How a filmmaker and podcaster found her voice through leadership, heritage, and the courage to pivot.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Alicia Ontiveros, Owner of Veros Inc. and host of the Unsolicited podcast. Alicia shares how her experience with Take the Lead’s leadership program helped her leave her corporate career to pursue filmmaking—and how courage, community, and creative action continue to drive her mission.
About Alicia Ontiveros
Alicia is an award-winning filmmaker with over 15 years of experience crafting original scripted and documentary content.
She is host of the podcast Unsolicited with Alicia Ontiveros where she gives the inside scoop on her adventures in film and tv, including her journey from script to screen with her first narrative feature film: MOTHER OF THE RIDE.
Her creative vision is shaped by exploring the intersection of truth, heritage, and ritual; each a lens for inspecting and informing story elements like character, conflict, and theme.
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Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is a very special episode we’re bringing on Alicia Ontiveros, and she’s the owner over at Eros Inc.
And she’s also a podcast host for the podcast. Unsolicited Love bringing other podcast hosts on the show to talk about what they do and how they’re doing it. So first thing first Alicia, welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for having me. It’s fun to be here. Oh, I’m, I’m happy to have you. And for everybody listening, just so you know that this particular episode is part of the take the lead edition that we’re doing with Gloria Felt and promoting and talking about the upcoming PowerUp conference as well.
So lots of fun there. And maybe, Alicia, this would be a great place to start is maybe talk a little bit more about your history with Take the Lead and, and the Power Up Conference. Yeah, sure. The PowerUp Conferences is a really fun conference. I look forward to it every year. I got involved with Take the Lead at a time in my career.
It was 2018. It was a time when I really needed some fuel, you know, like some juice. And conferences can be such a great pool of energy to tap into when you’re feeling like. Anxious about something or like you’re needing help figuring out maybe a pivot point in your life, whether it’s personal or professional.
And for me it was a professional point where I was just really feeling this pull to change the direction of my career, which was really scary thing. You know, I was in my mid thirties, I was feeling some. I was feeling like I was just on the wrong path, even though I really still enjoyed my job. I just needed to take a reality check and think to myself, where do I wanna be in 10 years?
, Is the path I’m on right now, the path I really wanna be on 10 years from now? And the answer was no. Mm-hmm. So I, but it was scary, you know? It’s like, what do you do about that? And so it was kind of like , a reckoning that I was having internally. And a friend of mine had recommended that I check out, take the Lead.
They have some foundational leadership development programs. One of them is called 50 Women Can Change the World. And so Gloria, and the founder of Take the Lead had put together a leadership development training program for media and entertainment professionals. And so I convinced my boss at the time that she should send me to the leadership training.
Amazing. She didn’t really, yeah, she didn’t really know that, you know, I was necessarily having these feelings yet about. Changed my career. But in any event, I knew that it would help me be a leader at work. It would help me try to figure things out. And so I went and it was amazing. I tapped into a community that ultimately helped me figure out what I wanted to do.
I’m still in touch with those people today and the power of conference was coming up. Like I go every time I can. And it’s amazing. So that was my first introduction to take the lead. , Why do you feel that? Like leadership training like take the lead provides and this then this concept of cohort building and conferences in general.
Like, why do you feel that’s so important? Well, oh my gosh. It’s, I could talk forever about this. I feel like. If you’re trying to do something, you can never go at it alone, right? Mm. Mm-hmm. Like this. When we come down to what it means to be human and what it means to like, have a fulfilling life and what fulfills humans community is so important, it’s so such a huge part of the equation.
And, you know, let’s just take a step back and just think about like, what does it mean? To be a leader. Mm-hmm. And you know, you have to lead your life. And you have to have a vision for that. And I, I think to me. Takeaway has helped shape my philosophy on how I approach life, how I approach my career, and to me, mm-hmm.
It’s helped, helped me define what leadership is. And to me, leadership is a creative act. Mm-hmm. It doesn’t matter who you are or what sector of the industry you’re working in, or if you don’t work at all in, you’re stay at home mom. It doesn’t matter what you do with your life, if you’re leading in any aspect to lead, you have to create and you have to act.
