My standard virtual rate falls between $7,500 to $9,500 USD per session. Once we learn more about your needs, we can provide you with a custom proposal.

To have the most impactful and meaningful fireside chat, I would recommend inviting a moderator from your community with a connection to disability and ideally a disabled person. This allows for us to share our lived experiences as we discuss questions that may arise and leads into a more natural dialogue.

I recommend booking no later than three weeks out to ensure you have ample time to advertise your event. If you’re in need of something sooner, please fill out my booking form at the bottom of this page as soon as possible and we can discuss further.

I tailor each of my presentations based on my client’s needs and the industry they represent.

If you’re looking for a presentation on a subject matter not included on my site, I am open to those opportunities, but will always be candid and let you know if I don’t have expertise on a subject.

Some topics I do not cover are unconscious bias, racism or race. I also do not focus my sessions entirely on Latinidad. My area of expertise lies in disability and intersectionality of marginalized identities. So while I do discuss my Latina heritage, I weave it into my overall experience of also being disabled.

if you’re unsure whether I cover your desired topic, go ahead and complete my booking form. If I’m not the right fit for your presentation, I will let you know and am happy to recommend other speakers.

Yes! I welcome the opportunity for you to record my presentation in order to share with colleagues who may not be able to attend, or to discuss further with your teams. I do, however, charge an additional recording fee and require that recordings be shared only internally within your organization and for a set period of time.

For more information on recording and recording costs, please feel free to email me.

I do not share my slides as I hold those as my intellectual property and am unable to release them to my clients. I can, however, offer a PDF version of my slides to provide to interpreters ahead of my presentation in support of accessibility.

If you have any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to email me at hello@catarinarivera.com and a member of my team will get back to you with your answer!

(A video of a light-skinned Latiné woman with dark brown wavy hair and brown glasses wearing a blue printed top sits in front of a blurry background.)

Hi, I'm Catarina Rivera.

I'm a public speaker, DEI consultant, and content creator. I focus on disability awareness, inclusion, and accessibility in the workplace.

I'm so glad that you want to work with me and bring me in as a speaker to your company, To give you a little introduction on who I am, something I do at the beginning of all of my virtual meetings, I'll share a little bit about my background.

I actually started my career as an educator. I was an elementary school teacher working with first graders and third graders. And I actually was a bilingual educator which was amazing for me because I was able to work with students who were Spanish-dominant. And Spanish is my first language. So, it felt incredible to give back to my community. After being an educator for a few years, four years, I left to start my own nonprofit, then I shifted into public health and I earned a graduate degree in public health. And I started working in the nonprofit space and that's where I stayed for quite some time. I gained experience in program management, community organizing and community engagement, and also focused on capacity building work which really gives me that foundation for the work that I'm doing now with Blindish Latina.

I started Blindish Latina and my business because I wanted to make an impact with my voice. I personally went on a journey with disability. When I was first diagnosed with Usher Syndrome at 17 years old, I did not know what I could expect or hope for my future.

It was a very hard time and it was very unexpected for me and my family. As I went through my own disability journey from hiding my disability, not wanting anybody to know, to starting to accept it, getting resources all the way to even starting to use a white cane where previously I would never have wanted to be public about my disability, I couldn't believe I got to a place where I was using a white cane confidently.

It was hard. When I first started using a cane, I was very acutely aware that people were looking at me, they were staring at me and I was concerned about using the cane in a way that they could understand rather than using it in the way that works for me because a lot of people don't recognize that many blind people have some remaining vision. So, when we use canes in a way that people don't understand, like holding the cane, looking around, looking at our cell phones, blind people unfortunately can get accused of faking their blindness and they can face harassment.

So, I was able to get to a point where I didn't care about what other people thought. And I used my white cane with confidence. Being publicly disabled changed my life, I developed a strong voice of self-advocacy, speaking up for my needs in all situations and places and that's what led me to do the work I do today.

I want my voice to make a difference more than in just my life and I focus on the workplace because there's so much work to do. There are so many people that are struggling to thrive because their workplace is not inclusive. They have disabilities and they're not open about it for the same reasons

I was, maybe they're earlier on their journey. It's still something that is difficult for them or they haven't accepted it. They haven't gotten enough resources. So I'm here to help create understanding, to activate awareness around disability, and communicate simple best practices because it's not that complicated to do a better job with disability inclusion.

So, that's a little bit about me and I can't wait to share more with you.

(A video of a light-skinned Latiné woman with dark brown wavy hair and brown glasses wearing a blue printed top sits in front of a blurry background.)

Now I'm going to share more about my facilitation style, how I lead my sessions, and what makes me different.

The first thing I want you to know is because I started my career as an educator, you are getting someone who is trained in how to create real learning.

My sessions have clear objectives and they're interactive and engaging. I'm not talking at people for an hour. We always have time for Q&A and they're always interaction moments at reasonable time points within the session, whether that's a chat box engagement or an interactive activity.

So, that really helps people to have a good experience, to be able to process the material, and feel that they have a space to ask questions. Another thing that's important to know about my approach is that I create a welcoming space for everyone.

Disability can be an uncomfortable topic. So, it is incredibly important to me to show up authentically, to share my story, to create a space where people feel comfortable. And the way that I'm showing up right now in this video is how I show up in my sessions too. I am not positioning myself as an unapproachable expert. I'm a real human. I mess up, and if I mess up in the session, I will correct myself and I will model that for participants because none of us are perfect.

We are always learning. Another important thing to know about my approach and working with me is that I will customize my sessions to your specific goals and your industry. It's great when I have context from my clients on how they interact with the world. Are they working B2B? Do they have clients that they're interacting with? Are they interacting with consumers? Are they designing products? Do they have retail spaces? Having this information means that I can provide really relevant examples in my sessions that are speaking to the context, the daily context, of your employees and your leaders.

