About Our Founder: Maria I. Melendez
About Maria I. Melendez
As “the midwife to your legacy,” social entrepreneur, motivational speaker, author of Take the Limits Off Your Legacy, executive producer, and women’s leadership advocate– Maria I. Melendez has embraced her mission of empowering others to live a life that embraces a limitless legacy. After leaving her high-profile career in the music business to pursue her purpose of empowering others to live life in purpose, give birth to their dreams and define their legacy, Maria has proven that she is the essence of living a purpose and legacy driven life in order to inspire others to follow suit. Featured in the ESSENCE magazine, Latina,com, Heartandsoul.com, and recipient of several notable accolades, she is an influential leader whose faith, zealous drive, experience, framework, story and impact are key to the leadership development in women and girls around the world.
Maria launched Embrace Her Legacy in 2012. Since then Maria has transformed the brand from a women’s network to an empowerment organization the offers co-curricular programs, empowerment programs & workshops, tailored events, and personal development resources to inspire women and girls to give become legendary in their lives, vision and spirit while embracing a purpose-driven legacy. She is the creator of Embrace Her Legacy’s franchise co-curricular & empowerment program for young women, the Made to Succeed Academy. Also the creator of Embrace Her Legacy’s keynote annual event, the Day of the Girl Summit and the executive producer of the riveting web-series, The UnMasked Effect – Maria is a visionary who continues to cultivate brand partnerships to further cultivate her mission. Maria diligently leads the company to become a leading organization to empower women and girls to be legendary under her unique framework. “Embrace Her Legacy is about helping give birth to the gift’s that have already been placed inside of us so we can become the women we have been created to be so we can honor what we have been called to do. I use my personal story of overcoming challenge to now live my purpose to help others birth their own gifts, vision and legacy. I do that by coaching, motivating and educating my audience through my distinct Embracing Her Legacy framework.” she says.
Raised in Brooklyn, Maria successfully achieved her goals while going against the odds. After landing a scholarship to Hofstra University, she excelled as a scholar and graduated Cum Laude with a marketing degree. It was during her time at Hofstra University where Maria grew an infinite passion of empowering others, especially women. She had already overcome her own struggles as an “Afro-Latina” growing up in the inner city. She realized that had it not been for her faith, mentors and education that she would not have been privileged with all the opportunities that came her way. Maria set out on a mission of leading other young women to victoriously do as she did. During her senior year of college, Maria landed a marketing internship at Warner Music Group. Excelling at her internship lead to a full-time position just a few months later. In her position she created and managed ground-breaking promotional campaigns for artists including Jay-Z, Toni Braxton, T.I., Trey Songz, and others. Maria’s marketing and promotion prowess only flourished and essentially fueled her life-long passion of starting her own company. After facing her own fears, she resigned from Warner Music Group to launch Embrace Her Legacy so she could live in her purpose.
In addition, Embrace Her Legacy continues to partner with several non-profit organizations and corporate brands to create programs that will educate women on how to achieve their legacy and empower them with the knowledge needed to develop self-worth, awareness, value and esteem. With her upcoming book release, Take the Limits Off Your Legacy: A Woman’s Guide to Unlock Purpose and Vision, Maria continues to soar as a leader and advocate for empowering women and girls to realize their dreams.
Maria understands that she “stands on the shoulders of giants” who have blazed the trail for her by leaving their own legacies behind. She not only embraces those legacies but she is devoted to continuing her own legacy – one endeavor at a time.
To book Maria for any speaking engagements or for more information, please email us directly at info@embraceherlegacy.com.
Is Women Empowerment For Real?
The other day I had the opportunity to speak with teens at an event for Women’s History Month and I jokingly said that there are plenty of women who profess to be about women empowerment but who really may not be. I joked, but I meant every bit of what I said and here is why.On my journey of learning to overcome my challenges to inspire and motivate women and girls to live in purpose and define their legacy, I have met countless beautiful, empowered, smart and successful women. Nevertheless, I have also met women who have professed to the tee that they were all for women empowerment and later I would disappointingly find out that it was a facade. What would concern me the most is that some of these women were prominent leaders in this industry of women empowerment. I come from a world of the music business where I was used to swimming with sharks but once again I was surprised at how women had become so great at portraying to be one thing and in actuality being another; especially in this world of empowerment.
I noticed a common trend and that’s actually part of what fueled me to produce “The UnMasked Effect” because I noticed that there were women who made “truth” a part of their appearance and not necessarily a part of their lifestyle.
I am going to be brutally honest here. We have A LOT further to go in really empowering one another as women. We have to stop calling each other all these mean and hateful names, we have to stop competing with one another, we have to stop selling ourselves short to have a perceived level of success and we have to stop pretending that we are about the solidarity of women when deep inside there is jealousy, envy and selfish ambition. We say that we’re really looking to empower each other but in actuality plenty of times we may be looking to get ahead or be a part of a “cool” movement.