Mm-hmm. You can have clarity of vision and still not be a leader. If you’re not acting on the vision, you can have conviction and still not be a leader. If you are not acting on your conviction. You can have community, even the community that you just mentioned around to support you, but you’re not a leader if you don’t tap into the community to create something.
And so really understanding what it would take from myself to lead my life and the, and the direction that I wanted it to go. Was so important. And my, my podcast, my podcast that you mentioned, unsolicited. Mm-hmm. The reason I called it unsolicited was because at some point in your life, I feel like when you’re like nearing midlife or you’re having your like third tertiary, you know, quarter like, yeah, quarter life, but a little bit beyond that, like, it’s like not quite a midlife crisis or, or poor life crisis, like nowhere between me, which is what I was having, I just realized that no one’s going to.
Pave the way for you. Mm-hmm. No one’s going to solicit you into your, and to your best, most powerful, most actualized self, you have to create it for yourself. And so unsolicited is kind of also a nod to the film and television world where when you’re a writer and you’re still trying to establish yourself, you’re an unsolicited talent.
Mm-hmm. You know, people aren’t coming after you. You have to get them to pay attention to you. And you have to figure out how to get people to think and believe, and know that you have the talent to be able to pull off. Writing a feature film script or a TV script or whatever it is, you have to create momentum for yourself.
You have to act, you have to be unsolicited. Nothing’s coming to you. You have to go to it. You have to create the momentum, and so that was such an important part. Like Take the Lead has really helped me understand. I’ve crafted an entire vision for myself in terms of the projects I pursue. I’ve clarified for myself that really, I started looking like into the things that.
Inspired me and I realized there was a through line to what those were. And so I’ve articulated that now. You know, truth, heritage and ritual are cornerstones to not only what the creative projects that I pursue, but like how I look at the world and how I want to translate that into a creative product in terms of, you know, a short film or a feature film or whatever it is that I’m pursuing.
And so. Being able to have to tap into an organization like Take the Lead to help you figure out how to harness that energy that will embolden you to act and become a leader is just really was priceless. And the community that it created, I’m still in touch with those ladies since 2018. Support each other all the time.
And so what you’re creating for yourself is not only getting kickstarted with momentum, and I’m sure a lot of people can go to a conference and get really energized and then go home and do nothing. You know? So it’s about the community at the 50 Women Can Program really was like a long tail of relationships that would help carry me through so many things.
Through the pandemic, through the strike here in la. Like I ended up moving from Chicago to la. The timing was insane. I quit my job to first. Sue a pivot back to film and television and guess what happened? The pandemic. Wow. So now I had no job and I, there was a pandemic and I was trying to sell Wow. The house.
I could move out of Chicago and couldn’t do it. I mean, thank God, like we had our health and things could have been much worse. But it was. The timing was horrendous. And like, how do you bounce back from that? How do you figure it out? How do you stay financially afloat? And then I moved to LA and the minute we moved to LA the strikes happened.
Oh, the industry has been basically dead since then, but it’s not, I haven’t given up on my, my projects. I’m continued to pursue them. And it helps you be able to have resilience through all of that. And so that’s so important. I’m curious, what’s one of your favorite things about being a podcast host? And about your show?
Like , what’s one of the favorite things about creating in that genre? ’cause you do a lot of things. Film, tv, I mean, what, what about the podcast? What’s fun about it? Well, you know what? I used the podcast because for two main reasons. One, I wanted to be able to show. My process as somebody who had never written a narrative feature film before.
Mm-hmm. And trying to get it off the ground, like take people into that process who maybe wanted to do it themselves and kind of try to be Wow. Try to show the good, bad and the ugly of that process. But then also I kind of saw it as a marketing tool in, I guess some sense in terms of if somebody was interested more in me, but they weren’t sure if they wanted to take a meeting with me.
