Embracing Identity and Advocating for Inclusion | Catarina Rivera

Welcome to My Hero 360! In this insightful interview, Jillian Comstock sits down with Catarina Rivera, a dynamic public speaker, DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) consultant, and content creator known as “Blindish Latina.” Catarina shares her powerful journey of living with both hearing and vision disabilities, her advocacy for disability inclusion, and her mission to smash disability stigmas through her online community.

Key Highlights:

• Discover how Catarina Rivera uses her platform to advocate for disability inclusion and break down stigmas surrounding disabilities.
• Hear the inspiring story of Catarina’s transformation from hiding her disabilities to proudly embracing and advocating for them.
• Learn about the challenges Catarina faced navigating the workplace with disabilities and how those experiences fueled her passion for creating inclusive environments.
• Be inspired by Catarina’s approach to educating others on disability in a welcoming, non-judgmental way, fostering stronger allyship and support from both disabled and non-disabled communities.

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Transcript:

Jillian Comstock:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to My Hero 360™. My name is Jill, and today is a very special day as we are diving into the extraordinary journey of Catarina Rivera. At My Hero 360, we’re all about amplifying the voices of heroes worldwide, those remarkable individuals whose stories not only ignite inspiration, but they drive positive change, and today it is an absolute honor to have Catarina here with us who is graciously sharing her story.

Catarina, this has been a long time coming for both of us. We’ve been back and forth in communication, but I’m so, so glad that the day is finally here. The people out there need to hear your story, and I feel so honored to have the opportunity today to interview you. Thank you so much for being here.

Catarina Rivera:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to sharing my journey with you.

Jillian Comstock:

Of course. Before we begin, I want to share with you our iconic mark because it reminds me so much of you and your story. It’s a lotus flower, and it symbolizes our heroes. This lotus flower, it grows in swampy waters, but it produces into this beautiful, gorgeous flower. They may have spots or blemishes on their petals, but this flower symbolizes how our heroes, like yourself, took life’s challenges and turned it into something hopeful and inspiring for others, and your story reminds me so much of the journey of the lotus flower. By sharing your story, people from around the globe going through a similar experience will feel less alone. That’s what we strive for in these videos. I’m so excited for the people out there to hear your story today. Again, thank you for being here.

But before we dive into the questions, would you like to introduce yourself to our audience, give us a glimpse into your background?

Catarina Rivera:

Hi, everyone. I’m Catalina Rivera, also known as Blindish Latina. I’m a public speaker, DEIA consultant, and a content creator.

Jillian Comstock:

Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here again. Let’s get into the questions. In your Instagram bio, you profoundly refer to yourself as the Disability Stigma Smasher, a copyrighted tagline that is a significant part of your personal brand. I’m curious about the origin of this powerful and catchy tagline, so could you share the circumstances or experiences in your life that inspired you to come up with such a brilliant descriptor? What motivated you to embrace this role and fight against disability stigma?

Catarina Rivera:

I call my community Stigma Smashers because everyone can smash disability stigmas. Whether you’re non-disabled or disabled, you can take action in your everyday life. I love the term because it’s active and fun. It’s aligned with my brand, which is also just all about being approachable and encouraging when it comes to talking about disability and sharing about it. But my goal here is really to create stronger allyship and support from the non-disabled community to support as well disabled people in feeling validated. In terms of the Stigmas Smasher tagline, I have some T-shirts and merch with it. That’s been fun to wear and have people wear. I think why did I get here and why did I come to this phrase with disability Stigmas Smasher is really just related to my journey.

I realized I didn’t do a visual description of myself, so I’ll do that very quickly. I’m a light-skinned Latina woman with dark brown, wavy hair, worn down. I’m wearing glasses with a dark brown frame and a sleeveless black top with ruffles down the center. Behind me is a corner of a room with a small window and some paintings. I’m very expressive when I speak. I smile often.