The degradation of women starts at such an early age. Boys are praised for having a girlfriend, while little girls easily get the labels “easy” and “fast.” We have to show our girls from young that they are more than the clothes they wear or the cars they drive at 16. When our girls get into a scuffle with another girl at school, one of the first reasons to blame is jealousy which in turn develops this notion that “girls are jealous and I’m better than her so that’s why she doesn’t like me.” This ends up being the mentality that we grow with. I know we have to teach our girls how to look out after themselves but is it really helping long-term success?
We have to show our girls that they are more than the boys that like them. Say what you may boys and men play a vital role on our self-esteem if we allow our worth to be defined in how others view us.
We have to stop implementing our own fears and insecurities on our girls because they pay more attention to what we do rather than what we say. We have to know that we are enough just as we are. You ARE enough. It doesn’t matter what education you have, where you work, what shoes you have on, how much money you have, how many followers you have on social media…you my dear are ENOUGH.
If more of us realized that, then we we would really start to be able to empower ourselves and each other as women.
Ratings for reality TV where women are constantly beating on each other’s self-images are through the roof but positive images fail to even make the cut. I go to conference after conference, event after event and we talk all the time about how men differ from women but when is someone going to say what about what women do to each other? It’s an ugly truth that we have to deal with and we have to start doing something about it.
Women empowerment is more than an award show, a luncheon or a social network. Women empowerment is a lifestyle, it says no to the cattiness, jealousy, competition and low self-esteem. It says hello to encouragement, love, beauty, community, support, authenticity, transparency, and wholeness.
I’m in no way beating us up as women, I’m saying enough is enough already. It’s time we authentically do better and embrace each other’s legacy.
XOXO,
Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy
The UnMasked Effect Episode 3: Facing Fear & Vulnerability
God Does Not Do Group Calling
The journey of discovering your purpose to birth your vision and ultimately live your legacy can be a challenging one, filled with birthing pains. What I am starting to experience and understand is that the journey can also be quite lonely at times.
Let’s be real here for one second.
We live in a culture that tells you to work until you can’t work anymore and keep working after that. Rightfully so, because 40% of Americans are one check away from living under the poverty line. I completely understand that we have to work, but shouldn’t we at least try to create a work life that is what we want? I know it’s hard, but it is possible. Is that not the American dream?
So on my journey of birthing my vision and living my legacy, I will admit that I feel super alone because I’m not doing the ordinary thing. Ordinary would have been to stay at a job the made me miserable and indulge in shopping, drinking or whatever else to take my mind off the fact that I was miserable at work. I speak from experience. Extraordinary is walking by an insane amount of faith and trusting God to show me how to use my gifts, talents and abilities to serve others and ultimately live the life that He ordained for me.
After battling with these feelings of “loneliness”, I heard a pastor preach and his message was “God doesn’t do group calling, He called you so you have to be willing to walk alone. Remember that no matter how lonely you may feel, God is and always will be with you.”
That message pierced my heart because I knew I needed to hear it. I learned that I have to be willing to walk my journey alone and sometimes that’s best because truth is most people will not understand why you’re choosing courage over comfort.
So many times we want our loved ones to understand, support us or even walk with us on our journey but that is not how it works out sometimes. You have to be willing to walk your journey of living in purpose by yourself. It’s not up to you to make others understand, you have to live in the conviction that what you are doing is right for you.
We each have a different calling over our lives and I am tired of seeing fear play such a vital role in holding us back. Fear tells you that you will lose your friends and you’re better off taking the safe route. I do not know of one influential leader that got to where they are by playing it safe or worrying about who would join them on the journey.
Truth is that your journey will show you who your real friends are. Not everyone is set to make it with us, sometimes we hold onto relationships for dear life without realizing that perhaps the season for that relationship has passed. It’s OK to let people go and trust God to take care of them as you do. We are not responsible for other people’s lives; that’s actually a deadly and dysfunctional road to walk down. You have to believe that people have the power to lead their own lives and you have the power to lead yours and yours only.
Be committed to you and your calling. Remember God does not do group calling, He called YOU and no matter how you may feel you are never alone. I’m convinced that me being “alone” is a sign that I am well on my way because all the greats have had to walk their journey alone at one point, even when the world did not believe or understand.
XOXO,
Maria I. Melendez
@EmbraceHerLegacy
P.S. Thank you for all your support of the premiere of “The UnMasked Effect” web series! We launched (2) episodes last week and Episode 3 airs tomorrow Wed. April 2nd at 8pm on YouTube.com/EmbraceHerLegacy
