A Latina’s Drive to Disrupt the Narrative

Latina journalist and co-founder of Latinidad Collective talks about Latinos’ incredible power of community and how our collective zest and feistiness for life fuel our journeys.

NB: How, as a Latina, has your background played into your work?

MP: I was born in the Dominican Republic and was raised in the United States. Dominicans are known for their warmth and hospitality. When you meet a Dominican, even after spending just 45 minutes with them, you’re instantly considered family. It’s common to invite others to share a meal, engage in conversation and celebrate together, embracing our shared moments.

My immigrant experience being a Dominican raised in the U.S. felt like you’re “ni de aqui, ni de alla” (neither from here nor there), like you literally have one foot here and one foot over there. That has very much informed the way that I approach things. There are topics where I think the Dominican way of thinking is great, and there are other topics where I realize we’ve evolved a little bit from that. As a journalist, this background has taught me to recognize the complexity of stories and perspectives. I understand that there’s always more than one side to a story, especially for immigrants like myself. Despite the challenges, this experience has instilled in me the drive to keep moving forward, both for myself and my family.

NB: Tell us about the launch of Latinidad Collective. What have you learned since launching it?

I launched my platform out of a mix of journalistic drive and feminine rage. It’s been incredibly rewarding and enlightening. Latindad Collective’s purpose is to highlight the beauty within our community, not just what women are doing but also what men are doing, and to bring forth topics that aren’t necessarily always discussed. One area that inspired me to delve deeper was featuring Latinos who have dyslexia. This stemmed from having a cousin who has dyslexia and often feels unseen in popular culture. This emphasizes what I aim to achieve within the scope of Latinidad Collective: to continue highlighting stories that may not receive attention because they “won’t bring in clicks.”

As a journalist for a couple of years, I’ve encountered situations where we understand the importance of a story but sometimes it’s dismissed because the people in charge are more concerned about the bottom line than good storytelling. This dissatisfaction led me to start my own venture. Even if nothing else comes of it, it’s a passion project for me to explore the type of storytelling I believe has been lacking in some areas. This isn’t to discredit the amazing work of others, as many creatives are doing exceptional work, but there’s always room for more.

NB: Latinidad Collective is not only redefining the Latino narrative but also telling important stories of others doing the same. You recently covered a story about redefining hair care in terms of beauty, can you tell me more about that?

I recently had the chance to collaborate with the Varona sisters who are behind Ocoa Beauty. One of the things I related to about their story was growing up Dominican, despite having straight hair currently in this interview, you always hear the narrative of, “el pelo rizado es el pelo malo” (curly hair is bad hair), from everyone. You’re not fully dressed up unless your hair is straight and this is something that the Varona sisters also grew up hearing. 

In the process of chasing that Eurocentric beauty standard, you kind of lose a sense of yourself, and the truth is that I have this hair because of all the different cultures that merged to bring me to life. Within the Dominican Republic, you have so many varying cultures, whether they come from an Arab-speaking country, Spain or Africa. There is a large mix within the Dominican Republic and our hair eventually shows that. So, I really loved their initiative to not only use ingredients from our country but also use them in a way that highlights the things that make us individually beautiful.

NB: What advantage do you think Latinos have to disrupt the collective zeitgeist?

MP: Our superpower is the conjunction of two things, our zest and feistiness for life and our power of community. On this journey, I’ve found that so many people, even those that I’ve just met, are cheering me on, encouraging me to keep doing it, and offering support. It’s like running with an Olympic torch and everybody is next to you, cheering you on because they know the importance of what you’re doing. I’ve met so many people who are killing it and because of the power of community, they’re able to network with people who know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who can get you through a door that you didn’t even know was possible. I don’t even know if there are enough words in this universe to adequately describe how wonderful it is to have that sense of community. On days when you’re feeling down about yourself, you can just message someone or send out a LinkedIn post. I’ve written posts on LinkedIn saying, “This is hard,” and everybody responds with words of encouragement, telling me to keep going. I feel it’s important to tap into that sense of community whenever possible and foster it. Because there will be difficult days when you feel like you’re carrying a torch and your feet really hurt and you just want to lay down and take a nap. But then you have a conversation with someone for just five minutes, they remind you that you’ve got this, and you find the strength to carry on for another day. I think that’s such a superpower. It also highlights, at least for me, that we’re not a monolith. We are a collection of beautiful humans, each trying to make a difference in this life, on this planet, to push us forward.

NB: Who is your Atrevido Preferido/Atrevida Preferida?

MP: The atrevido and atrevida that I admire the most are my parents because they decided to leave their country to give their three-year-old daughter the best chance at getting ahead. So, we moved to New York and basically started from zero. 

