For more than a decade, Claudia Forestieri was a reporter and producer for Telemundo, telling stories about Latinx communities around the country, from the Bay Area, to Chicago, to Miami, to Los Angeles, where she now lives. The work was important and meaningful to her. But she began to wonder how she could become a different kind of storyteller: telling more complete stories over a longer timescale.

With news, you usually only get the tragic end, or the beginning, or the middle. You dont even know because youre just having one piece of the story, she said. At first, I was a general assignment reporter, and then I started doing more special projects, like more in-depth series and special reports. And those were wonderful, but it still wasnt as satisfying as, like, seeing a well-told, well-written film or a series.

A huge fan of TV, she started to consider becoming a TV writer. She thought about her favorite shows and the ways pop culture can resonate with viewers on a personal, visceral level and provide comfort in hard times. And just like her work in journalism tried to make sure Latinx communities were more represented on the news, she wanted to make sure they were also more represented in TV and film.

While still working at Telemundo, she started to take TV writing classes on the side and work on sample scripts. In 2013, she applied and was accepted to NBCs Writers on the Verge, one of many diversity programs that help aspiring TV writers from underrepresented groups launch their careers in the industry.

In TV writing, these programs, which are facilitated by major TV networks and studios, generally involve a series of workshops and seminars over a few months or a year. They aim to prepare writers to apply for the position of staff writer on a show, the entry-level position for most TV writers. For instance, writers learn how to work in a writers room: the group of writers who brainstorm story and script ideas, before the showrunner assigns them scripts for individual episodes. The programs also teach writers how to pitch ideas and start to make connections in the industry, like meeting producers, executives and agents.

It took Forestieri nine years from when she first began to pivot her career from journalism to TV writing and two more network diversity writing programs, one at HBO and one at ABC to land her first job as a staff writer on Freeforms Good Trouble in 2018, through the ABC program. Shes now a writer on Netflixs Selena The Series, and is developing her own show, The Gordita Chronicles , at HBO Max.

Its so hard to get that first staffing job. Its incredibly hard, and so many things have to align. You could meet someone today, a showrunner, and they could love you and love your writing. But its not until seven years from now, where they have a show where your experience fits, and they have a position thats open thats at your level, Forestieri said. By the time I got into the ABC/Disney program in 2018, I had been taking so many writing classes. Id been to so many, like, Writers Guild seminars. I already knew what the deal was. I already knew, like, OK, that first job, yes, its really, really hard to get. But I had been told that the second job is even harder to get.