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Storytelling is our superpower. Learning is our passion.

We’re storyteachers.

Today’s kids are exploring a world far more complex than the one we grew up in, and they’re facing challenges we never imagined.
What skills do they need to navigate this fundamentally changed world?

The ability to think creatively and critically, to adapt and solve problems, to understand and feel at home in communities far beyond their own, and to express their thoughts and feelings with clarity.

These are the new fundamentals, and they’re teachable skills. That’s where Encantos comes in.

We know kids learn best through stories. So we partner with a diverse group of storytellers to create culturally rich, curriculum-infused storyteaching experiences.

Storyteaching engages and inspires kids to think on their feet, to connect with others from backgrounds different than their own, and to be curious and creative.

With the Encantos storyteaching platform, kids learn the skills they need to flourish—and they learn to love learning along the way.

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The Encantos app brings the storyverse to life and uses technology to help customize the experience so that our worlds grow as your children do.

But just as learning shouldn’t stop in the classroom, storyteaching doesn’t stop with our app.

By fusing physical and digital experiences, we expand our storyworlds to meet kids where they are, with the kinds of tools they love. Animated series, books, songs, apps, games, puzzles, and other products encourage kids to continue learning through play, curiosity, and engagement.

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As a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), each of our brands is tied to a family-focused social benefit cause to give back to a community. People want to work for, buy from, and invest in brands they believe in. We believe being a PBC is the most powerful way to build credibility, trust, and value with and for kids and families.

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Steven Wolfe Pereira

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder

Susie Jaramillo

President, Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder

Julie Fleischer

Chief Growth Officer

Anna María Chávez

Chief Impact Officer

Keith Elliott

Chief Technology Officer

Scott Traylor

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Taylor Margis-Noguera

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Sol Trujillo

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Charles Hudson

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Nuria Santamaría Wolfe

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Carlos Hoyos

Chief Data Officer & Co-Founder

Steven Wolfe Pereira

Chief Executive Officer
& Co-Founder

Julie Fleischer

Chief Growth Officer

Anna María Chávez

Chief Impact Officer

Keith Elliott

Chief Technology Officer

Scott Traylor

Chief Product Officer

Taylor Margis-Noguera

Chief Operating Officer

Sol Trujillo

Chairman and Board Director

Charles Hudson

Board Director

Nuria Santamaría Wolfe

Chief Strategy Officer
& Co-Founder

Carlos Hoyos

Chief Data Officer
& Co-Founder

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Facebook

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HBO

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Lightshed

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Best Buy, e.l.f, LabCorp

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BlackBoard

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President & COO

Parkwood Entertainment

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7min

Artist Susie Jaramillo Built an Empire Around Storytelling and Latinx Culture

Author

Popsugar

Published

October 20, 2022

Susie Jaramillo

Susie Jaramillo refused to be put into a box. When the Latina artist and entrepreneur was in art school, professors told her that she had to choose one thing and pursue it. They wanted her to pick a particular style to avoid commercialism — to become an artist's artist. But Jaramillo always knew she could make a bigger impact if she followed her heart and made art for everyone. Decades later, she's the founder, president, and chief story officer of Encantos. The story-teaching platform uses Jaramillo's art to create books, games, digital content, and other resources to help kids — particularly Spanish-and-English-speaking bilingual kids — think critically and creatively.

"I always had a sense that I was a diamond in the rough. I always had a sense that I had a purpose and that I just had to figure out what I was supposed to do. I knew it wasn't going to be the same path that everybody else was taking."

In art school, Jaramillo noticed a streak of anticommercialism. It motivated her to find herself as an artist and figure out what she was meant to do. "I didn't have clear career goals," she tells POPSUGAR. "I always had a sense that I was a diamond in the rough. I always had a sense that I had a purpose and that I just had to figure out what I was supposed to do. I knew it wasn't going to be the same path that everybody else was taking." Jaramillo, who is of Ecuadorian and Irish descent on her mother's side and Venezuelan on her father's side, has always liked to explore cultures and create different worlds. So when her professors at New York City's Pratt Institute of Fine Arts told her she needed to establish herself as an artist with one style, it didn't sit well with her.

