| From Cuba to CEO: Culture Isn’t a Month. It’s a Lifetime. By Liz Castells-Heard, CEO / Chief Strategy Officer, INFUSION By Castells September 15 through October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month—a celebration of our roots and the extraordinary ways our culture, energy and contributions shape America. I don’t take that lightly. For me, it means reflecting on the experiences that shaped not only who I am, but how I lead, listen, mentor, and connect. Being Cuban-born taught me something no business school could—how to live between worlds. Exiled at four, I left Cuba birthday cake in hand, family jewels hidden in the frosting. I grew up Cuban, through and through—from Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Geneva, London, Detroit, to NY and LA. The ZIP codes changed. Who I was never did. Being displaced while carrying culture as both DNA and compass gave me the fearlessness and grit to turn every ‘no’ into a ‘how’, and live fully because nothing is guaranteed. Code-switching across cultures, languages, and experiences gave me cultural fluency. That is what made me a marketer. Everything else is résumé. I was told I was too outspoken, too educated, too much. I leaned in harder every time. My career on Madison Avenue began when women and people of color were barely visible. I chose my path: acknowledge, adapt, advance but never acquiesce. The girl who arrived with nothing but cake and nerve eventually became a CEO. Still loud. Still no BS. Still relentless. Still curious. Still refusing to be anything less. A Stanford MBA and 40+ years in the industry taught me: Get there before the map exists. Like developing McDonald’s first English-Hispanic advertising and webnovela. Leading the first national Hispanic initiatives for Comcast and Time Warner Cable, earning the nickname “La Reina de Telecom.” Building acculturation modeling, bilingual mobile buy-flows, and influencer partnerships before they went mainstream. Our Nestlé Pure Life Water campaign was called “off-the-charts effective” by the Wall Street Journal. More than 130 awards later—the work still speaks for itself. None of it was accidental. It came from understanding people deeply enough to reach them honestly—slicing the numbers every way possible to find the gaps, opportunities, and truths—knowing how, when, where and why culture matters, where intersections exist, and how to authentically weave those stories. And the fortune to have a team of sharp, multi-talented, amazing people who don’t do “meh”—but “hell yeah” work. My team personifies the depth of U.S. Hispanic heritages —from Mexicans, Chicanos, Tejanos, Cubans, Nuyoricans, Dominicans, to Colombians, Afro-Latinos, Salvadorans, and Brazilians. We value the core traits that bind us: collectivism, family loyalty, optimism, cultural duality, engagement, pasión and trailblazing spirit. We express that pride through different idioms, customs, food, or music. But we all share a foundational cultural operating system that governs how we trust, live, think and choose—and the capacity to hold multiple truths. Brands that understand and champion our cultural depth earn a fierce loyalty that surface-level representation never will. And brands that only appear during Hispanic Heritage Month is not recognition or inclusion—it’s cliché and belittling—and quite shortsighted. Hispanics are America’s growth engine. Not someday. Right now. Over 20 years ago, I coined “transculturation” because vague terms couldn’t hold the work accountable. It means embedding cultural fluency across the organization, not just advertising. Our strategy for Nestlé Pure Life delivered its only global sales growth in the last recession. For Time Warner Cable, it tripled market share. For Spectrum, double-digit growth. At McDonald’s, it became corporate policy. None of that was happenstance. It’s because I have spent my life learning how to make people feel seen. That’s part methodology. Mostly, it’s cultural identity. This month reminds me where I came from—and why the work matters. Cultural fluency is not a nice-to-have. It is essential. Contact: Liz Castells-Heard, liz@adcastells.com https://infusionbycastells.com/ | 