I can also do sessions that are customized for specific audiences. So, for example, if you want your entire executive leadership team to attend a session with me, I will make sure to customize the session to what they care about and what their focus areas are.

So, whatever it is that we need to customize, that is something that I am very experienced in doing. I do it for all of my clients. And it makes the material more relatable and relevant to the participants.

So that's a little bit about working with me and what sets me apart.

(A video of a light-skinned Latiné woman with dark brown wavy hair and brown glasses wearing a blue printed top sits in front of a blurry background.)

Let's talk about the different offerings that I have so that you can understand your options as my client. I offer keynotes, workshops, presentations, and fireside chats.

Let's go over each of these in more detail. Keynotes are 45 minutes long. The keynote address itself is 30 minutes followed by 15 minutes of Q&A.

I also allow time for a welcome and introduction from you to make sure that you set up the event and welcome everybody.

I have a standard keynote that talks about the importance of prioritizing disability for the workplace but I also can create a custom keynote and I have other options as well that I have delivered before. In 2022, I delivered a TEDx talk called "Creating Inclusive Workplaces for All." The TEDx talk is 11 minutes long. I can also deliver that talk as a live experience for your community and we can engage in conversation after.

The second offering, workshops, are 90 minutes long. They are highly interactive. They begin with five minutes of a welcome/introduction, then 60 to 75 minutes of content and then we round it out with Q&A at the end. Workshops can only have 50 attendees, which means that it is a more comfortable and private conversation instead of inviting the whole company and we make it very interactive. I do a variety of activities. It's not just breakout groups because I always want to show that there are different ways for people to participate and engage.

The third offering that I have are presentations. Presentations are 60 minutes. They have no cap on attendees. You can invite the whole company. They start with a five-minute welcome or introduction from you, then about 40 to 45 minutes of content from me and we finish it off with Q&A. While a presentation has that 40 to 45 minute content block, I am not talking the whole time. I also build in interaction into my presentations through the chat box and they are very engaging. There's a lot that people resonate with and they engage in conversation in the chat.

The last offering that I have is a fireside chat. A fireside chat is 60 minutes and it has no cap on attendees. It starts with a 5-minute welcome or introduction from you. Then we go into a live conversation for about 40 to 45 minutes between me and someone from your community who serves as a host. Then we finish the time with Q&A. Some of my clients even shorten the live conversation to 30 to 35 minutes to allow more time for Q&A.

The great thing about a fireside chat is that just like a conversation that you would have with a friend, we can hop around to different topics and cover a lot. It's also a really welcoming event, especially if you are just starting your journey with disability inclusion.

If you've not had another event on disability, a fireside chat can engage people and encourage them to attend whereas they might not show up for a training. But once you're introduced to the topic, it can be a great way to kind of continue on with more learning.

So some of my clients book packages with me where we start with a fireside chat and then we continue on with presentations and we have a real learning journey there. The way that I set up a fireside chat is I send you a question bank of questions that have worked for previous clients. You decide which questions you like. You can write your own questions of course, and you can write all your own questions, you can use some from the bank and some of your own, you can use a lot from the bank and just a few from your own. Whatever it is, you come up with it, you send it to me, I send you feedback and we finalize the list.

Then I prepare customized talking points to make sure that while I show up in a very conversational way, everything that I'm saying is intentional and is designed to create learning moments - to create those "aha" moments that we all want. Now, I would like to share with you the topics for my presentations and workshops. I have many different topics. And the great thing that I shared earlier is that I customize, but the one thing that I have that I really love is my signature series.

My signature series includes three different topics that build on each other to create a great introduction to disability inclusion and awareness. So session one is "A Practical Introduction to Disability Awareness." This session is foundational. It goes over key definitions like what a disability is, what ableism is, what are types of disabilities. And this is a great starting point for everyone. We also talk about microaggressions which are so important to understand and prevent. The second session in the signature series is called "Unpacking Ableism in the Workplace." Many people have not heard of ableism or haven't dialogued about it. So ableism requires a deeper dive, more learning, and more engagement on that topic. The third topic in the series is "Disability Inclusion Made Simple." This session is all about actionable best practices. Now that we've spent two sessions learning, we've learned some best practices, but this one really goes deeper into what a manager can do to make sure they're creating inclusive meetings and an inclusive management experience for their team members.

I share recommendations for people in different functions and roles, whether that's communications, HR, marketing, or executive leadership. And that's really important to me to make sure that everyone that attends knows that I'm talking to them and I have best practices for you too.

So let's recap. What have I shared with you? I have four different types of offerings.

We talked about keynotes which are a maximum of 45 minutes and have no cap on attendees.

We talked about workshops which are 90 minutes and have a cap of 50 attendees.

We talked about presentations, which are 60 minutes long and have no cap on attendees.

And we talked about fireside chats, which are 1 hour long and have no cap on attendees.

And they include a host from your community who engages me in a live conversation. The topics for presentations and workshops are the same. It's just the method of delivery that is different.

Whether it's interactive with activities with a smaller group in a workshop, or interactive with chat box moments in a shorter time frame with a large group in presentations.

The last thing that I shared with you was my signature series which creates a meaningful learning journey for your community around disability. We start with "A Practical Introduction to Disability Awareness." We continue with "Unpacking Ableism in the Workplace" and we finish it off with "Disability Inclusion Made Simple.

I hope this gives you a good introduction to my offerings and all the ways in which you can work with me. I look forward to continuing the conversation soon.