[00:00] INTRO MUSIC

[00:05] Jennifer Wu: Hi everyone. Thanks for listening to the Founder Spirit podcast. I'm your host Jennifer Wu. In this podcast series, I'll be interviewing exceptional individuals from all over the world with the Founder Spirit, ranging from social entrepreneurs and tech founders to philanthropists, elite athletes, and more. Together we'll uncover not only how they manage to succeed in face of multiple challenges but also who they are as people and their human story. 

Our guest today is Claudia Romo Edelman, a social entrepreneur, an advocate, and a catalyst for social change. She is a global mobilization expert, a captivating public speaker and a media contributor, as well as a leader of inclusion, focused on unifying the US Hispanic community and promoting sustainability and purpose-driven activities. 

She is the Founder of We Are All Human Foundation, a New York-based non for profit dedicated to advancing diversity, inclusion, and equity. She is also a founder and co-host of Global GoalsCast, a podcast that highlights global progress through the stories of champions making a difference.

With an extraordinary background at international organizations, Claudia has a track record in launching global movements and creating collective action and is a master of agenda-setting. She has been in the driving seat of some of the most successful global campaigns of the last decade, including the launch of Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations, Product (RED), the creation of the SDG Lions, as well as rebranding of the UN Refugee Agency and the World Economic Forum. 

Claudia is a visiting fellow of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and has been published extensively by The Guardian, Forbes, Thrive Global, Ad Age, just to name a few. She is also the author of 6 books and with 8 more in the works, including “Hispanic Stars Rising”, “Hispanic Star” children’s book series, and “Mission Matters: World's Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success”.

Claudia is a board member at Canoo and several non-for-profit organizations. She is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, has been listed as one of Most Powerful Latinas for three consecutive years by the Association of Latino Professionals For America, as well as People magazine's 25 Most Powerful Latinas in 2020.

Claudia started out her career as a diplomat and speaks six languages. She holds degrees in Communications, Philosophy and Photography from Universidad Intercontinental in Mexico, as well as a Masters degree in Political Communications from the London School of Economics.  

Hola Claudia, welcome to the Founder Spirit podcast. It's wonderful to have you with us today. Thank you for taking the time.

‍[03:01] Claudia Romo Edelman: Thank you so very much for the invitation and for that wonderful way to put my bio. Amazing.

‍[03:06] Jennifer: Thank you, Claudia. Growing up in Mexico, I'm told that your childhood hero is Mafalda, who is a main character of an Argentinian comic book and cartoon series of the same name from the 60s-70s. Could you please tell us who Mafalda is and how she became your childhood hero?

‍[03:28] Claudia: Mafalda is a six-year-old girl that was the main character of the Argentinian comic book from Quino, who wants to change the world. She's concerned about humanity, about world peace, about injustice. She was always my hero because she was not afraid of asking questions and being unsettled with things that didn't make sense. She was unsettled with unfairness; she will not give up, and she will not concede. 

At the same time, she was just a girl and a girl that wanted to play with her friends and be pampered by her parents. When I started reading Mafalda, I identified being very small but having big questions; and somehow big anger about things that didn't make sense and seemed very unfair.

‍[04:10] Jennifer: Your late mother, Cecilia Romo, had an indelible impact on your life. In many ways, she led an extraordinary life as a national basketball player, a famous actress and a culture icon. I think she even met Fidel Castro at some point. Please tell us what your life was like growing up with Ceci Romo.

‍[04:34] Claudia: She not only meet Fidel Castro, she played 1-on-1 basketball with Fidel Castro in Cuba, which was a memory that I kept on hearing throughout the years as one of the most impactful pieces of my Mom. 

Look, I mean, growing up with Ceci Romo, it had everything the ups, the downs, the adventure, the inconsistencies, the fascination, all of it. My mom was a layered woman, a survivor, and a fighter. She lost two of her three kids; they died when they were 18 months old. My father, out of desperation and anger, asked for her uterus to be removed without her approval when she was going through a procedure. 

All of that happened, basically losing two kids, not being able to be a mother ever again before she was 30 years old. For many, that could have been the end of their sanity and their life and their enthusiasm. 

But for my mom, she took strength by seeing others and her desire to be with me and take care of me. She took strength in looking at herself from the most optimistic place. So she took me to orphanages or terminal illness hospitals to make sure that she was able to compare herself. And she was like, I'm better off than them, I'm not that bad - just kept on beefing up in herself that sense of survival and revive. 

So my Mom was everything, the good, the bad. She was larger than life, all my friends adore her. She found refuge at work, she was really working all the time and she did whatever she wanted. She started a career as a basketball player and then became part of the basketball national team of Mexico, represented Mexico everywhere in the world. 

When she lost her kids, she studied economics at 35 and then became a very successful economist. Being able to have a serious career at her age and build herself up back and then discovered that what she really wanted was to be an actress and she adventured to go into that new world, when she was 40. I mean, everybody told her she was crazy, you shouldn't do it. 

Basically she did what she felt - she went for life. Growing up with Ceci Romo and under Ceci Romo's wing was probably the most important piece that defined me and defined who I am today.

