Puerto Rico's best-kept secret isn't the beaches. It's the talent.

All right, we're live and welcome to The Corridor. I'm Angel León, founder of Coquí Ventures, and this is the show where the conversations about Puerto Rican and Latino founders, culture, and venture capital happen. My guest today is Dyanis De Jesus. She's a creative leader, brand strategist, and the co-founder of Puerto Rico Creativo, a publication and movement making the case that creativity is the connective tissue of the new Puerto Rican economy.

I brought Dyanis on today because she's making an argument that changes how we see what is being built on the island right now. The transformation happening in Puerto Rico is not the one most people came looking for. It's bigger, and — as Dyanis would put it — it starts with creativity. So Dyanis, welcome to The Corridor. Introduce yourself to the audience: tell them who you are and what you do.

Thank you, Angel. I really appreciate you having me. It's an honor. I've also been working from the diaspora for the last decade, so I understand where you are and what you're seeing.

I'm Dyanis De Jesus, co-founder of Puerto Rico Creativo, which started as an advocacy project to bring awareness of the importance of the creative industries and the creative sector — beyond cultural creators. Puerto Rico is rich in culture and creativity; we live that, it's been our history. But in today's world, creativity is playing a bigger role in many ways. As the Puerto Rican entrepreneurial ecosystem was taking shape, I had the honor of bringing this topic into the conversation and connecting the dots on what role creative industries and creative talent can play in the economic development and economic future of the country.

Thank you for the introduction. I want to start with one of the main arguments you're making, because when most people hear "creative economy," they picture design studios and ad agencies. You're making a much bigger claim. What do you actually mean when you say creativity is infrastructure in 2026 and beyond?

Being outside allows me to bring in some of the paradigm shifts we're seeing in the world and in other cities. I have the privilege of working in New York and also in San Francisco. Creativity has risen to a much more strategic role in the entire world, especially as technology keeps evolving. We're seeing creative talent embedded in all sectors — across and outside what are typically called the creative industries. That doesn't mean the creative industries themselves don't matter. They do. But the talent that goes into other sectors beyond the creative industries has become increasingly important.

So the creative economy encompasses what happens inside the creative industry — theater, culture, music, everything we think about when we think about creativity — but it also encompasses creative talent operating in other sectors. The pandemic was a really good catalyst for making that shift more obvious. Everyone suddenly needed transformation, pivoting, digitalization. That was eye-opening across the world, and in Puerto Rico as well.

This can be a little controversial, but in the past we've been perceived more as service providers — somebody who comes in, executes something, and is not really pushed into a strategic place inside organizations. What we're seeing now is the critical importance of placing creative talent in more strategic seats so we can become thought partners, people who actually help navigate these moments of transformation.

You published the publication — the first edition was in 2018, and the second in 2023. That one was the same approach: interviewing people across academia, government, and industry. What was the core argument of the edition you have in front of you right now?

Anybody watching this can go to puertoricocreativo.com and get a digital version for free. I take some time between one and the other. In the beginning we were thinking about the creative economy as the individual sectors and what we could do in each creative industry. This one looks forward into what's coming next — what I call the new economy.

What I do with the publication is bring people together who need to be talking more. I bring in people from academia, government, and leaders across the ecosystem — from early stage all the way to entities like Endeavor International that are taking companies more globally. I put them together to talk and look at each other. I'm a strategist by trade, so I also look at global trends and shifts, and I do an analysis to understand what we should be paying attention to in Puerto Rico.

The spotlight is on creative talent — talent that has historically been leaking. I am a great example of somebody who wasn't able to grow my career on the island at some point in time. I had to go to Chicago and then New York to grow. That's a luxury we don't have anymore. The way economic development works globally, talent is becoming essential. Talent retention, nurturing that talent, and finding a strategic way to bring it into promising sectors is key.

There's a quote in the book from the main leader of the World Economic Forum: we are shifting from capitalism to talentism. I love that notion, because it makes you understand that it's no longer just capital. Capital is not enough — you really need the thinking, and creativity as a concept. There's another quote that says we can have innovation without innovators, we can have creativity without creatives. We have a notion of what creativity is, yet we don't fully make the connection that creative talent is what brings creativity in.

