Valeria González Leyva

Valeria is a Conference Programmer at SXSW. As such, she is responsible for programming and coordinating the Next Stage at the Trade Show, Partner Programming, Music Mentor Sessions and she's part of the Sessions Management team which helps our speakers and session organizers with their sessions.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Valeria moved to Austin, TX in 2008, and to Valencia, Spain from 2015-2016. Needless to say, her life has been filled with adventures as a citizen of the world.

Valeria has a BA in Mass Communication - Electronic Media from Texas State University (Go Bobcats!) and a MA in Global Entertainment and Music Business with a focus in Live Entertainment from Berklee College of Music.

She has worked in college and commercial radio mainly in the promotions department, as a Graduate Assistant/Video Editor for Berklee Valencia, and has climbed through the ranks at SXSW from a volunteer, then intern, and now as staff making this her 7th SXSW.

Valeria's areas of interest range from event production, festival programming, music business, music tech and startups, to other non-music specific areas such as multimedia production, video editing, photography, website/social media management, and journalism, to name a few.

In her free time, Valeria enjoys learning new languages, traveling, editing videos, people watching and annoying the hell out of her cats.