‍[06:48] Jennifer: The characters that your mother played, they were very often rebellious, I think she was like that in real life. She also had a very expressive face, she had a gift for comedy and was funny and cheeky. Are these personalities that you also identify with?

‍[07:06] Claudia: I mean, now that you say that, I always said my entire life, I am nothing like my mom. She's the sun and I'm the moon and there's nothing. Now that you mention it, well, I think that I can be considered rebellious. 

Lately I've started adding more humor towards the speeches I give. I started using more standup comedy techniques to the speaking engagements I give, particularly to large audiences and corporate audiences, because I started feeling that adding that humorous piece helps for people to get uncomfortable truths. And while they're laughing, so I can hit them harder if I am funny.

‍[07:42] Jennifer: I think we all say that we don't want to grow up like our mothers, but in some way that we end up somewhat like our mothers.

‍[07:50] Claudia: Absolutely. At the end of the day, I think that when I look back now, some of the key influences of my life and the ones that I'm passing on to my kids, whether I want it or not, are very much related to my Mom and how she run her life. 

Regardless of those changes between a basketball player and redefining herself at 35 and then re-redefining herself at 40, it was very clear to me how it's not that she was fearless, she was petrified every time she had to make a change. It was hard every time; it was really the ups and the downs economically and socially. She was not going to let fear define her life, she was not going to let fear take the decisions of her life. So I think that one of the key lessons I learned is how she was fear free and how much I wanted to do that.

And even when she was suffering from Covid, you could see that she was fighting for it and embracing life and loving life and trying to get hold of it and not being scared, and she wanted to cross that bridge. I think that one of the key influences that I have from her is that fear is not going to be the driver of your life, and that we should all strive to feel and to live fear free, if not fearless.

‍[09:05] Jennifer: Thanks, sometimes it's just fear less, not necessarily fearless. A huge earthquake struck in Mexico, I think in 1985, and this was during your teenage years. I've been told that this was a major turning point in your life. Can you tell us what happened there?

‍[09:21] Claudia: I think that everybody has one or two stories that if you look back and you're very honest in memory lane, you can start seeing the definition of who you are and what you do. 

And for me, the earthquake was clearly one of them. It was not one earthquake, it was a series of earthquakes that hit Mexico City in 1985. I was a teenager, and I recall very clearly how after the first one, which was massive, almost shook the entire city down. All of us were just out of our homes and out of our buildings and started looking around and seeing what happened and seeing whether we could see our neighbors and friends and family. 

It was like an incredible act of leadership and self-organization where someone said, let's actually gather here and let's start bringing food so that we can have shelter, let's put all the children in this area. So everyone became a volunteer, and I went into volunteering with one group that was sweeping the streets of neighborhood, and our job was to find whether there was no one left trapped in those buildings. 

I remember distinctively how confusing it was. And I was the only teenager, everyone of my team was big guys. I was walking in the street when all of a sudden, I felt something that made me stop and started shouting out loud, very loud, like, stop, come here, come back. There was this one guy in my group that turned around and looked at me and said, like, what? I think I heard a voice. He looked at me angry and said, like, think or heard? 

And I just looked at him and started shouting even louder. So he came back to me, and by the time he was with me, it was clear there was someone trapped in that building. Both of us looked at each other and started shouting. Two more people came, four more people came, and then it was enough of us to start pushing that wall. 

We started pushing what felt for me for hours until we were able to move that huge wall. There was the moment in which the light came in, and there they were, the eyes of this girl. There was eyelashes full of dust and looking at us thinking like, you got me right, I am safe. I remember distinctively that was the first ever time where I felt useful. 

It was a new feeling, and it was overwhelming. Looking at the mother hold the girl and walking without even noticing who started shouting and so on, I realized that (is) something I wanted to do. But also, I remember how much it made sense to me that all of a sudden, all the complaints of my Dad like, oh, Claudia, you're so loud. I was like, yeah, it's great to be loud. I was able to call on the attention of many people that didn't see something that was valuable, that was there. I had been privileged and honored to be doing just that for more than 25 years. Using my voice as a marketer, as a communications person, I'm attracting the attention of people to put their hearts and mind to do something that probably they don't see or they haven't even seen before.

‍[12:12] Jennifer: A lot of the time as young women, we are told to be quiet, to keep a low profile and not to draw attention to ourselves. So I think it’s wonderful that you were able to find your voice as a teenager through this experience and use that as your superpower later in life to stand up for others, to channel Malfada! 

I’m curious - your late parents were both somewhat public figures in Mexico, especially your mother as an actress across Latin America. Yet you chose to start your career as a diplomat. Why was that? Why not the corporate world like your father or something more glamorous like your mother?

‍[13:04] Claudia: Look, I wanted to be Mafalda, right? I wanted to save the world. I had this experience with the earthquake, and I wanted to be a missionary and travel to Africa and live there. So I was not looking fortune, but my father, as a fact, it scared me to be as wealthy as he was. I didn't want to do that; I was not attracted by fame either, like my Mom, but I was attracted to change. 