The argument you're presenting is that creative talent is not just a cultural asset for Puerto Rico — it's an economic one. It's the substrate underneath every category that scales, on and off the island. Before we go sector by sector, give me an example from your publication of a company, a founder, or an executive where creativity was clearly the engine underneath the business — and what you or they learned from it.

There are two great examples. Case studies really make this real, because otherwise it's very theoretical.

Wovenware is one of the best cases in Puerto Rico — an outlier, an outstanding example of what's possible. It has the two founders, Christian González and Carlos Meléndez, but it also has Danae Montenegro, who has been a leader in the design thinking and design strategy space — a creative leader who came in side by side with the two founders as chief design officer. This is a company that was already well established and then got acquired by a key international player. Danae was critical in transforming how they were working internally, how they were servicing their clients, and everything the company needed to perform for that growth. So that's one example of a company that has been nurtured by the local ecosystem all the way to acquisition.

Then there's Raincoat — another outlier. The co-founder is Jonathan González, an engineer. That company really exploded after the hurricane in 2017. Jonathan acknowledges how he was nurtured by the ecosystem, but he was also an engineer and a design enthusiast. He recognized the importance of creativity and design because he himself appreciates it. So in a moment of growth, he brought in Miguel Miranda — another very recognized creative leader on the island — as chief design officer working side by side with the co-founders, taking the company to the next level.

It doesn't always have to be chief design or chief anything. What this means is that creativity needs to sit at the business table. We're not just executors. Very senior creative leaders sometimes end up executing things. We need to sit side by side with these founders to translate something that may have launched a startup into a more sophisticated product, into something that serves needs, into something that transforms into a complex evolving landscape. Raincoat is in the insurance space. These are complex sectors that require better ways to communicate — Miguel is a great example of how the communication was very technical and how he had to humanize it. How do you translate engineering into something consumers understand? How do you create interfaces that are friendly, so people come back? How do you brand something so people recognize how different it is? Storytelling, branding, narrative, product design — these are the areas where creatives need to come in, in more holistic, integrated ways.

I've experienced that myself with startups where the founder is so technical that they don't have that creative skill set, and they struggle to say what they're building. Every piece of jargon they use, they may think you understand — but it's really hard.

You made another point I think is important: the founders being built in Puerto Rico right now are not in a single vertical. They span tech, food, agriculture, consumer goods — it's a whole circular economy. Walk us through why that breadth is a feature and not a bug.

Creativity is not decoration. It sits at the business table, side by side with the founder — or the company never becomes what it could be.

I see Puerto Rico — obviously I'm a proud Puerto Rican, but I also see it — because it's a smaller territory, as a bubble for a lot of what's happening globally. It's very obvious for people like you and me to see it.

We're in a very interesting moment in the world. All these challenges — climate change, politics, economic ups and downs — are forcing smart people, doers, operators to think about solutions. We are landing into what I call the new economy in very organic ways. In Silicon Valley, you're coming from more strategic academic places — engineers, highly skilled people, Stanford graduates thinking about what's next in solar, energy, transportation. In other parts of the world, like Puerto Rico, we're coming at it from a very human way. We're coming at insurance, energy, food, because our basic needs are suffering. As governments are unable to meet these needs, great smart leaders come at them.

I had the fortune to collaborate with the Inter-American Development Bank some years ago on research into a similar landscape in Latin America. Latin America is a great example of bubbling innovation because governments are constrained — so people come up with all the solutions on food, homes, energy, financing. My first book had 50 examples of top innovations. That was 2017. We're seeing a lot more of that in the new generations at Parallel 18 and in the local ecosystem: more founders getting into alternative energy, agriculture, transportation, housing.

One of the examples is Clean Cult — non-toxic cleaning products. They're sustainable in how they think about their detergents and their packaging, which is cardboard. They're an example of this emerging economy — founders from New York who came to Puerto Rico, had the opportunity to grow, and hired a person there who became their top creative leader. You're seeing this dialogue between inside and outside of Puerto Rico, which is amazing.

