Jonas Rivera

Jonas H. Rivera (born May 2, 1971) is an American film producer. He produced the animated films Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), Toy Story 4 (2019) and Soul (2020), all of which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Rivera is an alumnus of San Francisco State University and has worked with Pixar Animation Studios since 1994. Rivera was born and raised in Castro Valley, California. His father is of Mexican descent, while his mother is of English Canadian descent. As a boy, he wanted to become an animator, but according to him, he could not draw: "I was a terrible artist, and I still am." Rivera graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Film Production. In 1994, in the last year of making Toy Story, he joined Pixar as their first production intern: "I saw Luxo Jr. in a class and liked it so much I cold-called Pixar." Since then he worked on almost every Pixar film, at first as a coordinator and manager. In 2009, as the producer of Up, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Rivera also produced Inside Out (2015) and Toy Story 4, both of which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He was the Development Producer on Soul.