It seemed to me that the world was so big, and I got this opportunity by chance to get into diplomacy; and it felt right, and I wanted to explore it. One thing led to another, and I got hooked into the world of the world. Being in an international setting, being a representative of my country or ideas, was very appealing. 

‍[13:50] Jennifer: I also understand early in this career, you got into a bit of a trouble for not filling out paperworks. Much to the dismay of your colleague who was heading up HR and Finance at the time. Instead of openly challenging him, which would have been my primal instinct, you approached him to be your coach.

‍[14:14] Claudia: I can't even believe that this story, I forgot completely. Look, I mean the reality is that I am a Mexican and I was not trained with a lot of structure or rigor, and I was working in a Swiss-German environment that was working like a clock. So you get it, you put the square in a circle and add the fact that I am an impatient person and that there were processes that didn't meet my criteria of what is essential. So there was clearly a clash between the system and myself and this particular manager. 

It was clear to me that I didn't want to be sacked. I went to our big boss of the entire organization and I said, look, I want to overcome my weaknesses and I would like to learn from the best, could you ask this manager, who clearly was on a fight to get me out of the organization, to be my mentor so that I can learn in the next three months.

So the big boss looked at me like I was crazy. He was like, are you sure you want to have him as a mentor? I'm like, absolutely. I knew that the manager was going to be even more upset with me and I just wanted to give him back as well. I knew that I was risking to make my life miserable for some time. 

But the reality is that I learned a lot, I learned how to be organized and structured the way that he was. I learned why it was so bothering for him to have someone like me that was absolutely not following all the processes. I not only learned why was he upset, but also I learned how to work in life from him. From that experience that turned out to be, not three months, a lifelong mentorship, where he was not only my mentor, but also became an ally. 

‍[15:50] Jennifer: That's incredible, sometimes things happen to us in the most unexpected way, I think, especially when the lesson is coming from someone who's not necessarily your ally in an organization. 

But I'm also told that one of your super skills is your creative drive. You're able to think out of the box, but also guided by your very strong moral compass. In an early campaign that you launched in Davos, there was something about these Swiss bells to calm the protest. So tell us the story, how did you come up with those Swiss bells?

‍[16:23] Claudia:  This (has) been forever, but it was the anti-globalization time, and people were throwing eggs and were very upset, Seattle - destroying the windows of McDonald's. My organization became one of the targets of the anger of the world for the injustices that we had. 

Within the organization I was managing the anti-globalization movement and the response, and I knew that a lot of the anger was justified, but that the solution would come from the dialogue of those decision makers to try to actually listen to what they were saying, as opposed to just being scared. 

So we went to a number of places and the security was every time bigger and harder, there were all these men that looked like Turtle Ninjas, all covered with metallic stuff and so on.

And we started putting photos of people from my organization, putting a flower there, saying look, we want to talk. Those images became very powerful and started getting viral. So when we had a conference which was really a target for the anger of people, we had more than 1,000 participants that started looking at what is the global agenda going to look like when you have so much anger? And people wanted to go to nationalist agendas again. So a symbol, it was important to demonstrate that we wanted peace and who was peaceful and who wanted to be in a dialogue. 

I remember I went to buy 500 Swiss bells and I hung them in the conference. You can only imagine the Presidents of the countries and the CEOs, where I was like, this is why everybody has to wear a bell. I want people to ring the bell twice a day during the conference so that we demonstrate we're peaceful, and it was a media message. But the thing is that you could think a 23-year old has that idea and that's fine, the point is that they did it. It was crazy to have all these decision makers wearing the bell in their lapel and then ringing it. 

At some point it became a massive media story saying decision makers want to dialogue with the street and want to demonstrate that they care. And it was important for me because it was the first time that I realized it's good to feel that people will follow. It was the first time in my life where I felt that I had a clout and that I could be using a superpower like that to be convening and to be mobilizing people and leaders.

‍[18:40] Jennifer: You've also been in the driving seat of some of the most successful global campaigns of the last decade, as we had mentioned. You were instrumental in the creation and launch of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. 

The 17 SDGs, as they're called, has 169 targets. They initially originated from the Millennium Development Goals, but much wider in scale and ambition to eradicate poverty and to create a more sustainable world. Can you tell us what that journey was like in launching and creating the SDGs?

‍[19:14] Claudia: At some point in my career, people realized that I was good at putting master plans, so they started moving me from one place to the other. I pretty much felt like a plant that people were moving from one office to the other. We needed to create master plans to launch and again mobilize the hearts and minds of millions and millions of people. 

The Sustainable Development Goals is the master plan for the future of the people on the planet. I 100% believe on it, I think that there is no plan B and there is no Planet B either, so we better embrace them. It's historic that 193 countries have signed it. 

The question is, how are we going to make them famous? How are we going to get people to be excited about them? How do we get companies, individuals and countries, where they don't think that they need to be talking about poverty or education to care?

So I broke it down, I think that it was the most intensive work time of my life. I woke up every morning at 4am, trying to have 3 hours of deep work on the strategy for months and months, before I had to wake up and be a Mom and get on my work every day. 

