Latinas In Podcasting: From Dream to Reality
The origin story of building a community from scratch
On the last episode of La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas, I told the listeners to check out this post for the full behind-the-scenes tea of building Latinas In Podcasting.
It wasn’t without its moments!
Latinas In Podcasting (LIP) was a goal born out of a naive dream that podcasting spaces are open to everyone.
I got a cold hard look at the reality of the situation when I attended my first podcasting conference. And having returned from attending the most recent one just last week, it’s become even more clear how much room we have to grow!
Who and What is Latinas In Podcasting?
What Latinas In Podcasting has become is a vibrant community made up of the richness of our experience as Latinas and podcasters. Our members include everyone from bootstrapped independent podcasters with day jobs to women who run podcast networks for people who look and sound like us.
When I sat down to think about who I wanted to be in community with, the people who came to mind included the brilliant artist and musician behind the amazing show Six Degrees of Cats. It’s the best show on the entire internet that you don't know about yet.
Trust me, you are in for a treat.
But when I thought about my friend Amanda's show, one that networks should be clamoring to fund, I realized she's but one amongst millions of us doing the best we can on shoestring budgets and outputting true audio delicacies. Delight right in your ears!
But how do you find them?
While Latinas In Podcasting was created to center and amplify Latina voices, we also welcome and support other underrepresented podcasters, especially women of color, bilingual creators, and those from other marginalized communities.
The goal is to make podcasting more accessible by providing education, mentorship, and networking opportunities in a space that also feels inclusive and culturally relevant. By focusing on visibility and empowerment, Latinas In Podcasting helps break down industry barriers for voices that are often overlooked, ensuring that diverse stories and perspectives are heard.
Why Does LIP Need to Exist?
But why does a community like this even need to exist? I've been asked this repeatedly:
What are you doing?
What problem do you solve?
Who do you serve?
These questions felt difficult to answer when what I really wanted to do was scream, do you not see what is happening all around us????
What's kind of wild is when these questions were posed by our own people in a kind of dismissive manner. The crabs-in-a-bucket mentality is toxic, but strong.
Well, I know a little bit about the power behind community and the strength in numbers. As a student of history (Go Bruins!), I’m intimately familiar with building tables when there are too few seats. And as the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter, I was forged to rally and lead. So I looked to other women who were also forged to rally and lead for guidance.
Lead, Don’t React
In late spring 2024, I was lucky to be in a room with one of the most storied Latinas in the podcasting space, Juleyka Lantigua. She’s the founder of LWC Studios and sits on the board of governors of The Podcast Academy.
I asked Juleyka for her advice in creating this community, and she took a great deal of umbrage with how I described it:
"Never lead from lack. You do not need to operate from a deficit."
It hurt to hear, especially since it was yet another Latina who said to me, “are you going to solve a problem?” So yes, that was my jumping off point and how I opened the conversation with Juleyka.
Which was in a public zoom, by the way. There were several witnesses to this. It was kind of mortifying.
Because when I was first formulating what this community might look like, I didn't have the right words. I kept thinking “sorority,” which doesn't actually make a lot of sense culturally. And that's what happens when you spend your life code switching with how you present yourself: sometimes your vocabulary gets stuck on one side.
But Juleyka’s words didn’t have to rattle in my head for very long. Because amplifying childfree Latina voices is exactly how I approach my own podcast.
Thanks to that difficult conversation, the idea for a Latinas In Podcasting Virtual Summit was born that very day. But we’ll get to that.
Where Latinas In Podcasting Started
So how did I determine this gap existed? Let me take you back to my very first podcasting conference right here in Los Angeles in March 2022.
I was just a baby podcaster with all of three or four episodes out when the show was still called The Maker Muse Podcast. It was also my first time in a crowd after lockdown, so I was kind of nervous.
And I'm not used to being nervous in crowds because I'm an extrovert!
Honestly, a part of me felt kind of like an imposter. Who the hell was going to care about a new podcaster who didn’t even know what she was doing? Let me tell you, that podcasting conference was a shock to my system. It is not like I'm not used to being the diversity in spaces.
