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Season 2 Finale

In the compelling season finale of "A LA LATINA: The Playbook to Succeed Being Your Authentic Self," hosts Claudia Romo Edelman and Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner wrap up the powerful second season by revisiting and reinforcing the essential lessons shared by their incredible Latina Trailblazer guests. This season has reinforced the importance of embracing our cultural identity, taking risks, saying yes to opportunities, building a strong reputation, seeking mentors and sponsors, and understanding that career paths are not always linear.

Claudia and Cynthia emphasize that being your authentic self is the foundation of success. A key highlight of the finale is the ten-strategy "Latina Playbook," derived from the insights of Latinas in corporate America, filling this episode with valuable insights about pursuing self-discovery, utilizing feedback for growth, learning continuously, and developing meaningful relationships. They highlight the importance of adaptability without losing one's essence and inspire Latinas to aim high and dream big, reminding them that they are in a unique position to achieve greatness.

This wrap-up episode is a celebration of the resilience, courage, and potential of Latinas, urging everyone to lead, succeed, and support one another. Join Claudia and Cynthia in this valuable conclusion to season two, and continue the journey of growth and empowerment with "A LA LATINA."
Show transcript
00:00
Hola. I'm Claudia Romo Edelman and I'm Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner and
00:03
this is a podcast,
00:04
a La Latina, the playbook to succeed being your authentic self
00:08
This is our wrap up episode.
00:09
We're gonna talk to you about the playbook of all the key
00:12
takeaways that we got in season two.
00:15
And you're gonna hear many of these takeaways are similar to the
00:18
ones in season one,
00:20
which means our playbook is being reinforced and we are learning that
00:25
there's a very specific list of things that we Latinas should do
00:29
and keep in mind so we can get to the top.
00:32
So Cynthia and I spent a lot of time doing the decalogue
00:35
the playbook of the 10 things that you as a Latina
00:38
should look so that you can make it to the top in
00:40
half the time with half the process.
00:42
Let's start. Cynthia,
00:51
tell me more about Monay.
00:53
What is your favorite product?
00:54
The product that I love the most.
00:56
First was our credit builder loan.
00:58
When I moved to the U SI realized that a good credit
01:01
score impacts so many aspects of our life.
01:04
If you have a high credit score,
01:05
you can get lower interest rates on loans and credit cards,
01:08
better insurance rates and better chances of getting a loan.
01:12
Can you imagine that more than half of our members raise their
01:14
credit score by up to 20 seven points in 60 days?
01:18
Wow. Ok, so I'm learning something new here and I
01:20
should be checking on my credit score myself.
01:23
Everybody should and it's super easy.
01:24
So for anyone out there needing to improve their credit score or
01:27
even know your credit score come to Money Lion.
01:30
That's amazing. How do you access the credit builder loan two
01:35
ways, either go to Money lion.com/membership or download the Money Lion
01:39
app. Ok, great.
01:40
Thank you. I'm in let's start with number one.
01:44
Embrace your cultural identity.
01:46
And when I think about this Claudia,
01:47
the first guess that comes to mind is actually somebody that didn't
01:51
do this, Mary Lou Marshall,
01:53
she couldn't embrace her cultural identity and she even changed her name
01:58
and last name to be able to get into law school because
02:03
when she was going to school,
02:05
she didn't think she could get the financial aid and the admission
02:09
that she wanted because she was Latina.
02:11
So she literally put her Latini dad in hiding and became somebody
02:16
else, went to school,
02:18
became a lawyer and then embraced her Latinidad.
02:21
And she has made it a point of her career to make
02:25
space for all of us to be who we wanna be.
02:29
And that's the number one key taker of this season and the
02:32
previous season, which is be your authentic self.
02:35
If you are your authentic self,
02:37
you are going to transmit more self confidence,
02:39
you're going to be able to be more proactive,
02:42
be more ingrained in the cultural community where you are.
02:46
And I think that that's the number one thing that is all
02:49
across every one of our guests is be yourself,
02:52
everyone else is taken and people will recognize when you're faking it
02:55
So be your authentic self in order to get promotions faster
02:59
Also, you have no choice ladies.
03:02
Because if you are not your authentic self,
03:05
your energy, your mental bandwidth is going to be dedicated to
03:10
fitting in to faking it and you won't have enough energy to
03:14
act, actually do your work and be amazing at your work
03:17
So stop trying to be someone else.
03:19
Like Claudia said, everybody else is taken.
03:21
Be yourself. Number two,
03:23
take risks. I think it was Gloria Al Cantara who said
03:26
that she became more comfortable taking risks because she took one small
03:32
risk. Nothing happened.