It was really strategic about how do you crack the system? How do you really get to be taken on? It was very much tapping into my own entrepreneurial spirit of being a zero to one, so a path breaker. I'm not a 1-to-100, I'm a 0-to-1 person, that's most of my skill. What we did was look at the world and say, what are the ways in which you can break this down so that as many people as possible can absorb it.

And we decided to divide it with technology, media, cinema, photography, artist, communications and so on of how to get mobilization. And then we went to the five most important players per industry in the world and started actually looking at partnerships. 

It was not the easiest piece, I have to say, and it was very important for me to remember what was the end game and play the rules. The rules of the United Nations at that time were you either get credit or get things done. I wanted to get things done, so I actually made sure that I was, as much as possible, invisible, so that many people felt the ownership of the plan and just take it.

‍[21:23] Jennifer: And as the mastermind, as you say, what were some of the tough challenges that you had encountered during this period?

‍[21:30] Claudia: Everything was a challenge, everything was a no, even my husband, I remember exactly, I went to one company to the other, one sector to the other. I was like, look, you have to invest in this, we will make it a brand. Not only as a plan, but it's also going to be a brand where you are going to be able to connect with consumers and you should invest in this brand equity now that it’s low. Put it on the back of your cereal, put it on your yogurt, put it on your t-shirts, put it on your talking points. 

My husband looked at me and said, Claudia, no one will ever pick up the SDGs, it’s one more United Nations’ nice campaign. And I remember looking at him thinking, I think that you're right, but I'm not going to give up.

I remember trying to do things in order - we will need collaboration, this will absolutely need collaboration. So I got tech gurus to come down with the committing power of the United Nations. I was like, you have to build me the best tech platform there is, so that people from all over the world can collaborate and advance the goals that we have. These guys were putting millions and millions of dollars into creating these platforms. Particularly, one entrepreneur went all-in, even tattooed the ring of the Sustainable Development Goals on his back, after I was on it so much.

But it flopped, it was early, it was one year too early. People didn't know what the SDG were, so by the time that the SDGs, the Global Goals, started taking traction and people started using it in their lapel and putting it in their windows and putting it in the yoghurts and the cereal boxes of the world, the technology was too far behind to catch up.

So I had a lot of tough challenges. And I do think that when you're an entrepreneur, particularly a social entrepreneur, you have more tough challenges than wins. The question is, how do you educate yourself and your team to be able to live with those ratios? Having a 6:4, 7:3, and be able to live with them and survive?

‍[23:20] Jennifer:  Well, I think two out of ten for me would be good. So now there are 17 SDGs, do you have a favorite SDG?

‍[23:28] Claudia: I do. I think that because I was part of the creation of the brand, the conception of the framework and the launch. For me, they are all interconnected. But I do think that the one that speaks more to who I am, what I believe in, and what I think is going to make the difference is 17, which is partnerships.

‍[23:46] Jennifer: Partnership for goals, that is. 

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[25:25] Jennifer: So moving forward in 2018, you founded the We Are All Human Foundation, which is dedicated to promote equity, diversity and inclusion. Can you tell us what motivated you to launch this US-based public charity?

‍[25:41] Claudia: When I was working for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, one of my favorite people in the world, my former boss, Mark Dybul, we wanted to go to Uganda to bring them a massive check as a grant to advance their programs. And one day before going, there was a law that changed in Uganda penalizing homosexuality, which would have meant for my boss that he could either go to jail or be killed. 

That's when I started listening to him and saying, what we really need to do is we're not fighting AIDS or tuberculosis and malaria. We're fighting a sense of humanity, we’re finding a sense of the disconnect of people, we all belong to the same human family. It was crazy, he was going to bring a massive check to help the people of Uganda, but he was at risk. There was a sense for me in that moment that divisiveness was growing and getting more traction, and by far faster than any vaccine and any (of) the progress that we had. 

So I started working for the United Nations, I was part of the creation of a campaign to fight xenophobia, racism and discrimination. But it was a bit too slow, a bit too hard to do it within the UN. So the UN helped me to set up We Are All Human as a way to remind people just of that - to campaign for a world, to remind that we belong to the same human family, that what happens to one affects the others. If you allow the sense of otherness to grow, then the real progress of humanity can be endangered. 

‍[27:10] Jennifer: Here's the Mafalda that's growing up now, she’s actually alive. I'm curious, We Are All Human - what does that mean to you to be human?

‍[27:18] Claudia: It is as simple as that - we are all human. It is a straightforward sentence, but we seem to forget. We seem to forget when you look at the media, when you look at the videos, when you look at what people say, we're living in bubbles where some people have a sense and very much infiltrated with technology, algorithms, media, social media, that in order to get their business models growing, they feed you with what you want to hear, what you believe. 

And so it reinstates the self, when you go out of that, you're like, ah, who are you? Why do you look so different than me and think different than me and I don't want you. That basic principle is so dangerous, it leads to populism. It can lead to things like Brexit, it can lead to separation, nationalism, it can really lead to consequences of the world that I don't want. 

