We spoke with co-founders Maribel Quezada Smith and Tangia R. Al-awaji Estrada — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
James Cridland: So it was announced earlier this month that BIPOC Podcast Creators is closing. Why is it going to close?
Tangia R. Al-awaji Estrada: There were several factors that we had to consider. This was a decision that we didn’t come to lightly - I think we spent the better part of a year discussing it and looking for other options; having multiple conversations with potential buyers, not able to find a right fit, and ultimately it was going to be better for each of us as individuals to let it go. What fed into that decision were a lot of things - like the revenue situation has become untenable in 2026. It’s just extremely difficult. We each have our own growing businesses, we each have small children and families, and just all of the regular life stuff that everybody has to deal with, and we needed to make a decision.
Maribel Quezada Smith: It was a difficult decision and initially the thought was, like Tangia said, we will transition the ownership over to somebody. But that unfortunately was not the case, and so it just came to to be that we had to close. We are making a conscious decision, and I’m walking away grateful for all of the relationships that we have built and happy and proud of all of the work that we did.
JC: So to ask the stupid question the issue that it set out to highlight is that fixed now?
TAE: Not even close. If anything if anything we’re farther away than when we first started. Our vision for BIPOC Podcast Creators when we started was that we were just going to create a creative home for creators of color in the industry - we were creators at the beginning of our podcast careers and just feeling really isolated. Many indie creators feel isolated, looking for a community that understands the hustle and that you can collaborate with and just be around and just have a good time. When we were going to various industry events, conferences, meetups, etc, we didn’t feel represented in those rooms. So we thought that we will create that space where those creators feel represented.
JC: You mentioned the the revenue side and the support side that you should have got from you know large organizations. How much of that is down to the change in US politics? Is that partially to blame?
MCS: That is absolutely partially to blame. There were a lot of budget cuts with some of our partners that were related to those changes. But even before the change of government, we started to see a decline in the investment from the corporations and the bigger sponsorships that we had. There were just too many layoffs.
TAE: People that were our partners - people that were rooting for us inside of these companies - were laid off, and we started to lose our allies essentially. We were having conversations behind closed doors where people were saying ‘we want to support you and we believe in what you’re doing’, but out in front of the cameras or in front of the microphone, they weren’t really saying it. Whether it was because they weren’t allowed to for budget cut reasons, or they started to become a little bit afraid, I had off conversations that were off the record where people were saying ‘we can’t be seen as funding quote unquote DEI’. The really big problem with that isn’t just the obvious, it’s also that we were never in their DEI dollars. Budgets for partnering with us always came out of marketing. So, what you are saying to me, as a woman of color, is that ‘I can’t be seen associating with you financially because of the color of your skin’.
JC: What should the industry be doing for projects like these? How should they be funded?
TAE: The larger question is - what is the vision of the future of the industry? What does it mean for an industry when you don’t have any creators who aren’t celebrities who can’t pull down a hundred million downloads an episode? What do you do when everybody else isn’t Joe Rogan? You don’t have anybody long term if you’re pushing everybody out. What corporations need to be thinking about down the road is if you want to have a healthy thriving industry, then you need to think about all of these hundreds of thousands - maybe even millions - of creators who are never going to be a hundred million dollar person download.
JC: Why would they care?
MCS: The companies? Sustainability. In the short term they always cared about return on investment; and one big problem with the way that some of the partnerships were working was that I feel like they weren’t focused on actually partnering with us - sometimes they were more focused on just visibility. When we tried to actually create programming and bring them in to do webinars or to do events or to add value we went ignored.
JC: What what should the industry be doing then? What is the ideal in terms of where the industry moves from here?
MCS: One major thing that the industry could do is to come together and figure out a way to continue to support the creator communities. And I’m not just talking about the BIPOC Podcast Creators or the Women of Color Creators - I’m talking about in genera. I think the first problem is that creators are going unseen right now, and they’re struggling to keep a sustainable process, or to stay creating. Even if it’s a hobby it’s a struggle: and you know this, James, because of the (high) amount of podcast drop-off rates, like someone producing seven episodes and then never doing it again. That’s the biggest challenge right now that the industry faces as a whole, and they should be worried about it because the creators have a whole economy behind them that invests in a lot of the products that are being sold in the podcasting industry.
TAE: I also feel like podcasting has changed so much and continues to change so quickly. I keep waiting for there to be a larger conversation happening in the industry about how we protect this space and make sure that it is able to continue to to thrive. It seems like everybody’s holding their breath to some extent. It’s just so reactive, and I think that’s very dangerous for this industry. The question to be asking is what should the industry be doing in general to ensure its ability to continue beyond 2027? Because who the hell knows if that’s what’s gonna happen.
JC: What are you most proud of in terms of what you achieved?
MCS: I’m walking away proud of all of the lives that we impacted, because of the community support that we provided. I know that we helped some people change the course of the career that they had. We helped people go from entry level - or no level - to being able to make decisions in the podcasting industry. We made connections that will last for a lifetime and I’m really proud of some of the friendships that also came out of that. The closing part is painful but I think it helps to know that there are people who still care and I think we have built something that proved a point.
JC: Thank you so much both of you. It’s really good to catch up, and thanks for your time.