The moment we're living, the challenges we're facing — in Puerto Rico and beyond — is leading with what I call impact innovation. It's not necessarily the most appealing to capital, and there are challenges, especially in the current US administration. But it's coming, and it's coming strong. As a researcher who looks at Europe, Latin America and everywhere, I can already see how other regions of the world — Asia, Europe — are moving strongly into circular economies, green economy, blue economy, and the creative economy sits at the center of that.

You touched on the diaspora. Across all these sectors, what's the common pattern in these founders that most people outside of Puerto Rico — the diaspora especially — are completely missing?

A lot of this is coming from a very human, authentic way. Jonathan, the Raincoat founder, is a great example — he just wanted to solve a problem for his mom. He ended up becoming a founder because his mom lost her home in the hurricane and needed insurance support. That authentic human origin of what entrepreneurship has become is a real thing. A lot more founders are getting there like that.

And that's not something the system itself is set up for — capital doesn't move like that. If you look deeper into Jonathan's story, he also had to become an expert on how to ask for funding, get funding, where to go. He has a whole presentation about that; you may want to interview him for it. He had to maneuver this almost on his own, even with support from the ecosystem — which only goes so far. Once he finished that path and needed growth and capital, he had to figure it out by himself.

Your founding story may not be your growth story. His founding story is authentic, impact-driven, all the things you'd think — this is a great story. But impact is not what gets capital. That's one of the gaps we need to think about. These are critical businesses. I'm a big advocate for impact and for what these founders are doing to transform our world, but that's not how the world moves. The world still moves on profits. So how do we bridge that necessity — a transformation in a world being depleted in so many ways, and the importance of these emergent solutions and new models of value creation that we need to support, fund, and allow to grow?

So Puerto Rico has the talent, has the founders, has the creative infrastructure you're describing. In your opinion, what is structurally broken in how the outside world sees it and engages with it? Why is it staying on the island? Why is there not more traction coming from the diaspora?

I want to start by saying there's a lot of amazing things happening — very committed people, super smart leaders. We've made a lot of progress, and I'm not talking from the outside. I know these people personally and I know the caliber of the leaders we have. Obviously our political landscape doesn't help us in many ways, and there's still a disconnect. When you talk to foreign founders who end up in Puerto Rico, we're still not tight. We're not talking as much as we could be. That's why I love doing my book — I really get people who need to be talking more, to talk.

On the topic of talent, everybody says talent is important, talent, MIA West, the engineers. I don't think we've really looked at that statement in depth — what does it mean for academia to form and connect the professionals the ecosystem needs based on the specifics of what's being built, of what the promising sectors are? As smart as the people behind all of this are, we're not looking each other in the face as much as we need to, or having these conversations with as much detail as we need to. There has to be more interconnection, more strategic orchestration.

When it comes to the creative economy, we left it at some point. We moved with it and articulated it with the first law, but there's so much more the world is doing that the biggest transforming economies — the Middle East, Dubai, all these countries — are doing. They're going deep into what it means to retain talent, to have the talent, to use the talent. We left that on hold. People like me are continuing it, and I will continue — I'm not stopping — but there's a lot of work to be more strategic about what talent means and what creativity means beyond a bad money movement. Culture is obvious and critical, but the strategic use of that talent is what we really need to go deeper on and be more orchestrated about.

Maybe this is your time to brag a little. Where does Puerto Rico Creativo sit in this puzzle?

I am Puerto Rico Creativo's observer and advocate. This is a way for me to — and I think as time passes this becomes more relevant, because it tends to be foresight. It's interesting how this was published in 2023, and in 2026 it's more obvious. That's the importance of somebody documenting, analyzing, and bringing foresight, because then I have the tools to have conversations like this. I sit as an observer, especially sitting in the diaspora, and I do a lot of self work — auto gestión. Sometimes I get support from the ecosystem, government entities. I have to mention I have an amazing co-founder, Ricardo Burgos, who's embedded on the island and has been key to opening doors with government and entities like the Puerto Rico Science Trust. Those entities are also understanding the importance of things like this.

But we can only do so much. The ecosystem has moved at a certain pace, and I will continue to articulate this narrative. Our logo is connecting the dots — so I connect dots. I bring awareness, I promote, I do a lot of events. I try to do what I preach: support the talent, nourish the talent. Talent is one of my main missions right now. I've been invested in bringing that to visibility. There are a lot of us — we're here, we're making noise, we're making events, especially the design community, which to me is probably the most critical in the emerging economy. Designers who support digitalization, branding, narrative. So the role of Puerto Rico Creativo is visibility, articulating, connecting, and promoting.