In terms of my own journey with disability, I’ve been disabled my whole life. I was born hard of hearing and have worn hearing aids since I was a toddler, and then I was diagnosed with Usher syndrome at 17. That includes a progressive vision disability. I didn’t feel part of the disability community overall though until more recently in my life, and that’s because I was really focused on only connecting in communities around blindness for a long time. That is what I was doing. I was looking for resources and networks around blindness, but as I created my social media page with Blindish Latina, I started to follow creators who had all different kinds of disabilities. That made me really connect to the disability identity overall, and I saw how powerful it was to connect and own disability.That disability is not a bad word. It’s just a neutral word. It describes something that we’re a part of, and it doesn’t mean less than or limited in any way. I feel that with Stigma Smashing, that’s something that I just related to because I knew for so long in my own journey, I couldn’t even think about making an impact on others because I was so wrapped up in how I felt about my disability, how I felt about blindness. I was scared about being publicly blind. I didn’t want to use a white cane for a very long time, and now I use a cane.

I’m publicly blind. People have questions about the fact that I use my cell phone and I’m using a cane because I have some limited vision remaining. I have about 5% of my vision remaining, so I know that I’m already just smashing stigmas by going out and operating in a way that non-disabled observers don’t understand necessarily because most people don’t understand the spectrum of blindness. My journey of getting to this point, I now feel so strong and I have a strong voice, whereas before I didn’t have that. I felt called to make a difference with my voice, to do something, to create change.

That’s all led me here to this place. It’s so important to change people’s idea of disability to address their negative ideas. For example, a lot of people think being disabled means you have a bad life, that it’s something that people should feel sorry for. That’s not the case. One of the things I do is share my life. I share my travel adventures. I share myself doing things like hiking. I share that I do anything that I want to do. I might do it differently. I might do it slower. I might do it in an adaptive way. I might ask for some help, but I’m not living a bad life and I’m enjoying my life. That’s something that I definitely want people to understand.

Jillian Comstock:

Wow, that’s just amazing to hear. You are so inspiring. It’s evident that your tagline is a powerful commitment to breaking down those barriers, like you said. I also love that you referred your followers as Stigma Smashers. I think that’s absolutely incredible, and so your role of dismantling disability stigma is truly commendable. I think you can agree that when you are actively smashing stigmas, it takes 2 people: you and the uninformed individual. You are very passionate and motivated to break the stigma. Educating comes naturally for you, but I assume that getting that uninformed individual motivated is difficult. How do you motivate the uninformed individual and open their mind to want to change?

Catarina Rivera:

I think the way that I’ve approached it is to be people’s online friend. If they don’t have anyone in their life that is disabled, I hope that through seeing me, connecting with my content, that they feel that they’re getting to know me and making a connection in that way. Whether that’s talking on my stories or sharing a video with me dancing and just being open about what’s going on, I hope that encourages a relationship because one of the biggest things that impacts prejudice and stigma and stereotypes is not knowing anybody from a community. Knowing just 1 person can make a difference. I hope I can be that 1 person, even though everyone has disabled people in their life, even if they don’t know it because there’s lots of people who don’t talk about their disabilities or who are not yet diagnosed, and we just don’t know who’s disabled around us.

When I’m reaching people through my community who are uninformed, I am sharing information with them in a welcoming way, in a way that doesn’t judge them or push them off. It’s really just fun and educational in terms of the tone that I have in my content, and that comes from me being a teacher as my first job. I studied education, and I was a classroom teacher for 4 years. Now I just feel that the world is my classroom. I’m educating on a bigger platform. I think it’s very important to acknowledge as well that if an uninformed individual is not open to change, I won’t be able to reach them.

But I do storytelling to build that relationship over time, and I share bite-sized pieces of learning over multiple videos, so I hope that creates the change eventually.

But I also just when I want to create change or have someone acknowledge something, I try to be gentle in providing feedback. For example, in my work with organizations and companies, I had a session recently where I gave a training to an executive team at a company. During this session, one of the executive leaders called themselves stupid and just made it like a remark that we see. It’s very common, like, “Oh, it’s so stupid of me,” or whatever. I said, “I invite you to reconsider this language.” That was my welcoming bit. “I invite you to reconsider this language as the word stupid can be offensive or hurtful to those with cognitive or learning disabilities, especially because they may have heard it all their life.”

