Samantha Almeida takes over as content creation director of Globo Studios

In October, Samantha Almeida will take over as director of the Content Creation department of Globo Studios. One of the top female leaders in Brazil in innovation and diversity in the communication market, Samantha will head the department responsible for encouraging the creation of entertainment content and will manage the teams of writers, researchers and content producers of Globo. 

In addition to all of her expertise in building plural storytelling, Samantha brings in her portfolio a trajectory marked by campaigns with a strong social resonance, focused on themes such as gender equity and racial debate, which earned her a series of awards and acknowledgements. She was the Brazilian judge in the Festival Cannes Lions in the Lions Entertainment Category and was just nominated to the 2021 Caboré Award in the innovation category. 

She was also one of those honored in the 2020 Women to Watch and was elected by MIPAD, a UN and African Union-partner organization, one of the top 100 most influential African descendants under 40 on the planet, for her input in the Brazilian communication market.

All of that experience will contribute to the stories Globo takes directly to the public every day in its many different platforms. “I always had a great passion for building stories and a lot of respect for the people to whom I deliver them. My entire career, my world view, is about that: starting with an empathetic and honest look at people, their dreams, their fears, the beauty in the lives of regular people, like me. Building bridges, creating dialog between different realities. The opportunity of doing that in a plural country with so many stories such as Brazil is very challenging, especially when that is combined with the power and reach of a company like Globo”, celebrates Samantha Almeida. 

These stories, like everything else in communication, must keep up with the transforming times society is going through, where debate, collective creation and the multiplicity of voices are imperative. “Having lived the last decade working with digital storytelling, integrating creativity with data and performance, I have learned about the importance of listening for building. That applies to listening to the audience, to society, to the teams, partners”, she says, explaining she sees the diversity of experiences, references and thought is the sole possible starting point for innovation. “Diversity is not the answer to every problem in our market, but it is – without a doubt – our best opportunity of getting it right. New answers will necessarily come from new questions, and we need to be able to ask those questions. We know everybody that is missing around the tables where we are sitting and we have never missed that multiple knowledge so much”, she highlights.

Her arrival in Globo marks the beginning of a new cycle in her professional journey. Samantha is a creative planner with a 20-year career in the advertisement and communication market. Until September, she was in a leadership position at Twitter Next in Brazil, an area focused on local and global solutions in a partnership with advertisers for developing strategies and creative campaigns. Her résumé includes, moreover, her work in strategic areas of companies such as Ogilvy Brasil, Music 2/Mynd, Avon Brasil, The Estée Lauder Companies, Trifil & Scala and Levi Strauss Co. 

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Samantha sees her challenge at Globo with optimism and says it feels like “coming back home”, since the relationship with the company began in her childhood. Her father, Rogério, was an employee in Globo Studios for years and took her to see the backstage of productions when she was very young. “At Globo, I fell in love with the universe of creation and communication. Because of my father, as a very young child, I walked through these sets, I could smell the studios, I watched shooting of programs from up close... That definitively impacted my imagination and left in me the wish to be part of this dream-making factory. Dreams of a young black girl, raised in the Rocinha community, daughter of an electrician”, she points out.