So I think that if we could think back to what my former boss said, if we can have everyone reminded that we belong to the same human family, I think that we would make a big effort. And that was much earlier, now you could see the data, you could totally see the data of this divisiveness getting traction. I could have predicted George Floyd - it was inevitable, I think that we're not over from that. 

So I created We Are All Human to bring an agenda of diversity, equity and inclusion, to move the world from tolerance to acceptance and to make sure that companies understood that this was actually going to beneficial for them, because people will be making choices of where to work and where to buy from, depending on whether they feel that they would be respected as human and whether they would be inclusive for all.

‍[28:53] Jennifer: I love that common focus about humanity, about that we are all human. One of the key initiatives that you've been working on is called Hispanic Star, which is a platform to advance the Hispanics in the US. Can you tell us exactly what Hispanic Star does?

‍[29:09] Claudia: So Hispanic Star is very inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals and is a framework, a master plan to advance the progress of Latinos in America. I hope that this master plan can be scalable and replicable for other communities. And Hispanic Star is, as well, like the Sustainable Development Goals, a symbol - a symbol to demonstrate Latino unity and pride, empowerment. A symbol to unify all us Hispanics. Like in America, we're very fragmented - Mexicans don't talk to Colombians, Venezuelans. 

We focus so much on our differences that it's so bananas for me. It is also a platform to showcase the incredible contributions of Latinos to the country, showcasing that we're stars, that America is made of stars and we're one of them. It is a symbol and a framework and ideally will become as big as the rainbow for the LGBTQ that when you see it, you feel this is good for Latinos.

‍[30:05] Jennifer: Why did you decide to launch Hispanic Star? Did you personally experience any discrimination or inequality? Did you see people falling behind? I've heard that people say that you were a happy Mexican living in Europe, so I was just curious what happened when you came to the US.

‍[30:25] Claudia: Yeah, I never heard of that term before, Hispanic, being a Hispanic or Latina. I was living in Europe for 25 years before moving to the US, and it was a surprise to me. I was like, what do you mean Hispanic? What does that mean? 

When I was in Europe, I was exotic, I could see the imaginary pineapple growing up on my head, I felt that novelty. But when I moved to America and I was very curious about this new group that I was going to belong, I started reading the data, and the data was so positive. I was like, wow, this is amazing, we’re so powerful. But when I went to the street, no one seemed to realize that we’re powerful; they looked at me and they treated me and everyone that I know as weak.

I started looking at the data again, and I was like, well, we're so big. Every Latino I met felt very small. I knew that we had a problem, it's not that we don't have problems, systemic barriers exist. We need better jobs, better education, better gender, better health. But the reality is that we have a reverse marketing problem and that we don't deserve the invisibility that we have. 

With all the tips and tricks that I have, and with the superpowers, if you want, that I have of marketing and mobilization, I thought that I could make a difference by moving the needle so that we can move from invisible to visible, from negative to positive, and from takers to makers.

‍[31:42] Jennifer: Now, you mentioned some of the key data that you were looking at. Can you share with us some of the key data and the trends that you see of the Hispanic market in the US as an opportunity to expand?

‍[31:53] Claudia: Thank you for asking, this is my favorite question. U.S. Hispanics, we're 62 million people, almost 20% of the population, and that is 20% of the population today. By 2050, we will be 30% of the population. One in every three American will be Latino. So hello, hello, hola, hello, hello, hola. 

That is the case not only because we're the people, but because we're the youth. We're an average of 28 years old, which is ten years younger than the rest of the population. The most important data point that I always say is our most common age. The most common age of 62 million Latinos today is 19, the most common age of non-Hispanics (in the U.S.) is 61, so there you go.

That's the future, that's the four decades of absolute pure growth that Latinos bring. That is why it's so important to make sure that we are educated, that we're giving the opportunity so that we can keep making America competitive, because we're going to be the future and the majority of the country.

We're also the economic power. The size of our economy is $2.8 trillion, which represents 12% of the GDP of America today, and that GDP is growing 7% faster than the GDP of China. If you would start looking at the emerging economies in the world, the fastest growing economies in the world, you have China, India, and then Latinos. 

No one knows this, and no one is actually understanding that we are in an aging America, Latinos are the ones that are paying the social security, that are paying for the taxes, that we are making progress. So what is clear for me from the data is that Hispanic progress is American progress.

‍[33:31] Jennifer: Well, thank you for being that voice for your community. Now, going back to your foundation, the mission is to actually advocate for every human to be respected and empowered. I know you're starting with the Hispanics in the US, you mentioned the LGBTQ group, but what are your other future plans to include other groups under the We Are All Human Foundation?

‍[33:55] Claudia: This is a podcast about founders and entrepreneurs, and I want to tell you how much faster I would have liked to be from where I am today. I launched the We Are All Human Foundation five years ago. And one year on the launch, I almost went under. So we had to stop, we couldn't have more funding. I had to tell everybody in the staff, we have no more funding, you have to find another job. 

