For Yanira Castro, the Elmsford-raised founding CEO of Humanity Communications Collective, there”™s a difference between a passion and a purpose.
Communications, she said, is her passion. But her purpose is to help nonprofits, and in particular social-justice organizations, tell their stories.
She has done just that with her firm, a five-year-old Charlotte, North Carolina-based company, that has put her among the 4.2% of women business owners who”™ve realized $1 million in revenue.
“You have to tell an integrated story on the web and social media and at events,” she said. Too often, she added, these exist as silos, leaving the questions of who you are and who you want to be in the world unanswered.
“Let us be the ones to get you out there,” she said. “You do what you are good at, and we”™ll do what we are good at,” across multiple platforms.
Many have taken her up on that offer. The collective”™s client list includes poet Luivette Resto; journalist/activist Rosa Clemente; Marta Moreno Vega, Ph.D., founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute; Justice for Migrant Women; The Marsha P. Johnson Institute, protecting the rights of Black transgender people; Outdoor Afro, celebrating Black connections with nature; The Latinx House, fostering Latinx contributions to society; The Solutions Project, working toward 100% renewable U.S. energy; and”¯Davidson Wine Co. Humanity Communications Collective has also played a key role in a six-year, $85-million National Wildlife Federation campaign to create the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over U.S. Route 101 in the Los Angeles area. The project, which will enable mountain lions and other animals to cross unharmed over the 10-lane freeway at a spot that is their natural habitat, broke ground on April 22, Earth Day. Humanity Communications Collective handled everything from thematic development to graphics, video, social media, web development, fundraising and metrics and analytics for the federation”™s fourth annual P-22 Day Festival. (It”™s named for a media-celebrated puma, with GPS collar No. 22, that lives in Griffith Park.)
“What”™s wonderful about this story is the work done to get the (Los Angeles) community involved,” said Castro, who has a particular interest in the environment and education. “It”™s about coexisting, about working together”¦and how it affects (the community). That”™s the power of storytelling.”
That power has fascinated her since childhood. Growing up in Elmsford, a Bronx-born Afro-Latina of Puerto Rican parentage, Castro said, “I wanted to be press secretary for the White House”¦.I really liked to talk to people”¦.But I never wanted to be a journalist.”
After graduating from Alexander Hamilton High School in Elmsford, she attended Ithaca College, where she switched her major from psychology to corporate communications with a concentration in public relations. Early on, she worked for the now-defunct PR@vantage, where Ilene Adler was “a great mentor.”
“She was an amazing boss, who saw my potential and that I had a knack for putting up information. She let me work on all these projects.”
Castro”™s corporate career has included serving as field marketing manager for Chipotle in Las Vegas and as East Coast marketing manager for California Pizza Kitchen, which led her to move to Charlotte in 2007. (Castro said she had to be based in a place that was home to a California Pizza Kitchen franchise and chose Charlotte, although she had worked at the former California Pizza Kitchen on Central Avenue when she was a teenager.)
Castro was building a corporate career ”“ going on to a brokerage house and winning a Charlotte 40 Under 40 Award while helping a nonprofit with a website redesign. But all the while she remembered something her grandmother said: “Time is the only thing you can”™t get back.”
“I wanted to live life purposefully,” she said. So she waited until she got her bonus from the brokerage house and quit her job to start her company. Instrumental in all this was husband Tony, a commercial plumber who quit his job to care for their four children, who now range in age from 10 to 26. Castro said she wouldn”™t have been able to do this without him.
Nor without her 17-member team, made up mostly of women of color like herself. “We are who you are,” she can say to her clients. With the team spread out across the country, work is virtual except for on-site support when clients need it.
The team does, however, get together quarterly and for yearly retreats, this past January in Costa Rica, next January in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Castro said her employees work hard and deserve good pay, comfortable working conditions and perks.
But it”™s also part of her life philosophy: “You can build a life that is happy and successful and do good. They”™re not mutually exclusive.”
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