Meet Hady Mendez, bestselling author of Calladita No More, who traded a corporate STEM career for entrepreneurship, a director title she had to negotiate for herself, and a bold new life in Madrid — and learned along the way exactly what silence costs us.
The Messaging We Grew Up With
Mi gente, if you grew up in a Latino household, you probably heard some version of this: be respectful, be grateful, don’t make too much noise. For our guest this week, Hady Mendez, that message came wrapped in her mother’s favorite refrán — “en boca cerrada no entra mosca.” Translation: if you keep your mouth shut, you won’t get yourself in trouble.
Hady took that lesson to heart. She spent years in corporate America — first as a programmer, then as a consultant — sitting in rooms full of ideas she never voiced, because speaking up felt risky. And for a while, she believed that keeping quiet was keeping her safe.
“I don’t think everybody knew that I was just as qualified, just as intelligent, just as bright. But I didn’t always demonstrate it.”
The Story That Changed Everything
It took an accumulation of quiet disappointments — missed promotions, smaller raises, meetings she wasn’t invited to — before Hady connected the dots. The moment that finally broke through? Watching a colleague get promoted after barely a year on the job, while she stayed quiet and waited her turn. When she finally asked her boss why she’d been passed over, his answer was simple: nobody knew she wanted it.
That’s when Hady made a promise to herself: she would never again let silence speak for her.
Self-Advocacy in Practice
Talking about self-advocacy is easy. Doing it is another story. Hady shared one of her boldest negotiation moments — a job transition where the company offered to match only her base salary, leaving out the commission and bonuses that made up a huge chunk of her real earnings. Instead of accepting the lowball number, she asked for what she was actually worth, and named the title change that came with it. It worked. She walked away with the raise and the promotion.
But she’s also honest about the times she undersold herself — including a negotiation where she was asked to name her own number and gave a smaller one out of fear. Every version of that story taught her the same lesson: closed mouths don’t get fed.
Self-Promotion Isn’t Bragging
One of Hady’s biggest realizations came from watching how customers treated her differently than her more “qualified-sounding” colleagues — not because she knew less, but because she never told anyone what she actually knew. Her solution: what she calls a “brag sheet,” a running list of your own accomplishments you can actually point to when it’s time to advocate for yourself.
“People are not mind readers. They don’t know what you want, and they don’t know what you’ve done — unless you tell them.”
It’s not about reciting your résumé in every room. It’s about making sure the people who need to trust you actually have a reason to.
Betting on Herself
A layoff in 2023 — and a tough job market that followed — pushed Hady to finally do the thing she’d always wanted to do: build her own business. Speaking, coaching, and writing Calladita No More became her way of turning a hard chapter into a new one, even while the industry she’d built a career in faced its own uncertainty.
A year after the book’s release, she says the most common reaction she hears is simple: people feel seen. At a recent conference, she gave away 250 copies — including to dads asking her to sign a copy for their daughters.
A Bold Move to Madrid
As if a career pivot wasn’t enough, Hady also made the leap to move to Madrid this year — chasing a lower cost of living, a path to an EU passport, and a fresh start. She’s honest that the transition wasn’t the easy, romanticized expat story people expect. There were hard weeks. There were moments she considered packing it in and going home.
And true to form, she hasn’t stayed calladita there either — whether it’s correcting people who assume her Spanish isn’t “good enough,” or simply refusing to let herself be talked over.
“I became more powerful when I stopped waiting for someone to save me and stepped into my own power.”
Key Takeaways
- The first offer is never the final offer — come prepared with a counter.
- Keep your own “brag sheet” — people can’t advocate for you if they don’t know what you’ve done.
- Staying quiet to avoid the “difficult” stereotype has its own, quieter cost.
- Career paths don’t have to be linear to be successful.
- Community is what reminds you who you are when the world tries to shrink you.
Resources Mentioned
Calladita No More — available wherever books are sold
Instagram: @calladitanomorebook
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