Zadi Diaz is an American producer and director, known for founding the web series ''

Epic Fu ''Epic Fu'' (formerly known as ''JETSET'') was a web series created by producers Steve Woolf and Zadi Diaz. The show premiered on June 1, 2006 with Zadi Diaz as the host and ended in 2011. Airing weekly on the ''Epic Fu'' web site and various ...

'', co-hosting the

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

''New Mediacracy'', and executive producer of YouTube Nation. She has won a number of Webby and

Streamy Awards The YouTube Streamy Awards, also known as the Streamy Awards or Streamys, are presented annually by Dick Clark Productions and Tubefilter to recognize excellence in online video, including directing, acting, producing, and writing. The formal ...

Early life

Zadi Diaz was born in

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

, then grew up in the Washington Heights section of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, as well as the

South Bronx The South Bronx is an area of the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of the Bronx. The area comprises neighborhoods in the southern part of the Bronx, such as Concourse, Bronx, Concourse, Mott Haven, Bronx, Mott Haven, Melrose, B ...

. She is of Dominican descent.

Career

''New Mediacracy''

Zadi Diaz co-founded the podcast ''New Mediacracy'' in 2006. Created with Steve Woolf and

video blogger Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

Steve Garfield Steve Garfield is a videographer and video blogger based in Boston, Massachusetts. Known for shows such as ''New Mediacracy'', in 2009 Garfield was inducted into the International Academy of Web Television. Career One of the Internet's first vi ...

, the podcast features candid discussions about online video and new media, and often features popular

web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single i ...

creators as guests. In 2010,

Chris McCaleb Chris McCaleb (born March 14, 1978) is an American film and television director, producer and editor, best known as the co-creator of the web series ''Prom Queen'' and co-host of the ''Better Call Saul Insider'' and ''New Mediacracy'' podcasts. ...

Big Fantastic Big Fantastic, LLC is a filmmaking collective and production company located in Santa Monica, California which creates, develops and produces online video entertainment. The company is currently most known for their popular web series ''Sam Has 7 ...

joined the podcast as a regular. Notable guests have included

Felicia Day Kathryn Felicia Day (born June 28, 1979) is an American actress, writer, and web series creator. She is the creator and star of the web series '' The Guild'' (2007–2013), a show loosely based on her life as a gamer. She also wrote and starred ...

Joe Penna Jônatas "Joe" de Moura Penna (born May 29, 1987) is a Brazilian musician and filmmaker best known from both his YouTube channel MysteryGuitarMan and his feature films. He resides in Los Angeles, California. YouTube Penna maintains the YouTub ...

Illeana Douglas Illeana Hesselberg (born July 25, 1961 or 1965), known professionally as Illeana Douglas, is an American actress and filmmaker. She appeared in three episodes of '' Six Feet Under'', for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination as O ...

John August John August (born August 4, 1970) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and novelist. He is known for writing the films '' Go'' (1999), ''Charlie's Angels'' (2000), '' Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle'' (2003), '' Big Fish'' (2003), ' ...

and

Paul Scheer Paul Christian Scheer (born January 31, 1976) is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, director, and podcaster. Scheer is a SAG award-winning actor known for his roles in Showtime's comedy series ''Black Monday'' and FX/ FXX's ''The L ...

''Epic Fu''

She co-founded ''

'', which first premiered as JETSET (also referred to as ''Jet Set Show'') on June 1, 2006 and was geared towards a young audience.

Amanda Congdon Amanda Thornton Congdon (born August 4, 1981, in New York City) is an American former video blogger. She began her on-screen career as the first anchor of the online daily news show, ''Rocketboom'', which she hosted and produced until June 23, 2 ...

and

Andrew Baron Andrew Michael Baron (born 1970) is the creator of Rocketboom, Know Your Meme, the video aggregator site, Magma and Humanwire. Baron has taught undergraduate and graduate classes at Parsons and was teaching IDTech at M.I.T. when he came up with ...

were initially tied to the first few episodes of the production, but the partnership dissolved with the ''

Rocketboom Rocketboom was a daily vlog produced by Andrew Baron in the format of a newscast with a comedic slant. Since 2004 Rocketboom has presented oddities, vlog excerpts, social and political commentary. The Rocketboom weblog and Apollo Pony featured s ...

'' split in July 2006. In April 2007, JETSET was the first established web show to sign with web video studio

Next New Networks The YouTube Next Lab and Audience Development Group, founded as Next New Networks, is a company based in New York City. Next New was launched in March 2007 by founders Fred Seibert & Emil Rensing, and co-founders Herb Scannell, Timothy Shey and ...

(NNN). In its tenure with NNN, the show grew from 30,000 to 40,000 views per episode to 3 million views a month. After briefly being signed to West Coast digital studio

Revision3 Revision3 was a San Francisco-based multi-channel television network that created, produced and distributed streaming television shows on niche topics. Founded in 2005, it operated as a subsidiary of Discovery Digital Networks since 2012. The ...

in June 2008, Epic Fu is independently run and distributed through

Blip.tv Blip (formerly blip.tv) was an American media platform for web series content and also offered a dashboard for producers of original web series to distribute and monetize their productions. The company was founded on May 5, 2005, and it was locate ...

''Disney Interactive''

From 2012-2013 Zadi lead creative development and production for the online originals team at Disney Interactive Media Group. There she developed and produced the web series Where's My Water?: Swampy's Underground Adventures,

Talking Friends ''Talking Friends'' is an American computer-animated web mini-series that premiered on June 8, 2012, on YouTube and Disney.com. Based on the popular app series of the same name by Outfit7 Limited, it is the first television installment in th ...

, Blank: A Vinylmation Love Story, Power Up, Explored, and other digital shorts and one-offs.

Speaking

She has spoken at events such as the New Media Expo in 2008.

Awards

Podcasts

*''

EPIC FU ''Epic Fu'' (formerly known as ''JETSET'') was a web series created by producers Steve Woolf and Zadi Diaz. The show premiered on June 1, 2006 with Zadi Diaz as the host and ended in 2011. Airing weekly on the ''Epic Fu'' web site and various ...

'' (2006) *''New Mediacracy''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Diaz, Zadi American Internet celebrities Video bloggers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American podcasters American women podcasters 21st-century American women