, which includes the radio station LAist 89.3 (formerly KPCC), LAist.com and LAist Studios, the organization’s podcast unit.

In an interview, Santamaria said she was drawn to LAist’s mission of serving Southern Californians, which she also focused on during her career at Univision, specifically empowering Latino audiences.

“The representation and diversity that LAist brings to Southern California in their storytelling, in providing the facts in the news, and also the investigative reporting that has cracked open some things that really impact a lot of Southern Californians — it's exactly what excites me in terms of making an impact in a community,” she said.

As VP, Director of Sales for Univision Los Angeles, Santamaria was in charge of revenue for the company, which included two TV stations, four radio stations, and digital and social media properties.

“Stability and funding is going to be the key to be able to move the organization forward and thriving. And that's really what I'm hoping to be able to do with the team,” Santamaria said.

She starts at LAist July 30.

A background in sales

Last week, LAist laid off seven employees as part of a larger initiative to reduce an estimated budget shortfall of $4 to $5 million over the next two years. Combined with earlier voluntary buyouts, the organization has cut 28 people, an approximate 17% reduction of staff.

The organization also laid off 20 employees last year , an estimated 10% of staff at the time. A company statement issued Friday said the budget shortfall was due to “a decline in advertising, the end of our investment reserves, slower-than-anticipated digital monetization, and overall cost increases that have not kept pace with revenue.”

Santamaria says she plans to come into LAist with an open mind to see what opportunities exist to grow revenue.

Before Univision Los Angeles, Santamaria was also president and general manager of Univision Arizona, where she oversaw station operations, sales, and digital marketing for the group’s television, radio and digital entities.

“Based on my experience with revenue generation, the idea is really to try to turn over every rock and inform additional audiences as much as possible about the great work,” she said. “I really think that it’s important to be in front of those audiences and remind them of that.”

She says, for example, it’ll be important to think about what every given platform might offer.

“The media landscape is evolving. I think over the last 10 years, over the last five years, technology has really put a challenge to linear traditional media in that audiences are getting a little bit more spread out,” she said.

A born and raised Angeleno

The first in her family to be born in the U.S., Santamaria was raised in East Los Angeles. Her parents immigrated from Sonora, Mexico to Los Angeles, where her father found a job working in a factory.

From seventh to 12th grade, she was bused to the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, a magnet school in Mid-City. After graduating college from Loyola Marymount, she got her start in her media career as an intern at Univision Los Angeles in 1992. From there, she was hired as a research analyst, and moved up the ranks.

“My parents grew up watching Univision and that's how they figured out what were the things that they needed to do to grow and to thrive in Southern California,” she said. “So I have a lot of pride in being able to work for a company that wasn't just a traditional media company. It meant so much more.”

She currently resides in Manhattan Beach. She said she’s looking forward to joining the world of public media.

“I think that’s the beauty of LAist and public media — that even though there are challenges in funding… the audience is so passionate and really believes in the mission,” she said. “It’s trying to find that stability in funding to continue to do the good work that [they] do.”

Disclosure : This story was reported and written by Senior Reporter Elly Yu and edited by Senior Editors Ross Brenneman and Suzanne Levy. Under LAist's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

Yu, like all LAist reporters, is a member of SAG-AFTRA. She did not discuss the way this story was reported with any SAG-AFTRA members prior to publication.