And most of the staff said, I'm going to stay, and I'm going to give you three months to figure out your new business model, and we believe on this. And that was so incredible for me. One month after we were back again, and then we were ready to launch the Hispanic Star in a big media happening in a stadium, baseball with the mayor of Chicago and the media and so on, and then Covid happened.

Now five years from the launch of the We Are All Human Foundation, I wanted to be already ready for expansion. The reality is that between my own learning as an entrepreneur outside of a big organization, Covid happening and everything else, I want to make sure that we crack the system of one community before being able to expand. 

That would mean that if I am able to create the frameworks, the ecosystems and the go-to-market so that companies and individuals can be mobilized towards advancing the perception and representation of one group. When we do that, which I think two years from now, we're going to be able to use the same model for any other minority that is oppressed, that doesn't have opportunities, and that needs to be invested on because it's the best interest for companies and for a country.

So I hope that I'm going to start looking at the circles where Latinos interact first. 22% of Latinos identify as LGBTQ, one in every three African American is a Latino. We have big interaction, and the most common interracial marriage that Latinos have is with Asians. I think that we want to start with those groups in which we are already having an interaction and then start exporting and scaling to different communities in different geographies.

‍[35:55] Jennifer: That's very fundamental, because once you find the product market fit, you've defined your repeatable scalable process, then you can really scale the business and move into other products and very similar communities, in your case. 

Also, I wanted to ask you, Claudia, you are a prolific writer. You've now published 6 books, and you have 8 more in the works. Can you tell us why you love storytelling and where does that ability come from?

‍[36:30] Claudia:  I am very focused on the goal. And for this community, books are important. I will do whatever it takes to get to the goal where we want. And if our goal is to advance the Latino progress and to make sure that every Hispanic is seen, heard, and valued, I realized that a massive pain point was that Latinos were never involved in any chapter of their history. 

Our history chapters were completely ripped off from their books, we don't appear in the American history, we don’t appear as heroes. We're not seen and not heard and not valued at all. So books became important for this particular initiative and for this particular job. I never did a book before, I was not necessarily looking for it. For us, for our community, it is important to appear somewhere.

It gives us a sense of existence for children to read about our own heroes - Roberto Clemente, Celia Cruz, Ellen Ochoa. It gives you a sense of if you can see it, you can be it. And also to elevate the number of Latino authors and to elevate the number of people that appear in books is important. So I started being very prolific about books only in this particular occasion because it is something that we needed. We needed visibility in a place where it was never given to us before.

‍[37:43] Jennifer: Just to mention that Claudia, with the eight books on the way, it’s to complement the children's book series, both in English and Spanish, to a much wider audience so that the English-only speakers can get to know about these role models that we have in the Hispanic society. 

And I want to also ask you because one of your books is called Mission Matters: World's Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success”, which you co-wrote with Adam Torres, featuring top female professionals who share their lessons on business and leadership. In your opinion, what has been the key to your own success?

‍[38:27] Claudia: It always shocks me when people say your success. I define success in very different terms, I don't feel very successful because what I consider success is not done. I would like for Latinos to feel proud and for Latinos to be paid better. I don't feel that way there at all. 

But I think that the way I get things done and where I try to be more effective is very simple. I vision it, having a vision, planning and execution. I'm a very determined and driven person. When I have a clear vision of what I want to achieve, then I'm disciplined and I plan to get it done. I'm a hard worker and I don't give up easily. As a fact, I don't give up at all.

The last piece for me is that I have made great friends all through my life that becomes a network and an ecosystem of support. So I think that if you have the elements of having a vision, that vision can be convincing for others to follow, and if you have an ecosystem, that makes a huge difference and having a great plan and then execute and repeat and repeat. 

‍[39:28] Jennifer: And the planning and the execution comes from your mentor, I presume.

‍[39:33] Claudia: Pretty much, this is my Swiss guy, exactly. I could see the plan, I dream in Excel files, I dream in to-do lists and so on. I'm very systematic about that, that comes from a macro planning and then the micro planning becomes part of the bigger picture.

‍[39:47] Jennifer: Claudia, you're also a co-host of a podcast called Global GoalsCast, and you seem to be doing so many things at the same time, and I know that you're also very generous with your time. How do you manage to do it all?

‍[40:03] Claudia: Well, I don't do it all, but there's so many things to be done and I want to do so much. I do have a serial entrepreneur mindset and I'm very clear with people when they want to work with me and next to me so that they don't get scared about the velocity and the volume but also the width of the thing. 

So I am too impatient to wait for one thing is done to get into the other. It doesn't mean that I do everything efficiently - I am an obsessive planner, maybe because I'm a woman and also a Mom. But I do plan everything. I plan my free time, my sleep time, my thinking time, my Mom time, my wife time, my deep work time, everything. I think that as I mentioned before, this comes from a macro planning. 

So every year for the last 20 years, which my mom taught me and we were doing it together and then one of my best friends joined us ten years ago and we've been doing that again every year. It's a very thorough exercise. It started like resolutions, but now it's the yearly goals. And those yearly goals have very specific indicators of progress, and from there we check every month whether we are red, yellow or green. Every three months we give ourselves a chance to check whether we have to readjust the goals.

