The Power of Roots and Wings
with Luis Montero
The Corvus Effect / Episode 8
Released: January 13, 2025
Overview
Luis Montero is CEO of the community, a creative agency that has won Webbys, Clios, and Cannes Lions for helping brands authentically connect with multicultural America — the audience that will be minority-white by 2044 for anyone under 30. His mother kept a painting in the house with two words: Raíces y Alas — Roots and Wings. This conversation is about how growing up between Spanish and English, Spain and the South, Disney Imagineering and Coca-Cola Latin America taught him that adaptability is a superpower and that the right idea only matters when you have the right people relentlessly pursuing it.
About Luis Montero
Luis Montero is CEO of the community, the award-winning creative agency behind some of the most recognized multicultural campaigns in advertising. Born to a Spanish father raised in a monastery and a Cuban mother who arrived in New Orleans with nothing, he went from Georgia Tech engineering to LA screenwriting to running an agency where the right idea from an intern matters as much as one from the executive creative director.
Listen to the Full Episode
Key Takeaways
1. Adaptability is the multicultural superpower
Spanish at home, English at school, summers in Spain — Luis learned to flip between his Southern drawl and Spanish fluently before he knew he was learning anything. That code-switching isn’t about hiding who you are; it’s about meeting people where they are without compromising the part that matters. In a marketplace where the multicultural majority is already arriving, the leaders who can do this naturally are the ones who actually connect.
2. Roots and wings — the parenting principle that works for leadership too
Luis’s mother painted Raíces y Alas — Roots and Wings — as the principle for raising kids: anchor them in heritage and values, then give them the freedom to fly. The same logic applies in business. Stay connected to your core values and where you came from; don’t let the connection become the cage that keeps you from making bold moves.
3. The right idea, the right people, relentlessly pursued
The community’s three pillars aren’t agency platitudes — they’re how Luis decides what matters. Finding the right idea is climbing steps until one of them turns into a trampoline, and that only happens when you have co-conspirators who share the obsession and balance confidence with humility. In a culture where you’re competing with whatever went viral five minutes ago, the org that lets the intern’s idea win is the one that’s actually playing the right game.