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‘When there’s a drought, pivot’
Auli’i Cravalho is just 24, but she’s already a decade into her career, and she’s shifted in her profession many times over.
Cravalho made her Hollywood debut voicing the titular “Moana,” released in 2016, and has since made her mark in other movies like 2024’s “Mean Girls,” in TV roles and on Broadway in the role of Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.”
But she hasn’t always gotten the roles she’s wanted most.
“The best way for me to get through that is one: time, and two: recognizing that the young woman who gets that role is just like me, very different from me, but just like me,” Cravalho told CNBC Make It at ZCON, a Gen Z focused conference put on by United Talent Agency.
“How can I be upset at a girl who has worked her behind off to get exactly where she’s meant to be?” she added. “And if it isn’t meant to be for me, so be it, and I have to let it go.”
Behind the scenes, Cravalho has started getting into producing, including becoming an executive producer on an upcoming live-action remake of “Moana.”
The expansion of the work she does is by design.
“For many of us [in Hollywood], the work is seasonal,” she said. “When it rains, it pours, and then there’s a drought. And when you’re in a drought, pivot.”
Redirecting the focus of your career takes time, being willing to make mistakes and committing to learning from them, she added.
Pivoting “took me walking into a room [and] saying ‘I don’t know what I don’t know.’ Let me close my mouth and just watch and listen and learn,” she said.
It’s allowed her to build a career based on her interests and passions, and to find a way to combat the feeling that she’s “inherited a world that is on fire,” especially in her advocacy around climate change and oceanic preservation.
In 2025, Cravalho associate produced the documentary “Reef” about one of the world’s largest coral reef restoration programs.
Cravalho stressed the importance of finding mentors to help you through career changes, and called on leaders to offer support to young risk-takers. “[I] am more than willing to fall on my face if someone’s willing to help me back up,” she said
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