Once whatever years we plan the bigger thing, 5- to 10-year plan. So as you see, it is what do I want to be in ten years? How is this year going to help me to get there? How is today going to help me to get there? Is this part of the things that I'm doing? 

By having a serial entrepreneurial mindset, unless you have the bigger plan in mind and the discipline to be checking on what you're doing daily basis, it could be too much. But I think so far so good, so I don't mind the million things.

‍[41:43] Jennifer: Can you share with us what those 5- to 10-year plans are?

‍[41:48] Claudia: In ten years if I look backwards, I want to be a social entrepreneur and an activist, I want to be a family person, devoting enough time to my family so that I can have a healthy relationship with my kids, my very numerous family, my husband. 

But I want to move towards setting up a business to generate wealth so that I can also demonstrate to Latinas how important it is stepping on your feet and having your own capital and generating multi-generational wealth on my own. I want to be an investor and I want to be a media person, I want to be able to have a voice and have authority - so pretty much all that.

‍[42:23] Jennifer: So she does do everything, or at least she wants to do everything.

‍[42:26] Claudia: I haven't started in a number of things, if I want to be an investor in ten years, then I start once a week I read about what investors are investing on. It doesn't mean that I'm going to act on it, but I want to start planting the seed in my head.

‍[42:38] Jennifer: I love that, you're actually inspiring me to plan, because I don't have any of these plans, I'm allergic to planning.

‍[42:44] Claudia: I don't believe you, looking at how you plan this podcast - this is the best podcast plan I've ever seen in my life. I think that you should consider that it is an idea of yours that planning, but deep down, your love planning, and you should embrace it.

‍[43:01] Jennifer: The idea of the podcast started out (when) I was wide awake one morning about a year ago, I couldn't sleep and the idea popped into my head, and I had no plans. But slowly, a bit by bit, something came together, so that's how I did it. 

The part, how you need to check on the progress,I think it's really important because we always make these resolutions at the beginning of the year, and then something gets lost the idea of going back and checking on the progress throughout the year is really important.

‍[43:27] Claudia: It doesn't mean, Jennifer, that everything comes with a price. I do think that having working Moms and particularly entrepreneurs, like you and I, do have to bear in mind that there will be a cost, there will be sacrifices for my family. I remember, actually, where I felt so guilty all my life of being a working Mom. I don't speak about this normally, but I started speaking about this, sharing some of my experiences as a working Mom. 

My daughter, when she was six years old, as a present, I asked, like, hey, Tamara, what do you want as a birthday present? She said, Mom, I would like to be a refugee. I'm like, Tamara, why would you like to be a refugee, darling? She was like, so that you can spend enough time with me the way that you do with refugees. Because I was working for the UN Refugee Agency, and every time I had to go to war zones or Darfur or Sudan and so on, I would go for many days and I came back full of stories about all these kids so that my kids would understand why was I doing it.

It broke my heart and it made me realize that it is very hard to do it all and to have it all, and it's not possible, but you have to choose one at a time. A couple of years ago, I asked both of my kids when they were like 17 & 16, I said, so guys, do you feel that you're different to other kids because I left you alone for so long? They were like, did you leave us alone for long? I was like, you don't realize it, that's awesome.

‍[44:53] Jennifer: See, I have a similar story because my daughter, who's now 14, she would say that when I was working at the startup, I basically ignored her. So that made me feel very guilty. She did say that, she said, you ignored us, you were working all the time. 

We always talk about work life balance, right? And you'll make your colleagues happy, you'll make your kids and your family happy. For me, I struggle with this all the time because I feel like I have to sacrifice at one point either my family for the work or my work for the family. I don't know if it's just part of being a Mom, but that's how I feel. 

So for the people who are out there who are trying to achieve this balance, well at least to know that some people doesn't think it exists.

‍[45:38] Claudia: Yeah, exactly.

‍[45:39] Jennifer: So I have another funny story. I heard once you went to a party in your wedding dress because you didn't have the right attire. I wanted to ask you, how do you reconcile these different versions of yourself? The woman that I'm looking at right now, highly functional professional with straight hair and perfect makeup, and then there is the curly haired bohemian, loud, funny Latina. How do you reconcile with yourself?

‍[46:08] Claudia: Your research is incredible, you should be a detective, I don't know where you find this. But that's true, the wedding dress story is because we didn't have anything proper to wear. So why not? I had my wedding dress, that was the one thing that was standing in the wardrobe. 

But look, the reality is that I am liking these new generations that are so fluid with everything, and you can be anything. Because for me, it was always a struggle that people didn't know where to put me, whether I was a serious businesswoman or a humanitarian. I don't mind at all going to refugee camps and sleeping in the floor in a sleeping bag with nothing, very basic conditions, or being in a seven-star hotel somewhere in the world is equally pleasant.