My parents are graduated lawyers in the Dominican Republic and unfortunately, they couldn’t get accredited to practice law in this country because it was too expensive at the time. This is in the nineties and my mom told me the story of when she was trying to see how the accreditation process was and she mentioned “when the lady told me how much it was, I left her office crying because I knew it wasn’t going to be possible for me.” But they’ve just made it work. At my age, they already had a little human who depended on them for everything, and they knew that they had to keep moving forward because they had no other option. They uprooted from everything in hopes that their child and later their second child would have all the opportunities they did not have in their home country and I hope that they know their sacrifice was worth it.

NB: Whose work right now do you find really exciting and why?

Several people come to mind immediately, not in any order. Marivette Navarette from The Mujerista. I adore her work and the community she’s built over the last five years. Thatiana Diaz-Roman from Remezcla, who’s doing so many amazing things. Ashley K. Stoyanov Ojeda, who wrote the book “Jefa in Training.” She is a dear friend and a consummate inspiration. She created a business in a very unconventional way that shows that when you have heart and passion for something, you can get very far. Victoria Carrington Chavez, the beauty and brains behind Lilac and Aspen, a creative branding agency and La Mezcla. Natalie Zamora, who is an endometriosis advocate. Liz Rebecca Alarcón from Project Pulso. These are all women that I admire because of their strength, heart, determination and the way that they’re trying to make the world a better place – I’m inspired by all of them.

NB: ¿Suerte o sudor? What percentage do you attribute your success to in terms of luck vs. hard work?

I am a believer that it’s a happy combination of both. So, I want to say it’s 50% sudor and 50% suerte because the hard work gets you to a point where then the suerte just magically happens. Not to say that there aren’t instances when something has fallen on your lap but a lot of times, at least in my case, it’s always been because I’ve been putting in the work. It hasn’t necessarily been a linear path. This is something that I like to ask people during interviews and a lot of them reply “I did the work that I needed to do and opportunities came while I was on that road and I just jumped at the opportunity.” You don’t think about it at the moment, but all of those opportunities teach you skills, transferable skills that you can use when the “suerte” pops open a door that you can waltz on through.

NB: What was your ‘ponte las pilas’ moment?

I’ve experienced several moments that were complete pivots in my life. In 2018, I was coming out of a relationship that taught me the importance of not accepting things that might not be good for me. So, I decided to embark on a journey of letting go of anything that wasn’t right for me. The first thing I attacked was my career. I call it an attack because I was at a point where I was ready to make big changes. That’s when I pivoted from social media marketing to journalism, and I’ve been on the journalism track since 2019. Landing a job at Hola! USA was a pivotal moment for me considering I had no prior editorial experience, except for running a blog in 2014. This highlights the non-linear nature of my journey. 

Another pivotal moment was when I spoke to Gigi Diaz, a fantastic business coach in Miami. I shared my idea with her, and she encouraged me to pursue it. It took a couple of months to get started with Latinidad Collective, but once I set the launch date, I committed to pouring everything I had into it. If this venture doesn’t go as planned, I see it as an opportunity to pave the way for something else. I approach everything with an open heart and the hope that I’ll learn valuable lessons that will contribute to my personal growth and evolution.

NB: Are there any stories at the moment that aren’t being covered that you would love to cover? 

MP: The topic that makes me happiest is anything food-related. I love talking to chefs and I love learning their stories. In addition to that, I love anything related to women’s and men’s health and how to approach having aging parents if you’re an only child. 

Anything finance-related, too. I recently shared a video on my Instagram about two sisters who posted a reel whose mother had passed away maybe a year and a half before they posted this video. They were talking about all the things that they didn’t know they would have to do after their mother passed away, and one of them was that they didn’t know that they had to file her taxes. Who would know that? It’s those little things that nobody talks about, that nobody thinks about until the moment that it’s there. 

The one topic that also gets me a little angry is women’s health because it’s so under-researched. I was listening to a podcast called “Latina to Latina” where they were interviewing Dalina Soto, she’s a Dominican American nutritionist, and she was talking about how the studies for high blood pressure and cholesterol were studies done on white men from the 1940s and 1950s, and that’s what they’re using as the markers today, but that’s not accurate. The sample size was not definitive of what society actually looks like. For me to hear as a woman, that a lot of the studies being used to help diagnose whatever’s going on with my body are based on outdated data is really upsetting and we need to talk more about that. 

NB: Is there any last piece of advice that you want to share?  

MP: Remember to give yourself the grace and compassion you give your best friend and your loved ones because you are also worthy of all of that grace and compassion.