During Senior Year, CEP requires students to engage in a capstone project with the topic of their choosing. For my senior project, I decided to study how motivational speaking can change to empower Latina women. I chose this topic because I wanted to connect my passions for social justice and community building together. In this page, you will find my senior project abstract, poster, presentation, and final write up.
Senior Project Abstract
Motivational speakers choose to share their messages to attentive audiences in hopes of uplifting and inspiring listeners to make positive change. However, despite their encouraging spirits, motivational speakers can strive to be more inclusive by acknowledging how women of color encounter certain barriers such as cost, representation, and specificity in programs that may prevent them from feeling the empowerment that is supposed to come along with a speaker’s moving message. For my project, I looked at four categories that made up the larger themes of my research: background information on motivational speaking, improving accessibility, focusing on representation, and program specificity aimed for women of color. I analyzed various sources that provided background and additional context for my project question, and then organized that collective information in the form of a literature review. Next, I reached out to motivational speakers, and interviewed three Latina women who are active in the motivational speaking event community, in order to inquire about how cost, representation, and program specificity influences or incentivizes motivational speaking events. In evaluating current literature regarding the motivational business and the importance of representation, I’ve explored how speaker background, market, and advertising influences tickets cost; how representation in speakers lead to empowerment and affirmation; and how program specificity for women of color encourages inclusivity and encouragement. Lastly, I combined the knowledge gathered from my sources and interviews to demonstrate how I believe that it is important to change certain factors of the motivational business so that it can positively transform the impact of speakers on women of color.
Senior Project Presentation
This was the presentation I gave for Senior Project Night. I was initially very nervous to give my presentation, but all of my judges were very engaging and nice. I received positive responses from the audience, and was overall so happy to have successfully delivered my presentation.