Author Susana G Baumann presents an inside-out, multicultural approach to leadership rooted in her award-winning book Speak Up! Tell Your Story to Influence Others

New Jersey, United States, November 4, 2026 -- Susana G Baumann, an award-winning author and multicultural communications strategist, has been recognized for her inside-out approach to personal branding and leadership presence that treats cultural identity as the source of leadership capability rather than an obstacle to overcome. The approach, grounded in her second book, Speak Up! Tell Your Story to Influence Others, was named the top leadership reading choice for diverse executive talent across New Jersey for 2026.

Recognition for a Multicultural Leadership Framework

Speak Up! Tell Your Story to Influence Others presents personal branding as an inside-out leadership practice, beginning with self-awareness before moving into public communication, influence, and visibility. Rather than treating culture as a detail to be minimized, the book positions cultural identity, language, accent, memory, and lived experience as source material for leadership development.

The book has also received recent awards that add visibility to Baumann’s long-standing work as an author, multicultural communications strategist, speaker, and advocate for minority women-owned businesses. The ReaderViews.com Bronze Award recognizes the book within a category focused on women’s issues and multicultural perspectives. The BookLife.com semi-finalist recognition places the book within a business and personal finance context, where leadership presence, influence, and professional advancement remain central concerns.

Baumann’s author platform, available at susanagbaumann.com, expands on the book through resources that focus on three pathways: Know Yourself, Lead with Your Story, and Communicate with Impact. The site also includes testimonials, leadership insights, and a newsletter with access to downloadable personal brand worksheets through the contact page.

Culture as Leadership Material

Baumann’s approach defines cultural storytelling in leadership as the practice of using personal identity, values, and lived experience as the foundation for how a person leads. This differs from the more common use of organizational storytelling, where leaders use narratives to shape workplace culture, explain strategy, or communicate institutional history.

In Baumann’s model, the leader enters the workplace already carrying culture. That culture influences judgment, listening style, conflict navigation, relationship-building, and communication choices. For multicultural and immigrant professionals, these traits are often present before they are formally named as leadership capabilities.

“The leader arrives already carrying a culture, and that culture is doing work in every decision they make, whether they name it or not,” Baumann said. “Cultural identity is not a footnote of a leadership style. For a lot of us, it is the leadership style, unnamed.”

The book is written for multicultural and immigrant professionals developing a personal brand, as well as leadership professionals focused on diversity, inclusion, belonging, communication, and career advancement. It also addresses rising professionals who may feel uncertainty about how language, accent, background, or family history fit within executive presence and influence.

Four Filters Behind a Leadership Story

A core idea in the book is that a personal anecdote becomes leadership material only when examined through four filters: values, character and personality traits, cultural attributes, and leadership interaction skills. The framework helps readers move beyond sharing personal history for its own sake and toward communicating patterns that clarify how they make decisions, build trust, and lead others.

Values are described as the decisions a person makes when nobody is checking. In this context, leadership values should be supported by evidence from lived experience rather than selected from a generic list. Character and personality traits are the stable patterns colleagues can observe over time, such as how a person commits, follows through, asks questions, or notices others in a room.

Leadership interaction skills focus on conduct in direct human exchange: how a leader disagrees, corrects, listens, or receives difficult information. Cultural attributes, meanwhile, are the habits of judgment shaped by background. A multilingual professional may have developed advanced sensitivity to tone, register, and formality. A person raised in a scarcity environment may identify constraints earlier in a planning process. A person from a collectivist decision-making tradition may build consensus before a formal meeting begins.

Baumann’s framework does not assign traits to any single group. Instead, it encourages professionals to identify how background has already produced capability and to describe that capability clearly.

A Career Rooted in Advocacy and Communication

Baumann’s credibility in multicultural communication is grounded in more than three decades of professional work. An Argentinean immigrant, she launched LCSWorldwide Multicultural Marketing Communications in New Jersey, providing multicultural leadership and staff development training for pharmaceutical and healthcare corporations, national nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and educational institutions across nine states.

A significant moment in her career included participation in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Spanish Outreach Program trainers’ cohort at WebJunction.com in 2007 and 2008. That work contributed to her first book, ¡Hola, amigos! A Plan for Latino Outreach for Library Personnel, published in 2010 by ABC CLIO, Libraries Unlimited.

In 2014, Baumann launched LatinasinBusiness.us to promote the economic empowerment of Latinas and other minority women entrepreneurs. In 2018, the initiative obtained nonprofit membership status as Latinas in Business Inc. and grew to more than 1,900 members nationally. The organization promoted more than 850 Latina-owned small businesses and Latina professionals in corporate environments. Baumann has been a speaker at Harvard University, Jacksonville University, and the Prospanica National Conference.

Resources and Continued Availability

The book’s approach is supported through three pathways: Know Yourself, which focuses on self-awareness, authenticity, and confidence; Lead with Your Story, which centers on leadership, influence, and trust; and Communicate with Impact, which addresses storytelling, public speaking, and personal branding. Some resources are offered in both English and Spanish, reflecting Baumann's immigrant Latina perspective.

Readers can access a downloadable free Self-Awareness Guide when they sign up for the newsletter through the contact page, an offer that continues through December. Free downloadable Speak Up! Worksheets are also available alongside weekly leadership insights. Additional perspective on the book can be found through reader reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, while reader testimonials are published on Baumann's website.

The book recently received a Bronze Award in the Women’s Issues/Multicultural category from ReaderViews.com and was named a semi-finalist in the 2025 Business/Personal Finance Non-fiction category by BookLife.com. Baumann shares ongoing commentary on her work through LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram at @sgbaumann_author. You can email directly to [email protected].

About Excel Branding

Excel Branding is the business platform of Susana G Baumann, MAA, MLS, an award-winning author, multicultural communications strategist, speaker, feminist writer, and minority women-owned business advocate. Through books, consulting, speaking, and educational resources, Excel Branding focuses on personal branding, multicultural storytelling, leadership presence, and communication strategies for diverse professionals and organizations.

Contact Info:
Name: SUSANA G BAUMANN
Email: Send Email
Organization: Excel Branding
Website: https://susanagbaumann.com

Release ID: 89208371

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