The Luckiest Guy in the World - A Leadership Talk with ESPN’s José Morales

José Morales, Vice President & Executive Producer, Original Content, ESPN

Earlier this year, FUTURE NOW welcomed Jose Morales, Vice President and Executive Producer of Original Content at ESPN, to the (virtual) stage for a Leadership Talk to discuss his career with FUTURE NOW Founder and CEO, Peggy Kim. 

Morales, who grew up in Connecticut, joked that ESPN “was in my backyard.” Being a big sports fan and living so close to the company, Morales’s eventual employment at ESPN seemed destined, though his interest was more in sports than cameras. “I was not doing movies as a kid, none of that. I was just a sports kid.”  

However, in college, he shifted his focus to communications and journalism, taking television production classes at the University of Connecticut. It was only a matter of time before he figured, “Why not just try to get my foot in the door at ESPN and figure it out from there?” 

After graduating, he leveraged his alumni network to secure his first job as a production assistant, thanks to his impressive performance on the sports trivia questions during the interview. “I applied to that production assistant program, and a lot of it was a kind of… a sports quiz that you had to take to… get your foot in the door, and that was it. And then it ultimately led down this crazy path of storytelling.”

His time there was, initially, short-lived, as he decided to follow his future wife to San Diego for her PhD program. But he eventually returned to ESPN as an associate producer to work on what he calls "glorified infomercials” to pitch ESPN’s sports packages to DirecTV.

At that time, ESPN’s biggest shows were College GameDay and NFL Countdown. “If you had any interest in being a storyteller, you would try to get on those shows,” Morales said. “Those shows would have what I would call these ‘short features’ within them, right? …You would try to do these short two- to three-minute stories around these prominent athletes in either college football or the NFL.”

Morales eventually made his way over to College GameDay, where he found himself leading a feature on Bobby Bowden, the Florida State University football coach at the time. After his grandson passed away in a tragic car accident, the FSU team rallied around Bowden. 

“We told the story beautifully,” Morales shared proudly. “Bobby's daughter, the mom of the boy who died, wrote me a handwritten note in a card and sent it to ESPN [via] snail mail, which nobody does anymore, but [she] sent me a beautiful handwritten card just saying, ‘Thank you for sharing my son's story. I had tears in my eyes watching it, and just thank you for what you do.’”

It was then that Morales realized what he wanted to dedicate his life to. “That was the moment for me.”

Now, with his recent promotion, Morales oversees almost eight hundred pieces of content per year, which not only get distributed on ESPN’s traditional linear channels, but also on YouTube, social media, and ESPN linear streaming. “Part of my job is to think [about] how do we chart a path forward in terms of storytelling.”

With the media landscape changing so rapidly, Morales admits, “So what… that looks like a year from now is actually probably going to be different than it currently exists today. Most people come to ESPN for live sporting events, right? They haven't come in droves to watch original content just yet, and that's what I do. So part of our thinking… and what we need to be focused on here is, how do we get the ESPN viewer to come looking for original content on streaming?”

In addition to developing a content strategy and producing the content, Morales must lead his team, which consists of fifty to sixty people at any given time. 

“It took me a while to feel comfortable,” he admitted. “All of a sudden, I was leading a bunch of producers and directors who [I] actually came into the business with, right? So they were my peers one day, and then all of a sudden, I'm [the boss]. That can be a little uncomfortable… I'm… [now] your manager. I'm not your friend.” 

This is one of the most challenging aspects of leadership, but leading with empathy has been Morales's greatest strength. 

As Morales has risen through the ranks, his role has also changed, which has meant fewer opportunities to be in the field and “going out and doing the work myself.” 

He has had to learn to adjust to satisfying his creative chops differently. “I get to make suggestions on content and say, ‘This works,’ or ‘This doesn’t work.’…Finding that fine line of not saying, ‘This is how I would do it, and you should do it this way,’ because a lot of the role is very creative…and we don’t want to take away the creativity from the producer unless it’s just flatly wrong.”

With such an impressive résumé, how does Morales view success? Of course, “it’s nice to have a lot of people watch the content.” But above all, he wants to be a great storyteller. 

Morales worked on  a story about an indigenous women’s softball team in Mexico, who faced racism, sexism, and countless other obstacles, but insisted on playing in traditional dress, and “before you know it, they were traveling around Mexico to play in these stadiums that women… weren’t allowed to play in.” While it might not be a ratings hit today, “that's a really important story to tell, right? So, to me, that's successful, whether it wins an award or not…. It's about the human experience. It's about great characters. So that's success to me.”

Morales closed with advice for future leaders, encouraging them to stay true to who they are, keep moving forward, and keep building their network. “I think that's so critical. And this is part of what this [FUTURE NOW] is, right? Finding connections in the industry.” 

Making connections is easier than ever—and sending that message, showing up for that networking event, volunteering…could open doors you never imagined…like they did for Morales.