Liz Castells-Heard on Culture, Strategy, and Growth

As appeared in Hispanic Executive, March 11, 2026.

Liz Castells-Heard has spent over four decades in advertising proving a point that too many brands still resist. Culture is not a segment; it is the market.

“I sometimes feel like I’m stuck between Mad Men and Groundhog Day,” the CEO and chief strategy officer of INFUSION by Castells jokes. “In different ways, I’ve been preaching the same thing for years, and people are finally coming around to understand it.”

Who has listened? The agency’s core clients –– McDonald’s, Toyota, and Spectrum –– are brands known for staying ahead of Multicultural growth, along with P&G, Unilever and many others.

Yet Castells-Heard says that about 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies still treat cultural marketing as an option, add-on or initiative rather than infrastructure, or don’t engage.

There’s a lesson in that gap — when nearly half of America is Multicultural, they drive 100 percent of population, job, and household growth, shape trends and demand.  Even more telling, two-thirds of White Americans say the rising Multicultural majority enriches America, influences their own brand decisions, and this reality should be reflected by brands.

Castells-Heard won’t stay quiet getting this message across anytime soon. “I’m a Latina Scorpio from New York,” she says with a smile. “Subtlety isn’t my thing.”

The Making of a Multicultural Lifer

Castells-Heard is often called bold, smart-as-a-whip, fearless. Her conviction was forged early. “I was born in Cuba, a seven-month preemie with my brain and mouth on overdrive,” she jokes. She was exiled at age four by the Castro regime — birthday cake in hand, family jewels hidden in frosting, and little else. Displacement shaped her understanding of identity. A truth only sharpened by a life lived globally. 

“Culture is DNA,” she says. “It codes who we are and how we move.”

Moving from Puerto Rico to Pittsburgh, she was bullied for being a “spic,” but won people over. In Connecticut, she burnt bras for women’s rights. She was a tenacious, inquisitive, and vocal kid, or as she puts it, “double annoying.” Those qualities became her edge as a future CEO.

She started in investment banking in Geneva. At Stanford Business School, a last-semester marketing class she took “for fun” changed everything. She fell in love with decoding the human “why” behind the numbers — and pivoted instantly. “My classmates may be billionaires or own sports teams now,” she says, “but I genuinely love what I do. I get to build brands, drive clients’ results, shape culture, and the next generation.”

Her advertising career began on Madison Avenue at a time when women and people of color were barely visible. A few female MBAs were guinea pigs of sorts in management-track roles. She was told she was “too outspoken for a woman, too educated for a Latina, too pretty to be smart, too much.”  She just leaned in more.

She cut tension with jokes about the testosterone in the room, letting the guys know that she meant business — refusing victimhood without denying reality. She got big agency and client experience and worked harder. Later, she lost earned partnerships but chose not to litigate––knowing that her next opportunity would be better. It was. One firm collapsed after she left.

“I learned early that ‘no’ just means ‘how,’” she says. “Impossible is a condition of the mind.”

She is a champion of education, the advancement of, and appropriate portrayals of women and Multicultural communities in media. Today, success also means something more personal: the number of people she’s trained and mentored who are now running the show and making a difference. Her advice to those she mentors mirrors her own experience.

“You can take something terrible and turn it into something magical,” Castells-Heard says. “How you handle difficult situations is what defines you, not the situation.”

A Much-Needed INFUSION

That mindset defines Castells-Heard’s leadership: candid, collaborative, grounded in grit, corazón, constant learning, and a No-BS ethos. She says: “Analytics is our lifeblood. Strategy is our superpower and creativity our soul. But heart is the compass.”

Founded in 1998, the agency is a tight, nimble, client-centric shop, one that embedded AI across the board long before it was fashionable to stay ahead, sharper and adaptable.  The bar is high. People must be flexible, multifunctional, curious, and accountable. If they want a tidy checklist and a nine-to-five, this is not the place — and she’ll help them find their true path.

Despite her volume and velocity, her leadership is rooted in generosity, listening, empathy and loyalty. She never asks anyone to do what she won’t do herself, still works 15-hour days, celebrates her team’s wins loudly — and still considers former employees part of the ‘familia.’”

A pivotal chapter in the agency’s evolution came when she partnered with Leticia Juárez. Where Liz’s kinetic force and vision pushes brands to think differently, Leticia’s calm steady command, approachable style, and insight delivers precise orchestration — as the clients’ voice of reason. “Our clients know we’re all in,” Juárez says. “That creates trust and magic.”

They’re a powerhouse duo in cultural marketing, positioning INFUSION as a strategic growth partner — not a tactical vendor. They sit upstream, embedding cultural fluency into business decisions and frameworks. “Our job is to power our clients’ growth in collaboration by infusing innovation and insight,” Castells-Heard says. “Clients face pressure, shifting goals and chaos. We help them turn monkeys into rocks — creating clarity and uncovering opportunity. The more we know, the more we can impact.”

Their consistent results speak loudly:

With McDonald’s, their Hispanic marketing by development phase playbook, border guidelines, and segmentation work became corporate policy.

For Time Warner Cable, their acculturation and cultural media marketing models, and 5-P “Life My Way” platform tripled Hispanic awareness and share.

For Nestlé Pure Life, their Hispanic-only led launch drove outsized growth. Not only was the strategy and campaign later adopted by the general market, it delivered Nestlé Waters’ only global sales growth in the 2008 recession, an outcome still incredible by any metric.

Castells-Heard invokes the team she’s built early and often. It’s here that you understand the push and pull of her tenacity and heart. “I may be the energy and the vision,” she says, “but it’s my team’s amazing talent and work that makes it repeatable.” Keep reading