Shabnam Mogharabi is an entertainment entrepreneur, author, and journalist with more than 15 years of leadership experience in media and storytelling. She is a lifelong student of positive psychology, a freelance documentary film producer, and an expert on how to create socially impactful and entertaining content.
With actor Rainn Wilson, Shabnam co-founded SoulPancake, the inspiring entertainment company behind beloved video series such as Kid President and My Last Days. Under her tenure, SoulPancake amassed 10M social media fans and nearly 1B video views on its daily positive videos about human connection. The company eventually had a successful exit to the social impact film studio Participant.
It was in espousing the values of SoulPancake that she believes in - the importance of joy, hope, purpose, and gratitude - that Shabnam found a calling as a public speaker. Today, she shares her uplifting, vulnerable message on how to harness the power of joy at dozens of conferences and events a year.
Before SoulPancake, Shabnam was an award-winning journalist and editor and one of the youngest winners of the Jesse H. Neal Award (the Pulitzer Prize for B2B journalism). She has worked as a contributing writer, editor, and stringer for several publications, including People, Pool & Spa News, Sunset, and HuffPost. She is a New York Times bestselling author with "SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions".
Shabnam is a Henry Crown Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She is on the advisory board of Seed & Spark; an industry advisor for USC’s Digital Media program, and on the board of directors for the national nonprofit Tahirih Justice Center.
Shabnam received her B.A. in journalism and business administration from the University of Southern California and her Master’s in media from Northwestern University. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband and son.
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"On behalf of the NRF, I would like to thank you for your time, effort, and expertise. Your presentation was such a 'joy' for our audience. And you made me cry."
"On behalf of the NRF, I would like to thank you for your time, effort, and expertise. Your presentation was such a 'joy' for our audience. And you made me cry."