That’s an example of how I give feedback to someone who might not have considered another perspective about something, and I think that approach is supportive and welcoming.

Jillian Comstock:

Absolutely, and it’s certainly evident that your approach to this has been so successful. I mean, look at you. You have created such a massive following on Instagram. Your brand is just growing and growing by the minute. Speaking of social media, your platform advocates for disabled people. It spreads awareness to non-disabled people and provides knowledge about living with a vision disability. With social media, it’s almost impossible to avert negative comments, right? How do you own your power when a negative comment arises? What strategies do you employ to safeguard your well-being in the digital space?

Catarina Rivera:

I think this is such an important conversation. It does happen. It happens to every creator in every area. I am reminded of my recent partnership with Delta Airlines. I was part of Delta’s Faces of Travel initiative. For this partnership, they asked me to travel somewhere that was meaningful to me and tell the story of my experience. I traveled to Miami and told a story of what Miami means to me; what do I do in Miami? I involved my mom in the video. It was such a fun experience. They are my favorite airline, so it was a dream partnership. I had so many high hopes when I shared this video. The video went viral. It’s my first brand video to go viral on Instagram, and it reached over 37 million people, which I can’t really conceptualize.

Unfortunately, a lot of these people were actually just people who wanted to leave negative comments. The video was constantly all day getting negative comments. People were questioning my blindness. That was one of the main comments. There were other comments that were more harassment about my appearance, and so this was very difficult for me to absorb in the beginning. I’m used to reaching people, but the speed at which the comments were coming in was very different than any other video that I’ve had before that has gone viral. I also received questions like, “Why travel if you’re deaf-blind?” People would say things like, “Oh, just put her in the driveway, spin her around and tell her she’s somewhere new.” “What a waste of a window seat,” because I was sitting in the window seat. The comments were really, really negative and uninformed. The first thing that I did with these comments is I didn’t take them personally, and I don’t take things personally. The second video that I ever posted that was a reel went viral. This happened several years ago. I learned through that experience how to manage it, even though this was on a bigger scale. I don’t take things personally. I stopped looking at notifications for the posts. I would go into the posts when I wanted to engage with some comments, but then I wouldn’t just look at my notifications otherwise, and so that helped me manage and set boundaries.

I saw also the negative comments are evidence that my work is needed. If I look at it that way, it’s motivating to me. The amount of people that were uninformed about the fact that blindness is a spectrum, that we are able to live great lives, and that we can travel was massive. I see a massive need for my voice, for my work, and so it fueled me to continue doing what I’m doing.

That’s one of the ways that I frame things when I do get negative comments. I do respond to people if I see that people have genuine questions; I try to respond and educate. I think for that video, what happened is I was not explaining my blindness. The video is not a tutorial on my blindness. It was to show my travel experience.

That is why so many people asked the video to do something it wasn’t designed to do. Like, “Oh, you didn’t even explain your blindness.” Well, I have other content and I have a whole brand, and I have a whole bunch of other work that explains that. That’s how I approached it, but I think that negative comments are going to happen. They happen to every creator, and it’s challenging at first. You have a reaction when it first happens, and then hopefully you can adjust and you can realize it’s not about you; it’s not personal to you. You don’t know what’s going on with the people that are making these comments, and some of them are reachable.

Jillian Comstock:

Yeah, I mean, like you said, you have to change your perspective in order to be okay being on social media. That’s a super important part of it. But it’s hard, right? Putting yourself out there on social media and being vulnerable with the world takes strength, and I just want to applaud you for that because it’s a remarkable testament to your authenticity and courage. There are so many disabled people out there who don’t know other disabled people, and therefore they lack that connection that is so important and feeling less alone. Your ability to create a safe space and be that person for so many disabled individuals is beyond inspiring.

Shifting gears a little bit, I want to talk about your TED Talk. It’s titled, “Creating Inclusive Workplaces for All.” Everyone watching right now should go take a look. In your TED Talk, you recount the detailed experience of navigating a job interview in New York City. You highlight aspects from the commute to the handshake and finding your seat in the office. One striking point you make is about hiding your disability during the interview process, a practice many disabled individuals may relate to. Could you elaborate on the reasons behind concealing your disability during that interview and how it influenced your perspective on creating more inclusive workplaces?

