OUR STORY
ABOUT URA
OVERVIEW
WHAT IS URA?
URA Entertainment, also known as From the Streets to the Set, was created to open doors for underrepresented talent and connect productions with real-world authenticity. The organization’s work sits at the intersection of casting, mentorship, and access — serving both the people who have been overlooked by Hollywood and the productions that need them most.
URA is not a traditional casting agency. It is a development-first organization that prepares real people for real opportunities — and then creates those opportunities through direct production relationships. The result is talent that brings something to the screen that cannot be manufactured.
THE FOUNDER
BERENICE MOLINA VALLE
Berenice Molina Valle is a producer, casting director, and talent manager of Mexican Salvadorian descent. She built URA out of a desire to create truthful opportunities for people who relate to the realities she came from.
Berenice did not come up through traditional Hollywood. Her professional path runs through gang intervention work, community recovery programs, and the deeply personal understanding that the people Hollywood claims to portray deserve to be the ones who portray them.
What began as helping productions find raw talent evolved into a larger mission: turning overlooked lives into professional opportunities on screen. She learned the business processes of talent management alongside her roster as opportunities grew.
KEY MILESTONES
ORIGIN
The Founding Story
URA was launched in 2017 and grew out of Berenice Molina’s work with gang intervention, recovery, and community outreach. What began as helping productions find raw talent evolved into something larger: a structured pathway for people whose lived experiences are exactly what film and television productions claim to be looking for.
URA’s Street-to-Set model was not designed in a boardroom. It emerged from Berenice’s direct experience with the communities she grew up in and around. She knew that the industry’s appetite for “authenticity” was only meaningful if the people being portrayed were actually involved in the work.
That conviction — that real representation requires real people — is the foundation URA was built on, and the principle that drives every casting decision, training session, and production partnership the organization undertakes.
2017
Year URA was founded in Los Angeles, California
250+
Year URA was founded in Los Angeles, California
4+
Year URA was founded in Los Angeles, California
Mission / Values
Authentic representation on screen
Opportunity created through access
Professionalism on and off set
Community responsibility
Breaking typecasting at every level
Creating opportunity for the next generation of community talent
BREAKING STEREOTYPES
URA challenges the industry’s habit of reducing Black and Brown talent to one-note archetypes. Its work centers on fuller, more human representation — and on giving people access to roles beyond stereotype-based casting.
Public interviews and press coverage repeatedly highlight that goal as URA’s defining purpose. The work is not about filling quotas or satisfying diversity checkboxes. It is about the fundamental belief that better, more truthful stories require better, more truthful casting.
TRAILERS AND REELS