They could tap into my podcast and just get a sense of my personality with things that are important to me, how I see the world. They don’t even have to like, invest that much in their calendar to get to know me. And like, it might be a good way to to be able to create a relationship with somebody, whereas the, the door might be closed otherwise, you know, and then maybe , so I have a few little short episodes where.
I try to clarify like the beginning of my podcast. Yeah. I was talking about those things that I told you about earlier, like, what is my vision? Mm-hmm. What kind of projects am I interested in so that people could kind of learn about that really easily. And it’s kind of actually like my, I have an Instagram account that is a companion to the podcast that’s become actually more of something that I use more often because.
It’s sometimes easier than to sit down and do a whole podcast and like, produce that to just get on Instagram and talk about what I’m thinking about that day and to also mm-hmm. You know, film and television is a visual medium, so I like to show things and be able to do that through Instagram is fun too, so it’s like an extension of the podcast.
Oh, that’s so cool. So what, I mean, what’s next?, What are some of your plans , and projects that you have coming up next? What are you working on? I’m working on short film. And I would say like, to take tie, tie that to take the lead. One of the things I learned during the training was to really part of becoming a leader is knowing your history.
Mm-hmm. And I ended up going back to New Mexico where my extended family. Well, I’m from New Mexico, but , in a southern part of New Mexico, my extended family is from. And I realized I didn’t know a lot about my heritage, that I wanted to really dig into my family heritage. And I learned some things about my family that were amazing and I connected with, my family in a way that I hadn’t before. And that was because, you know, I started thinking about these things. Gloria has a power, a leadership tool called Know Your History. And so I kind of just dove into that and ended up having an experience with my great aunt that fueled mm-hmm. A story that I knew I had to tell.
And so I am working towards. Creating short film based on my experience with her. Unfortunately, she passed away since I connected with her. Mm-hmm. But if I hadn’t dug into my family history at that time and been like, spurred to do it, I may never have actually met her. And I just would never have had this experience.
And that has informed my filmmaking pursuits. So I’m working on that and I’m really excited to be at Power Up this year. I encourage everybody to go. Who is, excited to, like I say, tap into some creative juice and to feel energized and supported. And the theme this year is courage to lead. And I love that because it really does take courage when I think back to how, like, how much of a scary no man’s land I felt like I was in when I didn’t know like exactly what I was gonna do about this feeling I was having.
The courage to be able to make the change is so important. , And so I’m really excited that we’re going to be leaning into how to tap into bravery, how to ’cause like, as I’m sure people have heard before, like being brave just means being scared, but doing it anyway. Mm-hmm. Like bravery is an act of just, you know, being scared but doing it anyway.
So, yeah, courage. The theme of courage is great, and so I’m really excited to be there and learn from everybody, connect with women, and continue to move forward. Yeah, that’s great. It’s a great story. One, I’m happy to bring my audience and love, love supporting the organization. Take the lead in for your listing, just so you’re aware in order to get tickets, get information, and learn more about the conferences.
It is a real simple website. Take the lead women.com and you can get tickets. The dates are August 25th, on August 26th, 2025. So coming up in Washington, DC again, August 25th and 26th and it’s, again, it’s take the lead women. First off, or I should say, Alicia, thank you so much for coming on the show.
This has been fun to learn more about your podcast, your process, your experience with Take the Lead and glorious training. If anybody wants to follow up and continue to follow your work and learn more about what you’re doing and also your art how do they do that? Well they can go to ros productions.com or on Instagram.
My handle is unsolicited dot Hi. Which I just recently changed because it used to be like unsolicited, the podcast, but then all this AI stuff started coming out. And not that I think AI is something that, you know, is not a tool to be used like for sure, but it’s created a. Created a big stir in the creative community, like in film and television.
Of course, as you can imagine, the impact it’s having. And so the AI stands for human intelligence because at its core, filmmaking, film and television is about tapping into humanity and what it is to be human and reflecting that back in an artistic way. And so it’s unsolicited, hi. Fantastic. And we’ll be listening just so you know.
We’ll definitely put we’ll put that information in the show notes so you can just click on it and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Alicia, thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you.