Catarina Rivera:

Thank you so much for sharing about my TEDx Talk. It recently passed 40,000 views, so I am just thrilled that it’s reaching more people. Why did I hide my disability? I actually hid my disability not only in the interview that I talk about in this TEDx Talk, but in all of my interviews in my entire career before I became an entrepreneur. The reason that I hid my disability during the interview process is because of fear of discrimination, of being seen as not capable of performing the role.

Even though we have the ADA, which was passed in 1990, which does protect me from the discrimination due to disability in the workplace, I was still scared because I know that discrimination does still happen. If the employer knew about my blindness, they might have thought that I would be an expensive employee or that I can’t do the fieldwork required in the role because this particular role that I was talking about or interviewing for, it was a community engagement role that I would have to attend community meetings and make connections with lots of people. Someone who doesn’t understand blindness might’ve thought, oh, she’s not going to be able to get around and talk to people and navigate all of that. But I knew that I could, so I didn’t want to be counted out before people really understood. The employer really could have assumed what my capabilities were, what my limitations were without asking me and without fully understanding my actual lived experience.

To share some context about this issue in the workplace in general, when people are hired and they are employees in the workforce, only 21% of disabled employees disclose their disabilities to human resources.

That’s only 1 in 5. I always suggest to my clients, whatever percentage you have on file, multiply that by 5 to get a more accurate estimate. Just knowing that, it’s just so important to understand that there are so many reasons for it. Disability identity is very personal. Not everyone feels comfortable. Not everyone has confidence around their disability. I know, for me, it took me many years to feel 100% confident disability pride of all of that, and really to understand language.

I used to call myself hearing impaired. That was because that’s what the doctors told me. That’s what my parents said. That was the word that was used. I didn’t know any other term. Then when I started posting on social media, I was invited to consider other terms, and I learned about hard of hearing. I learned that I could just say that I was deaf, and I had never understood the context of hearing impaired. That it is an outdated term and a little limiting in how it’s constructing the hearing disability.

I love to say now that I say hearing disability, vision disability, and I use hard of hearing. I use deaf. I use deaf-blind, but I use a lot of terms that I wouldn’t have used before. I think everyone who is on their disability journey, they’re contending with internalized ableism, which is negative ideas about disability that you’ve heard in society that you then internalize within yourself, and you believe. That it’s a process that so many disabled people do the work to remove these messages, but it takes so much time, and they come back. They come back. It’s really hard to fully eliminate.

But so ideas like, oh, I’m a burden. I shouldn’t speak up. I shouldn’t ask for more. That’s coming from internalized ableism. I really am empathetic and compassionate to the people that don’t want to disclose. People don’t want to be seen as less capable. They don’t want to deal with stereotypes, and so I completely understand that. I think how it’s influenced my perspective is I think I really just understand that there’s lots of disabled people in the workplace who have fear and through my work with my clients, I can make it better for them.

If I can get the organization to buy into disability inclusion and to be more aware and managers to respond better when someone discloses a disability and just give lots of tools and resources for how you can make the workplace inclusive without anyone needing to disclose, without people needing to ask for the specific accommodations they need, if they’re really focused on inclusion by design, then the workplace will be better for everyone. Then the environment will be better. Then it can create an experience where people do feel more safe and they may or may not disclose, but at least they will have less challenges navigating in the workplace because it’ll be more accessible and inclusive for them. It does motivate my work to focus on disability inclusion overall and to say it matters now.

Jillian Comstock:

That’s amazing. It’s clear how personal and impactful your experience was during that job interview, and your willingness to share such a vulnerable moment speaks volumes about the importance of fostering inclusion in the workplace and breaking down the stigma. I think as we strive to create more inclusive environments, I think your story serves as a powerful reminder of the work that someone needs to be done, like you said. My Hero, we’re all about recognizing those that have embraced life’s challenges and turned it into something powerful and hopeful for others, so can you share ways in which you have not let your own obstacles define you?