But this is Los Angeles—the city name is literally in Spanish. Shouldn't there be brown people here, just by proximity? And that's when I saw it: a banner with one huge word on it: LATINA.
And like a moth to a flame, I ran my ass over to that table and met Theresa Gonzalez, the host of Latinas from the Block to the Boardroom.
You've heard Theresa on this show before we talked about Otherhood in episode 38.
Theresa was there as an exhibitor, which is a ballsy move for an independent podcaster. I knew that this woman meant business, so I asked her, "where are the rest of us?" And she gave me that look.
You know, the look.
It's a mixture of resigned weariness from being one of the only brown people in the room plus the fire that runs through our blood making us proud to be Latinas.
That's the look.
So I made it my mission to find as many other Latines as I could, and during the networking portion, one night there were SEVENTEEN of us all chatting it up.
That's it: 17 in a room of several hundred podcasters and industry people. The business people, the companies with money.
Only 17 of us!
But it wasn't all for naught. During that same conference, I attended a session on monetization that blew me away. The presenter, a Black woman named Michelle Jackson, gave us 26 ways to make money that had nothing to do with the traditional—and frankly inaccessible-to-most-indie-podcasters—ad model.
I asked to speak with her after the session, and she told me about a group for podcasters of color on Facebook (now on Discord). And that's where I found my people.
Fast forward to the following year’s conference in Vegas, where that Discord group held a networking event. A handful of Latines and other podcasters of color showed up and we had a great time. But the overwhelming attendance is what my friend Sasha Willis, who is half of the powerhouse do behind the production house Atabey & Company, called “male and pale.”
She’s not wrong.
We came back to Los Angeles for the same event in 2024 and that is when Latinas In Podcasting was finally born.
Theresa and I kicked it off the night before the conference began with a happy hour at Bar Magnolia inside the gorgeous Figueroa Hotel. It was an intimate group in what used to be a critical location for women in Los Angeles. According to their website:
The hotel was the largest commercial building funded by women for women when it opened in 1926 by the YWCA as a safe haven for solo female travelers, who were prohibited from checking into most hotels without a male chaperone.
Then during the conference, we hosted another networking session with podcaster Azucena Garcia of the now bilingual show Parálisis Cerebral Respuestas (Cerebral Palsy Answers).
And that room was filled with people coming through! They weren’t all Latines, but people of all colors and heritages. We even played the Mexican game lotería!
IYKYK.
And I didn't want that momentum to end. But how do you gather people when you're scattered all over the city, the state, the country?
The Event that Launched a Community
Now, I don't know if you know this, but I'm not just a sexy voiced podcaster and sporadic Substack writer you read here. Aside from being an Ivy League school dropout, a former photographer, and a powerlifting pickle baller, I'm also an award-winning conference and event manager.
If there's one thing I know how to do and do well, it’s organize events!
So when Juleyka challenged me to create, instead of react, the Latinas In Podcasting Virtual Summit was born. (And since the content is timeless and available, you can still access it through the magic of a VIP ticket.)
The LIP Virtual Summit was built on a very simple two-part mission:
to lower the barrier of entry to podcasting resources and knowledge, and
to encourage Latinas and underserved voices to connect, collaborate, and launch.
The goal was to serve new and aspiring podcasters, to introduce them to podcasting the right way, so they didn't waste time spinning their wheels and get discouraged before even starting out. And while a good portion of the 125 attendees were indeed newbie podcasters, about a quarter of them were veterans with three or more years of podcasting.
That was just last October. For the record, I barely hit my third anniversary in podcasting last month, so some of the attendees had more experience than me!
At first, I was confused by this. Why would veteran Latina podcasters be interested in an event for newbies? What does a newbie-focused podcasting summit have to offer these women who have been podcasting longer than me?
But here’s what one of the virtual summit speakers, Angela Briones, said herself in the last episode:
I joined Latinas In Podcasting because podcasting can get lonely, and I really wanted to connect with other podcasters so we could learn from one another. The biggest thing I've gained from this community that I didn't expect is the instant connectedness we all have with each other. Everyone wants everyone else to succeed and wants to lift each other up….If I were telling a fellow Latina about Latinas In Podcasting, I would describe it as one of the most important parts of the podcast process, community.
