The Cultural Rules Keeping Latina Leaders Stuck

Mi gente, this one is going to trigger you — in the best way. This week I’m sitting down with Denise Soler Cox, a cultural excavator, award-winning filmmaker, keynote speaker, and author who's spent the last decade going inside the cultures that shape how we lead, belong, and become who we are. After speaking on stage, women kept pulling Denise aside to share secrets they'd never told anyone. From this, Denise began to realize the cultural rules keeping Latina leaders shrinking and sidelined — and how to finally cut them out. Throughout the conversation, Jannese and Denise get into it: the two conflicting rules about money most of us grew up with (don't talk about it when it's bad, don't talk about it when it's good — and what that silence actually costs us), why corporate America rewards "polished" over honest, the hardest chapter Denise had to write (her relationship with her mom), boundaries, the "no contact" pendulum, and why the book is releasing in English and Spanish on the same day.

WE GET INTO:

01:50 – Origin story: Being Enye and the 17-year wait to make it

04:36 – How backstage confessions became a book about 10 taboos

09:31 – Corporate polish vs. real authenticity

11:56 – Cultural rules around what emotions are "acceptable"

16:10 – The two conflicting rules about money

19:20 – "Thermal equilibrium": the cold rooms in our families

21:06 – "White people problems" and the guilt of making more money

24:26 – Becoming the villain of the family story

27:32 – No contact vs. the hard conversation

31:33 – Gratitude vs. losing your ambition