Catarina Rivera:

I want to be careful how I talk about disability because I don’t think disability is an obstacle or something to be overcome. Disability is not that for me. I used to think it was though, and now I realize that so much of what’s happening is not about my disability at all. It’s about the lack of access in society, the lack of inclusion, and the ableism that I experienced where others place limits on me.

For example, if I was to attend a social event that was well lit, had ramps, had clear signage, had low music where I could see and hear, then my disabilities wouldn’t matter. It’s not necessarily that, oh, it’s your blindness and you’re hearing disability that makes it “difficult.” It’s actually the obstacles that society is placing on me in different situations or that I’m encountering. When I travel, broken sidewalks and infrastructure that’s not developed or lack of public transit and all of that, so that’s something that I have changed my view on over time.

But I also want to share that having a disability now is something I view as a positive in my life. Having Usher syndrome has brought me to community, to friendship, to greater understanding of myself. I now have a business, which is thriving. I’m able to employ other disabled people. That’s been amazing. Getting diagnosed at 17 and knowing that life can change at any moment changed the way that I lived life. It made me more adventurous. I became determined to live a life of purpose, and every job that I had in my career was purposeful. It was about making the world a better place. I embraced travel. I didn’t want to wait until later in life to have adventures because you can’t really count on that. I started traveling from the time that I started my career. Now I travel full time, which has been a huge dream of mine that I’ve been able to make happen, and it’s been such an adventure.

I fully accept my disabilities, who I am. I view my disability as part of me. You cannot separate my disability from me. I’ve also learned greater empathy, compassion, adaptability, innovation, creativity, all of that from my disability lived experience. I think while contending with internalized ableism as a part of everyone’s journey, I’m so thankful that now I view myself as worthy, as everyone else in the world. I’m just as worthy in all areas of life. I know that I can do a lot, and that is really important to recognize that I will choose sometimes to not do things that aren’t accessible for me because I want to save my energy for other things, and I think I have a very good perspective on it now though.

I do look for what can I do? What will be fun for me? Sometimes it’s something adapted or slower, but I don’t think my disability stops me from living a great life, and that is a very important stigma to break down with disability and with blindness in particular because a lot of people have a fear of blindness.

Jillian Comstock:

I completely agree. For my last question, what would you tell your younger self knowing what you know now?

Catarina Rivera:

For context, I have started 4 different business ventures or entrepreneurial ventures in my life, and I learned lessons from each one. I would tell my younger self, looking back, “You don’t truly have a business until you’re paid for what you offer.” I would also tell my younger self that, “Many people start a few different businesses before they’re successful, so keep going, keep going. You’re not behind. You’re right on time.” A lot of times I think as you’re in your 20s, you’re comparing yourself to others: 30 under 30, who’s doing all these things by the time they’re 30 years old? If you’re not aligned to them, it could feel like you’re behind. But I would say, “You’re not behind. You’re right on time. Life is truly a journey. You’re worthy just as you are. You are lovable just as you are,” and that is really because I had a lot of issues when it came to dating.

I thought I had a deadline to find my partner. Before my blindness gets to a certain point, I need to find my life partner because after that, I won’t be able to find someone. It will be they won’t want to date me, and I held these ideas for a long time. Then life happened, some life things happened, and then I actually found a wonderful partner of mine after I started using a white cane, so my younger self would not have thought that was possible.

But it took me about 13 years to believe that I was worthy with my disability, not despite my disability, and then it took me over 14 years to really self-advocate consistently and speak up about my access needs confidently and consistently. I share those numbers because I think people also put pressure on themselves to have a short journey, and my journey was over a decade.

Jillian Comstock:

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your authenticity and your vulnerability, and thank you for sharing your insights and helping us understand the importance of fostering inclusion in the workplace and embracing diversity in all its forms. You are truly a hero, and here at My Hero 360, we value and appreciate the impact you have made on the world, so thank you.

Catarina Rivera:

Thank you so much.

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Connect with Catarina Rivera:

• Instagram: @blindishlatina
• YouTube: @CatarinaRivera
• Website: catarinarivera.com

About My Hero 360:

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