Q. What is your favorite part about being Latina?
A. I have a deep love for our culture. I love our music, the way we express ourselves and our humor. I love our joie de vie – approach to life. So, my favorite way of being a Latina is to love life, the way Latinos do, to really appreciate moments in the present. We also have a generous spirit and a warmth that stems from our culture and rhythm. We love to dance, and we love to listen to music. We also care about how we present ourselves. Being a Latina means caring about the details in life, the quality of the journey, and making sure I savor every moment.
Q. What is your superpower?
A. Storytelling, which I approach as a creator and as an artist. You could say my superpower is drawing. But I realized early on that I like to do more than just draw. I also love team building and music. I write a lot of the music we use in Canticos, and now I’m an Emmy-nominated director.
Q. Tell me about a time that you were underestimated.
A. I’m underestimated all the time. I’m number four of five children. When you are the number four child and you are a girl in a Catholic household, the only expectation of you is that you don’t get pregnant out of wedlock. The expectations are nice and low. I also studied art, and my family thought, well, she can stay home and teach. When I became an entrepreneur and built my advertising agency, my family asked what is she doing? I was also underestimated professionally because the real creativity is expected from the general market agency, not the Latino agency. And even when the creativity came from us, they would sometimes acknowledge the idea but tell the general market agencies to do it. Later when we started doing Canticos in conjunction with Nickelodeon, they only put us on YouTube. They didn’t put us on broadcast because they weren’t expecting much. Then they saw how beautiful it was, and they said let’s put it on broadcast, and then it was Emmy-nominated. Even now, as a creative I’m the CEO, and many underestimate me. It doesn’t end, but it also doesn’t bother me anymore. It just means less pressure, and I know I can deliver.
Q. Tell us about where you’re from and the journey to where you are now.
A. I was born in Valle de la Pascua in Venezuela. I came to this country when I was eight months old. I came with my mom, my dad stayed back, and he commuted to Florida for years. When I was 10, my parents decided they were going to try to live in the same place, and my mom and I moved back to Caracas. I lived there for about 5 years, and I loved it. I got to know my cousins and became close with them –it was amazing. Then my parents separated, and we moved back to the U.S. For a while we’d go back in the summer, which I can’t do anymore; it’s too dangerous. I eventually studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and it took a while to find out who I was as an artist. You develop a skill set, but you don’t really know how that skill set is going to manifest in your career. I worked as a freelancer before realizing I love problem-solving and controlling my destiny, so I was a natural entrepreneur. I started an ad agency focused on the Latino market at age 26. I remember getting frustrated at brands that always wanted to bring in celebrities. I have nothing against celebrities, but I kept asking why you can’t build a brand that means and stands for something — rather than being so celebrity-reliant. When I realized the retailers weren’t going to do it, I thought wait, I can do this! I was having children then, so I set out to build a kids’ brand that would help me raise bilingual and bicultural kids in this country.
Q. That sounds amazing, and daunting. Where did you start Susie?
A. Well, I wanted something pretty, something I would be proud of. I joined forces with another Latino family, and my co-founder knew how to raise money and was well connected. As a creative, I knew a lot of musicians, animators, designers, and he knew brand managers and venture folks. We combined our talents and connections and launched Canticos, which is our bilingual book format. It has Spanish on one side and English on the other. It was a whole new way of making books — bilingual, one language at a time. And Canticos arrazó, but it was such a no brainer! The time had come, and I believe that hay que hacer las cosas con amor, and people recognize that. We wanted Canticos to be the type of high-quality content that families would identify with. We wanted moms to say I’m a Canticos mom and feel proud because it’s a beautiful product.
Q. Susie, so much of the content in Spanish feels like it’s at such a high level, meaning it targets older children and the reading level is very high. Were you intentional in starting much younger and much simpler?
A. Yes, it was almost like the book industry was being driven by writers who just liked to write a lot. Canticos is simple and fun. It’s nursery rhymes and preschool concepts. With Sol Solecito, kids learn the days of the week. With Un Elefante, you’ll learn to count from 1 to 10.
Q. Does targeting this age group set parents up to maintain a bilingual education?
A. Absolutely, there’s data behind that. The earlier you start a child with a second language, the more fluent they’ll be and the faster they’ll learn. Starting early can improve things like memory, mental agility, and flexibility, and even stave off dementia later in life. The other important thing is that we do it with music. Music is known to stimulate memory and confidence.
Q. What advice do you give people who are building a new brand?
A. The first thing is to think about what your brand stands for and document it. Go through a branding exercise and figure out who you are and what you stand for, and who your comparable brands are. A good question is, if you were at a party with other brands, what brands would you want to hang out with? Whose company do you want to be in? Then you can visually board that out. You can then hire a designer or work with the millions of tools out there. You build a community from there.
Q. How have you approached staying true to what your brand stands for culturally while having a broader appeal?
A. Two things. One, when you try to reach everyone ,many times you won’t get anyone on board. Make sure people know who you are and what you stand for, and then determine your target audience. That will help package your content around what your audience wants. Secondly, you have to figure out what problem you are solving. Every business has a problem. I’d recommend the book, “Fall in Love With the Problem, Not the Solution.” The hardest part of being an entrepreneur is focus and discipline.
Q. Who is someone else we should feature on our Informada?
A. Beatriz Acevedo, she is the co-founder of the multimedia platform Mitú, which was sold to Latido networks. She is also the founder of Suma Wealth, a leading financial technology company helping Latinos build wealth. You should also feature Patty Rodriguez,the co-founder of Lil’Libros, which is also a bilingual children’s publishing company, and the jewelry line MALA. She recently partnered with Jessica Alba.