Dyanis, this has been amazing. I definitely agree that creativity has to be part of the infrastructure of building a business — not just in tech, but in any industry. In the era of AI, this is yet another reason creativity should be embedded and important, because it has that human factor I believe we're slowly losing.

I have to say something about that, because it's the conversation of the moment. There's this idea that technology and AI are displacing talent. The reality is that we're becoming way more critical. When I was in Silicon Valley I worked at an AI startup, and the role I had was really about translating technical things and working side by side between the CEO and the tech team, all the engineers. Creative talent are the ones who navigate ambiguity.

In this moment, when everything is in flux and everything is new, teams have to become way more multidisciplinary. So technology is not displacing creatives — in fact, it's making them way more needed. There's a report and initiative in the UK called CreaTech that is tracking the convergence of creatives and technology, and advocating for its importance. It's an amazing initiative — the UK is really advanced in the creative sector. Anybody can look up CreaTech; they track the importance of bringing those two together and the strategic role they're playing in transforming entire sectors.

Two more questions before we close out. First: if a Boricua founder or a Latino founder is listening to this right now, building in any of the sectors we've talked about, what's the one thing you tell them about how to position themselves and their work for the next year or more?

If you're a Boricua founder on the island, take advantage of everything. The ecosystem is sometimes not as obvious, but everything is there. All the outliers I have in my book are really examples of taking full advantage of what we have to offer.

The other thing: be open. Whether you're local or foreign in Puerto Rico, be open to looking outside your jump-start. Entrepreneurs tend to be doers, which is amazing, but think beyond what you know — that's very general founder advice. Look a little outside, and in Puerto Rico the obvious place to look is creativity, creative talent. Bring those in early. I've been in that place with founders early on, and it really is an asset — strategic. There are a lot of people in Puerto Rico willing to roll up their sleeves and go there and build with you. If anything, these outliers are teaching us that having creative talent side by side has been critical to their growth.

Last question — the one we ask everyone. If Puerto Rico Creativo were a song, what song would it be, and why?

It may be obvious, but I have to go with Bad Bunny — Debí Tirar Más Fotos. It's not particularly because it relates to the actual publication, but because it touches the core of my entire work. It's about how amazing our country is, how rich, how much we have. Especially when it comes to talent, DTMF has that nostalgia of something you left behind, which is something that touches me every single day.

On a personal note: I got into this work so passionately because I wanted to create a space to go back to Puerto Rico, working there and growing there. And I have to acknowledge that ten years after, I still haven't been able to do that. We're growing a lot, but the growth hasn't been enough for a person like me — already a senior creative — to go back. I give a lot from outside, but we have a lot of work to do internally, so people like me don't have to keep carrying the nostalgia Bad Bunny captures in the song — the places that are now a memory, the aunt I don't have, the cousins, the beaches. I hope we keep building so that talent stays, talent can grow, and we can really take advantage of this historic moment.

Thank you, Dyanis. Thank you for introducing yourself, letting us know who you are and what you're working on — and more than anything, for those thoughts about creativity as infrastructure, not decoration. These are the conversations I'm shooting for on The Corridor. The corridor is where Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and Latino allies hang out and have conversations about what everyone's doing and how we can support each other. The argument you're making about creativity as infrastructure is the reframe that changes how people see Puerto Rico. I hope it keeps growing and more people get involved — one person can't do it all. Before we go, tell the audience where to find you.

Thank you, and thank you for your vision. It's critical, and there's way more that we need to do from the diaspora. Thank you for opening that corridor.

Anybody interested in downloading the last publication can go to puertoricocreativo.com. You can reach me at dyanis@gmail.com and on LinkedIn — I love collaborating, love being in touch, and I'm very committed to all of this and to the country. Please feel free to reach out.

Thank you, Dyanis. Everyone — this is The Corridor, the podcast from Coquí Ventures, where the conversations about Latino and Boricua founders, Latino allies, venture capital, and the experts and professionals building this community happen. Thank you, Dyanis, and thank you everyone for listening.