Voices of leadership
Weaving Communities of Changemakers
Q&A with Renata Soto
From an early age in Costa Rica, surrounded by her mother’s activism and a family of poets, educators and social changemakers, Renata Soto learned the power of speaking up and rallying people toward change. Nearly three decades ago, she made the U.S. South her home and has since become one of the prominent voices for equity, belonging and immigrant rights.
In Nashville, Soto co-founded Conexión Américas, an organization that has supported thousands of Latino and immigrant families on their path toward the American dream. Under her leadership, the organization launched Casa Azafrán, a nationally recognized hub for collaboration and community innovation, where President Barack Obama hosted a televised town hall on immigration.
Today, Soto is founder and president of Mosaic Changemakers, a venture dedicated to weaving a better South by connecting and uplifting leaders of color at the forefront of social and racial justice. Her work centers on embracing the South’s demographic transformation, deepening understanding of who calls it home and building a future grounded in collaboration, solidarity and belonging.
Soto is a Pahara Fellow, Class XII, and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. We caught up with her at the 2025 Resnick Aspen Action Forum to talk about her commitment to weaving a better South for people of color and what others can learn from her leadership journey.
Answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What was the challenge that caught your attention and drove you to act?
The problem I’m committing to solving is weaving a better U.S. South by forging a collective of change makers of color across the region, from Louisiana and Arkansas to the Carolinas and all the places in between. In the United States, the South tells the country’s hardest truths, and it is also a place with an amazing history of resistance and solidarity.
As an adopted Southerner who has lived in Atlanta first and now in Nashville, I know the power of communities of color. Our struggles are connected. Therefore, our work needs to be connected. Our stories, our strategies, our movements need to be connected. And I am committed to try to do my part to create a community of change makers of color who are connected to each other and to really envision thriving futures for all of our communities.
Looking back, what’s an important lesson you’ve learned on your leadership journey?
One of the most important leadership lessons I have learned is the importance of embracing the questions and not being tied to answers. So when there is a vision and a problem we want to solve, embrace all the questions, all the things that we don’t know.
Who are the people that need a solution? What are the resources that we need? How do we get them? We don’t need to know all those things to start. Achieving a vision is certainly something hard because uncertainty is hard. But it is actually the only way in which I have felt that I’ve been able to move forward towards something that I want to tackle.
It is okay to embrace all the questions along the way because the path is to answer them. But we don’t have to have those answers before we actually take action or try to convince others to join us in that action.
In moments of uncertainty, what gives you the strength to continue moving forward?
What keeps me moving forward is knowing that no matter how many times we feel we’re not making progress, and how many times we take two steps forward and one back, I think we all understand that each of those steps accumulates collectively. Even if it’s someone in South Carolina, someone in Tennessee, someone in Alabama or someone in Mississippi, our collective efforts are connected to each other. Small is big, and it is significant. Seeing the effort and commitment of all the changemakers we work with certainly keeps me going.
If you were to write a letter to your younger self, what would you say?
We always think about the things we would have done differently, or things we didn’t do. Lately, What I would say to myself is: good job on pursuing your inquisitive nature in all the ways that I did, through both school and the things I explored outside of school.
And then the thing I would say to young Renata to do differently is: pay more attention, even more attention, to the lessons and wisdom of the women around you — my grandmothers, my mother, my aunts. I wish my grandmother’s were still alive so I could have had more conversations about their own paths, the ways they became who they were, and how they protected and nurtured another generation of women.
Want to join a community of changemakers reimagining the South? Apply to the Mosaic Fellowship by October 10.
About the Aspen Global Leadership Network
The Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) is a dynamic, worldwide community of nearly 4,000 entrepreneurial leaders from over 60 countries. Spanning business, government, and the nonprofit sector, these leaders share a commitment to enlightened leadership and the drive to tackle the most pressing challenges of our times. Through transformative Fellowship programs and gatherings like the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, AGLN Fellows have the unique opportunity to connect, collaborate, and challenge each other to grow and commit to a lifelong journey of impact.
More from 2025 Resnick Aspen Action Forum
In July 2025, over 500 leaders across the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) community gathered for our largest Action Forum to date. Joined by nearly 100 young leaders, AGLN Fellows from more than 30 countries returned to the enduring questions first posed at at the founding of the Aspen Institute 75 years go: What does it mean to lead with purpose in times of profound uncertainty?
Explore more inspiring content on leadership and change-making from the 2025 Action Forum here.