Ilana Sod


Ilana Sod is a Mexican television and radio journalist, presenter, and producer. She has worked for a variety of media outlets and collaborated particularly on initiatives relating to social issues and youth-oriented programming.

Career

She has an extensive career working with youth-oriented programming and Social Issues. From 2004 to 2012, Ilana Sod was MTV Latin America's newscaster and Editor-in-Chief for Public Affairs Programming. She also previously was a columnist for the Mexican newspaper Excélsior and a contributor to Radio Trece in the Mexico City area.
Sod, who was born in Mexico City and now splits her time between residences in Los Angeles, and her native Mexico, is still a recurring contributor for MTV and multiple media outlets throughout the Spanish-speaking world. The 2014 TV news Special "" which Sod co-produced with , for NBCUniversal's mun2 Channel has been nominated or short-listed for several prestigious awards, including for a Daytime Emmy in the Outstanding Special Class Special. "Hecho en America" won the Gold Award at the 2014 WorldMediaFestival – global competition for modern media. "Hecho en America" was executive produced by .

Agents of Change

She is the host and producer of "Agents of Change" - a project initially sponsored by the Government of Finland, through the Inter-American Development Bank, for MTV that reports on ideas and people that affect positive change throughout Latin America and the World.
Agents of Change seeks to empower and inspire its audience to take action, make a difference and launch new youth-led initiatives. Dedicated microsites and social media pages on Facebook and Twitter assist with these goals; to date, there have been 20 long-format shows and over 90 short-form capsules to promote the program.
Agents of Change also works as an incubator of change. Through a partnership with Ashoka, the global association of leading social entrepreneurs, the initiative has raised over $2.5 million to launch over 500 Agents of Change teams in the U.S. and 22 countries in Latin America.
Since its inception, in 2005, Sod and the team behind , have managed to grow the project's scope and reach by soliciting and obtaining the support of many other sponsors and supporters to the Project such as: The World Bank,, and UNICEF
"Agents of Change" is an ongoing production that has taken Sod to places throughout the world Sod has reported from, Italy, Kenya, and many other places.
"Agents of Change" Documentary Series - Selected Highlights
The First Season of "Agents of Change" received Awarded by The Intermedia World Media Fest for her work on the series "Xpress" produced by MTV Brazil about the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, México. Best Educational Documentary.

Television

Sod has had a long and distinguished career in television broadcasting. In addition to her hosting duties for MTV, she also worked as network TV news anchor for Canal 40 and Canal 22; she also reported for Sky News Australia, where she covered local Social and health topics such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Australian capital.
In August 2003, she co-produced for MTV the PSA campaign Grita, whose goal was to empower young people and children to be more communicative about their sexuality. This series of spots were widely recognized for their effectiveness at helping bring positive change and awareness of these issues to the forefront in Latin America, earning Sod and the series wide recognition in Latin America for their efforts as well as multiple awards including the PromaxBDA Golden Award as best pro-social campaign of a TV station in Latin America.
More than a year later, as a follow-up to Grita, a new update on the series, produced for CNN and MTV, had her reporting on the views, thoughts, and feelings of Latin American youth regarding machismo and how this cultural attitude increases the risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS for women in the region. The 30-minute special premiered on CNN International on November 27, 2004 and was re-broadcast a few days later by MTV around the globe during World AIDS Day, on December 1 of that year. Sod's reports for the global broadcast by MTV focused covering on the epidemic with emphasis on how it affected Argentina, Colombia and Mexico.
In May and June 2006, Sod earned additional recognition for her efforts to give a voice to the Mexican youth during the key presidential election of that year. In a Mexican television first, she accepted questions from Mexican youth and then interviewed all five presidential candidates a month before the election. The Somos 30 Millones series, named after the number of Mexicans under the age of 35, included interviews with Felipe Calderón, Roberto Rafael Campa Cifrián, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Roberto Madrazo Pintado, and Dora Patricia Mercado Castro.
Later, in August of that year, she was MTV International's correspondent and UNICEF's moderator during the XVI International AIDS Conference, 2006 in Toronto. As part of MTV's AIDS-awareness initiative, Staying Alive, Sod's contributions appeared at the "48 Fest" special vlog and a session titled From Rhetoric to Action: Defining a Stronger Role for Youth in National HIV/AIDS Policies.

Radio

Between 1996 and 2003, Sod worked for Radioactivo 98.5 in Mexico City, where she hosted a daily show titled "Retroactivo". At Radioactivo, she hosted a show Additionally, between 1999 and 2001, she coordinated the Radio Sex Project, 48 hours of investigative reports about sex. She also hosted and reported for various Radioactivo programs. After Radioactivo's closure, she covered the Iraq War in 2008 as a correspondent based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for Grupo Imagen. She later departed Imagen to contribute to Javier Solórzano's news program on Radio Trece with a segment entitled Amplio Espectro.
In 2018, Ilana Sod joined the launch team of Aire Libre, a new radio station run by the former director of Radioactivo.