That's what they were craving: community! It's all right there.
And that's what we’ve continued to deliver since day one.
Evolution of Latinas In Podcasting
We had two live events tied to the summit. You never know how that’s going to go given time zones, work, etc. But a surprising number of people showed up! So now the challenge became: how do we keep them engaged?
How does an event turn into an actual community?
When the US election happened just a few weeks after the summit, I knew that either way the votes turned out, it would be nice to gather with others who might feel some sort of way. So I emailed all the attendees and let them know a free space would be available Wednesday morning after the election.
And WOW. Even more people came to that! We all collectively felt knocked on our asses, and it was clear that people needed to get their emotions out in a place that felt safe.
A slew of members came through to cry, to be angry, to be together before having to go out and face reality. It was strangely empowering, knowing we could just BE and not have to perform for the outside world.
On the day of the inauguration, we did the same thing. This time we called it a virtual coffee break—or cafecito. It was one last moment to exist and breathe in peace, together.
Both of these have now evolved into free weekly events. On Wednesdays we have our 2-hour co-working block, and on Fridays, we enjoy our 1-hour cafecito. Members are welcome to drop in and ask questions, or just say hi.
These are my favorite days of the week.
We’ve also added monthly educational workshops based on member requests. So far this year we’ve held workshops on:
Energetic cord cutting
Podcast vision planning
Adobe podcast software
And this month we’ll have a workshop on how to protect your day job while running your mouth on your podcast. If you’re a podcaster with a day job, join us for Podcasting with a 9-5 presented by LIP member Carla Santamaria, host of the The First Gen Coach Podcast!
What’s Next for Latinas In Podcasting
Last week I was once again at that same original podcasting conference, in Chicago. It was a completely different experience than the first one in 2022. Because this time I wasn’t a newbie, and I didn’t feel like an imposter. I wasn’t even representing my own podcast.
I was there as the founder of Latinas In Podcasting, and speaking about it onstage with these amazing women.
That Michelle Jackson is the same woman I met all those years ago at that first conference. And all three of them, Michelle, Mónika, and Sasha also spoke at the Latinas In Podcasting Virtual Summit. Here we were, onstage together.
The topic: community. Of course!
I can’t fully describe what it’s like to sit as an authority with three other women of color (and three of us are boricuas!!) in a room meant for the male & pale. It was a mix of rebellious energy, quiet power, and revealing the truth behind a lot of bullshit.
Suffice to say, it’s pretty fucking rad.
And the crowd, tiny as it was on the last day, wanted more! The Q&A lasted so long it cut into the next speaker’s presentation, so we got kicked out. But all that did was further validate why Latinas In Podcasting needs to exist.
This presentation would never have seen the light of day without community support. I didn’t even know Sasha or Mónika personally before their speaker submissions for the virtual summit last August, before the LIP community even existed.
Do you know how expensive it is to go to a conference in a major city like Chicago? It cost me $2000 alone—and that’s with a free speaker ticket! That’s a LOT to ask of people you’ve just met. But when I floated the idea of putting together a panel of the four of us at this conference, all of them came back with a resounding yes.
THAT’S the power of community: being able to lean on it for support.
Why would these women agree to spend a ton of money and be away from their families for 3 days? Because they believe in the power of community just as much as I do. They bring their expertise and collaborative spirits with them, and to their own individual communities, and it makes them want to share it with others.
That’s the kind of person you’ll find inside Latinas In Podcasting. People show up for each other, and we support one another.
It’s a circle, not a pyramid.
And we’re just getting started.
Stay tuned for more about LIP and the 2nd Annual Virtual Summit coming this October 16-17, 2025!
Congratulations on your success and on the growth of this important space for Latina podcasters! If you’re ever in Miami, I’d love to meet and may be able to help with activations here. Universe, do your thing. 🫶🏼✨
Love a good origin story. Thanks for sharing! We all need to lift each other up to raise the unheard voices.