"I used to tell my professor, 'Why can't you just have style in everything you do instead of having a style?'" she says. When she graduated, she worked as a freelance artist for various animation studios but eventually realized she wanted to become a creative director. By chance, she discovered the burgeoning US-Latino market, which at the time was something that was just beginning to draw interest. Jaramillo ended up meeting and connecting with a group of Latinx professionals that her sister worked with, and she joined a few of them in starting their own advertising agency. They wanted to take the market into their own hands and showcase Latino culture more authentically. With that, Jaramillo, the creative director, was born. She was 26 at the time and starting a career in a field she knew nothing about. But she forged ahead anyway.

At the time, many company execs Jaramillo encountered couldn't understand why Latinxs feel so strongly about culture and community. "Somebody needs to showcase it for them, and I'll be happy to do that," she says. "You spend a whole bunch of your life just figuring out 'Where's the need?' 'How can you serve? 'What are you supposed to do with your life?' 'What's your purpose?' 'How can you lean into what you do best in order to serve and make a living?'" Jaramillo explains. And it turns out her answer came several years later while she was on maternity leave. Bored at home, she and her husband created Canticos, a bilingual nursery-rhymes app that the larger platform, Encantos, was eventually born out of.

In 2012, Jaramillo sold the ad agency largely because she wasn't satisfied with the goals of her clients, many of whom were unwilling to take risks to represent Latinos authentically. She took a two-year sabbatical to figure out what was next. By then, she was a mom to two young children and immersed in the world of babies and toddlers, which translated into her art. She spent her free time drawing and writing and turned much of that into what would become her first children's books. Eventually, she took everything she had learned as an ad executive and then as a parent and created Encantos with the goal of helping Latino parents connect with their kids while teaching them about our culture.

"I've always felt strongly about owning your own intellectual property and creators owning your own story," she says. "It never made sense to me that creators — and Latino creators — could not be the stewards of their own visions." Jaramillo notes that in reality, she's always been an entrepreneur, even if her path took her in different directions along the way.

It started with nursery rhymes and bilingual books. Now, Jaramillo is a veritable powerhouse with an Emmy nomination under her belt. She has created everything from the "Canticos" series, an app, a slew of educational products for kids, and more than 20 children's books in publication, including a brand-new series called Skeletitos, which is based on her experience connecting with her inner spirituality to take control of her own dreams as a child.

Encantos currently entered into a strategic relationship with Ben Odell and Eugenio Derbez of 3Pas Studios. As a result, Jaramillo has been appointed CEO by Encantos's board, where she will continue the work she started in an even more meaningful leadership role. This will make her the first Latina CEO of a children's entertainment company that creates culturally inspired content for today's diverse kids.

"With this new partnership with 3Pas, we have celeb power and an A-list studio behind everything we do. And I have my cofounder and global chairman there to make all of this bigger," she says. "I'm incredibly humbled by the trust the board has shown me. I'm also committed to serving today's diverse kids with my superpowers."

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Careers

Big on stories. Huge on purpose.

Careers

Big on stories.
Huge on purpose.

Our People

We’re a familia of award-winning storytellers, educators, illustrators, thought leaders, musicians, people persons, professional game-changers and amateur salsa dancers helping to change the way kids learn.

Core Values

We believe the way forward to a more equal, just, and healthy world is to raise little ones who learn to appreciate themselves and each other for who they are. More humanity, more learning,
more love.

Quick Facts

Our Kidscreen Award-winning videos are Emmy-nominated, and our app was nominated for Kidscreen’s “Best Learning App”. We’ve become the premier publisher of kids and family books focused on diversity, equality and inclusion. Based in Culver City, CA with its main creative studio in NYC, Encantos is a public-benefit company. Each one of our brands gives profits back to support meaningful causes. Living our purpose is part of our job description. We’re fans of compassion, merengue, and hugs.

Our People

We’re a familia of award-winning storytellers, educators, illustrators, thought leaders, musicians, people persons, professional game-changers and amateur salsa dancers helping to change the way kids learn.

Core Values

We believe the way forward to a more equal, just, and healthy world is to raise little ones who learn to appreciate themselves and each other for who they are. More humanity, more learning, more love.

Quick Facts

Our Kidscreen Award-winning videos are Emmy-nominated, and our app was nominated for Kidscreen’s “Best Learning App”.
We’ve become the premier publisher of kids and family
books focused on diversity, equality and inclusion.
Based in Culver City, CA with its main creative studio in NYC, Encantos is a public-benefit company. Each one of our brands gives profits back to support meaningful causes. Living our purpose is part of our job description.
We’re fans of compassion, merengue, and hugs.

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