Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

leonor,

YES, Hispanic speakers can go mainstream and should. Doing work as a motivational speaker myself I will be the first to tell you that it requires a lot of relationship building far beyond your own cultural, ethnic or racial group. The reason why they are not more visible depends on how they are working to make this possible. Every speaker has to not only work at their craft but they have to work at expanding serious relationship contacts, branding campaigns, PR campaigns, endorsements, product lines, and speaking engagements that take them far beyond their own community of people. I hope this helps. If you have any additional questions please let me know. Is there anything else I can do for you?

Your Servant, Deremiah, *CPE (Customer Passion Evangelist)

Hispanic speakers are only ready to go mainstream if they have something important to say. Simply speaking Spanish doesn't make them desirable per se.

For example, Juan Antonio Negroni is an accomplished HR professional (formerly with Hilton International) who has a passion for helping companies deal with the effects of job stress. He consults and speaks on the subject, and he can speak in either English or Spanish, depending on the audience.

He's a terrific speaker in either language, not because he is bilingual, but because he has something important and valuable to impart, and he immediately engages his audience. That's the kind of speaker you want -- someone who has important information or perspective to share, and who knows how to communicate effectively.

So to your question about Hispanic speakers, yes, it's important that we have great role models and visible contributors from the Hispanic community, but they need to do more than speak Spanish and come from Hispanic roots -- they need to have an important message for their audiences and be able to inspire appropriate action.

By using the term "mainstream" in connection with an Hispanic speaker, what exactly does that mean?

If it means booking an Hispanic speaker for Spanish speaking engagements at the highest level, surely as mgoodman points out, that has more to do with whether they have something important to contribute, other than just their particular ethnicity or linguistic capabilities.

By the same token, if Picasso were alive, and spoke only broken English, but gave a great lecture on aspects of modern painting, would he be a good speaker?

Of course, and people would flock to see him! Because of his ability to speak English or Spanish... No! Because he is a great man and would be worth listening to in ANY language, with subtitles, sign-language or any way of receiving whatever he had to say.

When JFK went to Berlin and announced "Ich bin ein Berliner" did he get the gig because he knew a few words of German? I doubt it - he went to speak and attracted a massive audience because he had something important to say, in a foreign language, about Freedom.

I think it's important to stand back and ask what a speaker can contribute, and to which audience or target market, before worrying about vague terms like "mainstream" that has little to do with the medium, and everything to do with the message.

If language is the only barrier to getting that message across, translators are not all that expensive!

Hope this helps...

ChrisB

JFK didn't know enough German... apparently he announced, "I am a donut."

Thank you, Eddie Izzard!

- Shelley