03:34
Sometimes it worked out sometimes it didn't work out,
03:36
but it's not like her career ended.
03:38
So she just started being more comfortable with taking risks.
03:42
If you don't take risks.
03:44
If you don't get out of your comfort zone,
03:46
there is no growth and we're so scared sometimes to shake the
03:50
boat and to move into different positions.
03:53
But even in our A La Latina dinner in New York.
03:57
I love hearing Ariana Stoer saying that it's gonna be ok at
04:02
the end of the day,
04:03
you're gonna be ok.
04:04
Your career is gonna be ok.
04:05
Your family is gonna be ok.
04:06
So take comfort in knowing that things will be ok and take
04:10
risk in lateral moves,
04:12
take risk in changing careers,
04:13
take risk in moving to a different industry if you feel more
04:16
comfortable. So number two,
04:19
take risks. Number three,
04:21
say yes to opportunities.
04:23
We had many guests that spoke about how sometimes they didn't seek
04:27
the opportunities, but people put opportunities in front of them and
04:31
even when they weren't sure that it was the right opportunity or
04:34
that they were ready for it.
04:36
They said yes, Rita Fro from Disney had so many sponsors
04:40
and so many people in the teams adjacent to her that they
04:44
would come to her and say,
04:45
hey, there's this new opportunity.
04:47
Do you want to take it?
04:48
And she just said yes.
04:51
And that's how she got to the top by saying yes when
04:53
an opportunity knocked on her door.
04:55
But we also heard a lot from a lot of guests saying
04:59
I'm gonna say yes to volunteering.
05:00
I'm gonna say yes to go where the fire is.
05:02
I'm gonna say yes to doing the extra extra mile so that
05:06
I can be seen and can be noticed and can be recognized
05:10
So we say yes opportunities,
05:11
but also say yes to volunteering and say yes to trying your
05:14
hardest. Number four,
05:16
build your reputation. Claudia and I talk about this a lot
05:19
because we know that Latinas work very hard,
05:24
but we also know that we are too humble and that we
05:29
maybe don't feel comfortable speaking about our accomplishments and this is something
05:35
that's gonna slow us down.
05:37
It's gonna slow you down.
05:38
If you only focus on delivering results and you assume that people
05:42
are noticing your results without you taking ownership of them,
05:46
you are missing out.
05:48
So spend time speaking about what you and your team are delivering
05:53
It's part of like playing the corporate game in a and
05:56
I think that what I heard a lot from all our guests
06:00
in season two and season one is how someone else noticed you
06:05
your hard work and took you on an opportunity.
06:08
I said you can do it better.
06:10
What I didn't hear enough is self advocacy and self promotion are
06:14
integral to self realization and going in the corporate ladder.
06:18
So let's build our reputation,
06:20
having our work, talk about ourselves and our excellence.
06:24
But also let's be better at self advocacy and self promotion the
06:28
way that other people do.
06:30
Number five, seek mentors and sponsors in this season,
06:34
we spoke, I think more than in the last one about
06:37
allies about how of course mentors and sponsors are super important.
06:42
But sometimes we think that a mentor or a sponsor has to
06:44
be somebody that looks like us.
06:45
And if that's what we're going to wait for,
06:48
it's going to take us like five generations to get to the
06:50
top because there's not enough of us at the top.
06:53
So we should consider anyone that believes in us a sponsor.
06:59
If you have somebody in your company that you work with,
07:01
they can become your sponsor.
07:03
Even if they don't look like you and mentors,
07:05
you can start tapping into mentors.
07:07
Even when you're going to school.
07:09
We heard from Nancy Reyes,
07:11
we heard from Anna Sein about people that mentor them to get
07:16
not even to college into high school.
07:19
People that were not Latinas,
07:21
people that weren't part of their families,
07:23
but they kind of took it upon themselves to guide them to
07:27
navigate an environment that was totally unknown to them and really help
07:31
them open doors that enable them to be where they are.
07:34
And also we heard in season two,
07:36
how people are giving back how they got mentors and sponsors and
07:41
they are committing themselves to becoming a mentor and a sponsor for
07:45
many other people so that people want to work with you and
07:48
see you as a role model and ideally as a hero.
07:51
And number six, don't look at your career as a ladder
07:55
I can't tell you how much I wish people understood this
08:01
I still see a lot of young people,
08:03
Latinas and not thinking that you need to get a promotion every
08:06
two years and in your linkedin or in your resume,
08:08
it should look like you were just climbing a ladder.
08:12
And every one of our guests told us that is not true
08:16
You can move to different parts of the organization to learn
08:19
the business, to also experiment with other functions and see if
08:22
you like something better than what you're doing now.
