Leila Cobo
Writer, novelist & Latin music expert
A Fulbright scholar from Cali, Colombia, Leila Cobo is Executive Editor for Latin Content and Programming for Billboard and is considered one of the world's foremost experts in Latin music and culture.
Under her tenure, Billboard has expanded its coverage of Latin Music and for the first time in its more than 100-year history, the magazine has a complete weekly section dedicated solely to Latin music. Ms. Cobo is also in charge of coordinating the yearly Billboard Latin Music Conference, the largest gathering of the Latin music industry in the U.S. (and probably the world).
A focal point of the conference are Ms. Cobo's exclusive "one on one" interviews with Latin musica's biggest stars, which have included Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony and Enrique Iglesias.
Under Ms. Cobo's leadership, Billboard also launched Spanish language website billboardenespanol.com and the annual Regional Mexican Music Summit.
Ms. Cobo is also host and executive producer of "Estudio Billboard", the acclaimed TV show that airs weekly on the V-Me network and features in-depth interviews with artists like Juanes, Man, Juan Luis Guerra and Los Temerarios among many others.
Ms. Cobo is considered one of the country's leading experts in Latin music and is regularly interviewed and consulted by new outlets around the world. Her distinctive voice was used to provide the Spanish-language narrative of "Latin Music USA", the landmark, four-part PBS documentary to which Jimmy Smits provided the English-language narration. She was named one of the most influential people in Latin music in publications such as Gatopardo, Revista Fuchsia and Ocean Drive Magazine, which named her one of its "Power Brokers" in 2008. In 2007, she was the recipient of the journalistic excellence award from Premios Orquidea, which honors Colombians abroad.
Ms. Cobo holds dual bachelor degrees in journalism (from Bogota's Universidad Javeriana) and in piano performance (from Manhattan School of Music in New York). She concertized extensively before getting her master's degree in Communication management from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. Prior to Billboard, she wrote for the Los Angeles Times and was later the pop music critic at the Miami Herald. She's written liner notes for Ricky Martin, Shakira, Julio Iglesias and Selena among others, and is in the advisory board of the Latin Grammys and works closely with the "Grammy in the Schools" program.
Ms. Cobo is also one of the authors of the Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music and a guest writer on "Quinceanera", an anthology published by Harper Collins in 2007. Her first novel, "Tell Me Something True", was published by Grand Central Publishing Oct. 1 and is now in its third printing. Her second novel, "The Finding", will be published in 2011.
connect with leila