I think that for me, for the background I had, my parents divorced when I was two years old, and my father was ultra wealthy and living a very ostentatious life. My mother, with all her changes, every time she changed profession, she had very ups and very very downs. When she moved and being an actress, she didn't even have money to buy food. We went to theater with her colleagues and dancers, and they would actually cut a piece of their bread and give it to me and feed me. 

And I learned how to be comfortable in both. I was comfortable sitting down next to the president of a company or the president of the country in my father's setting, and then being with dancers that were sharing their bread, and they were dealing with AIDS, and they were poor. They were both my universe - I think that I learned how to be very comfortable in a number of financial, social and political settings.

So a little bit of that fluidity that is now happening in the world is very convenient for me because I'm like, oh, yeah, exactly, we call all the everything.

‍[47:55] Jennifer: That's an extraordinary story, by the way. Claudia, you also majored in philosophy at university, so I know that you're a dreamer. What are some of the philosophical questions that you're still asking yourself today?

‍[48:09] Claudia: The one that is never going to leave me is the lottery of birth. I don't understand. How is it that the lottery of birth determines people's future for lives forever, their destinies? I want to defeat it. I want to change it. I want to understand how someone can be successful or unsuccessful only because they happen to be born in one country or another. 

Recently, I started thinking a lot since I moved to America about values and driving principles that create a national consciousness and the collective consciousness of America that is so very different that I was used to. So I started looking at those questions about what are the basic principles and values that make a nation great? How long, when those values are so unstable, can that leadership last?

‍[48:57] Jennifer: That's really interesting. I do have answer to that question, by the way. It's called karma because I'm a Buddhist - that’s the lottery of birth.

‍[49:05] Claudia: The lottery of birth is karma. Okay, I never saw it that way. I'm going to have to digest that.

‍[49:11] Jennifer: I want to go back to the point that you mentioned about what are the values that make a nation great. As a communications expert, what do you see happening in the media today?

‍[49:22] Claudia: Media - I used to be a media person. I studied communications and I actually was a journalist for the start of my career and I did it as Mafalda - let's tell the truth, let's inform the people, let's advance democracy. 

It hurts me to see how much trust has completely eroded from media institutions, how much media really deserves to be distrusted in some capacity, and how much that comes from the inability to really produce that democratic task that media was supposed to fulfill. For example, if I look at Latinos - Latinos do not trust media at all. They trust their employer by far more than any other media organization when it comes to information. 

I believe in democracy and I believe in the democratic role that media can play informing people objectively and educate their own decisions. But sadly, I don't see that given the business models that we have right now, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

‍[50:18] Jennifer: Are there media publications that you're reading right now that you feel is more trustworthy than others?

‍[50:24] Claudia: I do, and I do think that there's a couple of media organizations standing and I hope that they're not going to lean in towards their opinion or business models. I do go for the typical, most important media organizations like the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal. 

I am actually very excited about what's happening with Gen Z and the way in which they are reporting themselves and consuming themselves and how I see a new generation of influencers being willing to be educated and not only do bikini poses or travel blogs, but also informing and being activists of areas like climate change.

‍[50:58] Jennifer: By the way, speaking of Gen Z, my kids, they get all their news on YouTube and TikTok.

‍[51:04] Claudia: Absolutely, and that's why I am excited because I think that there's more and more seriousness and intelligence being put into feeding those platforms with Gen Z, by Gen Z and influencers that know. So I'm excited.

‍[51:20] Jennifer: Yeah, I agree. A couple more things, Claudia, if you were to rewrite your own story, are there certain phases of your life that you would want to live differently?

‍[51:31] Claudia: Oh, wow. I think that I would have start earlier being an entrepreneur, I was petrified to make the change from being an institution to do it on my own. I would have started earlier being a pilot of my own life as opposed to a co-pilot of someone's agenda. 

And I think that if I could do it again, I would erase all those areas in which my impatience and anger hurt people, even if I did it unintentionally. I'm very much thinking, for example, of my Mom, I wish I would have been more gentle. 

And probably, I would have worked 10% less and enjoyed a little bit more, particularly, my sleep and friends.

‍[52:13] Jennifer: Okay, so where can people find you, Claudia, your books and your organization?

‍[52:20] Claudia: Well, I'm @ClaudiaRomoEdelman, WeAreAllHuman.org and HispanicStar.org.

‍[52:26] Jennifer:  Great, and Claudia, my last question - what does the Founder Spirit mean to you?

‍[52:30] Claudia: The Founder Spirit is the incansable (in Spanish), tireless desire to create and solve problems.

‍[52:36] Jennifer: And you're about to create your own business venture right here, so I look forward to that. 

We're now coming to the end of our interview, and as you know, we end every episode with a quote. For this episode, we have a quote from Mafalda, Claudia's childhood hero and a progressive youth concerned about humanity and world peace.

‍"The ideal would be to have the heart in the head and the brain in the chest. So we would THINK with LOVE and LOVE with WISDOM.”

Claudia, I want to thank you so much for joining us today and sharing with us the love and wisdom in your life.

‍[53:16] Claudia: Thank you so very much.

‍[53:26] END OF AUDIO