Denise Soler Cox—a keynote speaker at this year’s WEC, June 21-23 in San Francisco—understands the feeling of being caught between two worlds.
Don't miss her keynote at WEC, June 22, 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m.
In her case, those worlds are the Puerto Rican culture of her parents and the mainstream American culture in which she was raised.
Soler Cox has an important story to tell, and it’s relevant to us all. As it turns out, we all need a little help learning how to think about culture, identity and what it means to belong.
“Denise is not a DEI speaker,” says Kris Campbell, VP of speakers and entertainment at Heroic Productions. “Her message is pure and personal, but it’s also a powerful message for leadership. There has never been a time where it’s more important to bust through barriers, communicate more and embrace our differences (easier said than done)! Denise’s message is the stuff of transformation. She has a message I had never heard before. It snuck up on me. It stayed with me. And I believe it’s helped me be a better person.”
Your gateway to the new era of events. Learn more about and register for WEC San Francisco, June 21-23.
At WEC, her appearance will include a 37-minute director’s screening of her award-winning film “Being Eñye”—with 500 people able to watch the film and experience the Q&A after her talk.
“Emotions will flow after the screening,” says Soler Cox, who co-produced and co-directed the film with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Henry Ansbacher. The film won the coveted “Audience Favorite” at the Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival as well as the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival.
Being Eñye is the first documentary released by Project Eñye, a multimedia production company aimed at transforming how the public thinks and speaks about culture and identity. “Eñye” refers to a group of people who struggle with feeling caught between the norms, beliefs and value systems of American culture and the culture in which many U.S. Latinos were raised.
Attendees of all colors, ethnicities and nationalities come up to Soler Cox after a presentation and say, “This is my story!”
“Her message is pure and personal, but it’s also a powerful message for leadership.”
“It’s been amazing to watch this message become a catalyst to help people open up to share their personal experience and to realize, sometimes for the first time, that they are not alone,” she says. “I receive emails from people all over the world who’ve seen the film and reach out to share their unique journey in finding belonging. It’s important to understand how global this experience really is.”
The confidences audience members have shared have sparked production on the filmmaking duo’s second documentary—this one on secret-keeping. Soler Cox believes there is a strong connection between secret-keeping and experiencing a lack of belonging.
“The deepest barrier to belonging is a cultural norm that teaches us that I can’t tell you the truth about me,” she says. “However, if we can authentically tell our truth at the right time, with the right people, we are free.”
Soler Cox, who is also writing her first book on the topic of belonging—slated for publication in winter 2023—believes her mission is more important than ever now that the world is opening up and workplaces are calling their teams back to the office.
“It’s been amazing to watch this message become a catalyst to help people open up to share their personal experience.”
“Marginalized people are talking amongst themselves and sharing, ‘I don’t want to go back to work. I don’t want to go back because I feel like I don’t fit in or belong there.’” She says, noting that she’s heard from her clients throughout the pandemic that they felt safer and more productive working from home, not having to worry about belonging-related issues.
Soler Cox believes that by bringing the challenges of Eñyes out into the open, the challenges that come with figuring out where you belong, she can help employers grappling with the “Great Resignation” to create workplaces where people from diverse backgrounds not only feel comfortable, but where they will want to stay.
“When I spoke at Microsoft, a high-performing Latina said, ‘Thank you so much for explaining this in such depth. I had my resignation letter written out already. This made me understand a conflict with my boss and decide [to] figure something else out,’” she says. “That’s inspirational!”
When asked what the meeting and event industry could do about this, Soler Cox says, “I think the meeting and event industry has an incredible opportunity to provide a space of transformation for people. The connection that happens between people when they can be face-to-face—it’s where all the magic happens!”
