ABOUT MARISA
I listen for the sentence beneath the sentence.
I have always been interested in what people mean before they quite know how to say it.
That instinct began in journalism, where the first answer was rarely the real story. At People and People en Español, I learned to listen for the detail that changed everything: the contradiction, the memory, the sentence someone almost passed over. Later, in corporate, executive, and crisis communications, the stakes changed, but the work did not. I was still asking questions, finding the meaning inside the noise, and helping people say what they actually meant.
I have done that work inside large organizations, across languages and cultures, and at the kitchen table. I have helped leaders communicate when the words carried consequences. I have helped build institutions, including the International Charter School of Atlanta, from an idea into something real. And as a Cuban-American woman who grew up moving between languages, places, and ways of seeing the world, I learned early that words carry more than information. They carry history, identity, judgment, and belonging.
That is why I care so deeply about what happens when technology enters the writing process. AI can help us organize, synthesize, and create. But it cannot begin with an empty page and somehow know what matters to you. It needs the stories you tell, the decisions you have made, the language you return to, the things you believe, and even the things you would never say. Without that source material, your voice does not become more efficient. It becomes more generic.
My work begins with conversation. I listen for the story underneath, trace the patterns in how you think, and help turn what you know into something clear, useful, and lasting. The goal is not to manufacture a polished version of you. It is to preserve the real one, so your ideas can travel farther without losing the person who gave them meaning.
Former People & People en Español journalistCorporate and crisis communications leaderFounding board chair and institution builderBilingual · English / Spanish
