Jared Ruga

Jared Ruga is an Emmy®-winning and GLAAD-nominated producer, writer, director, and creative executive charged with developing, financing, and producing meaningful content that engages audiences in conversation and action for a prosocial agenda. He performs most of these roles as CEO of Vavani Productions, an ethos-driven media production company he founded in 2017. Vavani's first project, feature-length documentary Quiet Heroes, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, was internationally distributed, and won a Daytime Emmy® Award. In the nonprofit sector, Jared has served in various board, committee, and advisory roles at Sundance Institute, Voterise, Equality Utah, and Restore Our Humanity, and is Co-founder and Board Member of the Lightspark Foundation and Co-founder of the Impact Guild. Jared earned JD, MBA, and MFA degrees from the University of Utah and BBA and dual-BA degrees from the University of San Diego, where he was inducted into multiple honors societies, including Phi Beta Kappa. He has also created and taught undergraduate classes at both of his alma maters. Jared enjoys meeting new people, trying new cocktails, and seeing new places, and he splits his time between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. He's currently learning how not to kill houseplants before he considers getting a dog.