08:24
And ultimately, that's going to make you a better asset for
08:28
your organization if you understand the business.
08:30
And if you start looking at how all this playbook connects with
08:34
each other, you can start understanding that it's going to be
08:37
ok, that you can start taking risks,
08:39
that you need to build a network that you need to understand
08:42
how the careers are not straight.
08:44
Then you start building a pattern for yourself that you to grow
08:48
and do it by being your authentic self.
08:51
Number seven, invest in continuous learning.
08:55
I love Adela Zepeda saying that 20% of her time is devoted
08:59
to understanding the industry where she is operating,
09:02
how much we have to be curious how much we have to
09:05
trigger that continued learning in the places where we are so that
09:08
we can get into those corporate board positions that we are all
09:12
wanting to be able to do that.
09:14
You need to invest in continuous learning and Adela said up to
09:18
20% we heard it from many other guests as well.
09:21
Yeah, many of our guests have master's degrees phd S there
09:25
is a formal learning that you can sometimes take time away from
09:30
your job and immerse yourself in learning something.
09:34
But what Adela said was like,
09:36
so much more important and so much more impactful to all of
09:38
our lives, which is up until the day we die,
09:41
we should spend 20% of our time learning something new because life
09:45
changes too fast, technology changes too fast and we can get
09:48
stale. So number eight is one of my favorites,
09:51
building relationships. 40% of the success and entrepreneur depends on the
09:56
networks that they have in order to get to the places where
10:00
they need to be.
10:00
We Latinos, we do not have enough networking opportunities,
10:04
enough or infrastructure to build relationships.
10:07
So you need to go and make a bigger effort to show
10:11
up to places where the network is to be able to be
10:14
conscious about networking for purpose so that you can see how our
10:19
guests are looking at a power map and who do they need
10:22
to build relationships with so that they can advance on their career
10:25
and build trust. And you don't have to think about relationships
10:28
in a transactional way in a what can this person do for
10:32
me immediately? Sometimes you nurture a relationship that will yield something
10:37
later on and sometimes it's gonna happen.
10:40
Like Patricia Pacheco who was waiting tables,
10:43
mentioned to one of her customers that she was looking for a
10:45
job and that person got her an interview at American Express and
10:49
that was her first job.
10:50
So build relationships anywhere you are.
10:53
Number nine, adapt your style to the circumstances.
10:57
The first time that we heard this very clearly called out was
11:00
from Adela Zepeda who said that she adapts not only her style
11:05
but she calls it the language of the environment where she's
11:09
in. So if she's operating a company,
11:12
she speaks one language.
11:13
If she's on a board,
11:15
she speaks the language of the board.
11:17
And that's how we should all think about adapting without losing who
11:20
we are. But also not saying this is who I am
11:23
Take me as I am and you adapt to me.
11:26
No, we have to change.
11:28
Like Eliana Musa said on season one,
11:30
change the clothes that we pack in the suitcase depending on where
11:34
we're going, but always pack your own clothing.
11:36
Because what we have seen is that in order to be able
11:40
to be accepted, Latinas have been packing the clothes of someone
11:43
else in order to dial down in order to be accepted
11:48
So adapt your style to the circumstances knowing that you need
11:51
to learn the language where you are,
11:53
but you cannot change and deny who you are.
11:56
And I think that the number 10 which is really important and
11:59
we have heard from everybody and I think it is my personal
12:02
message for everyone listening to a Latins aim high dream big.
12:07
Understand that we are in the greatest position that we can as
12:11
a Latino community that our ancestors have made it possible for us
12:15
and made all the sacrifices so that we can have a school
12:18
so that we can be the first generation that goes to college
12:21
that is in senior positions that can make it so dream big
12:25
make your ancestors really proud of your success and don't deny
12:30
yourself the opportunity to aim as high as you want.
12:34
And once you've reached that high that you were dreaming for,
12:38
move the goal post because there's somewhere else that you can go
12:42
never stop dreaming and take someone with you.
12:44
Yes. And I was actually going to say that the person
12:47
from all of our guests that reminds me more of this goal
12:51
is the guest from the episode right before this one,
12:54
Claudia Romo Del Man.
12:55
She dreams high and she's teaching me to dream high too.
12:58
It was amazing having this second season.
13:01
I hope that all of our audience can feel how much this
13:05
is incredibly gratifying, satisfying,
13:08
but also useful for you as much as it is for
13:12
us to do a La Latina podcast and a La Latina dinners
13:15
expanding it the network so that we can be having more
13:18
Latinas in the top possessions in half the time with half the
13:22
bruises rate review and help other Latinas by telling them about a
13:27
La Latina podcast and all of that we can do leading and
13:31
succeeding