Today we’d like to introduce you to Luana Mendoza-Evans.
Hi Luana, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I want to take you back to my first day of school in the US, third grade. The teacher was going on in a language I didn’t understand, and the tears just started falling. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder, and a little girl tells me, “no te preocupes, yo tampoco hablo inglés.” Don’t worry, I don’t speak English either.
She made me feel like I wasn’t alone. That small moment of connection changed everything, and it’s shaped how I think about leadership to this day. Making the people around you feel seen and capable. It’s also what a great personal brand does. It helps your audience feel like you understand them.
I spent over fifteen years in corporate strategy and leadership communications. I started in marketing, moved into program management and strategic planning, and became the person leaders called to stand up new businesses, launch strategies, and bring programs to life. My last chapter was in the Fortune 100 Chief of Staff office, where I helped senior executives translate scattered ideas into programs and engagements that influenced thousands of people. I was the person building the infrastructure for how the president of the business showed up.
Then I got laid off from a role I’d outgrown. In that same season, I was connected to a founder who needed help untangling her story, and that one conversation was the spark for Thread Studio. Because I realized something. Every Fortune 100 executive has story infrastructure built behind them. The moment you leave corporate, suddenly you’re supposed to figure all of that out on your own, with no team and no strategy. That’s the gap. And it’s exactly the gap I now exist to close.
Today I’m on a mission to help corporate leaders and corporate escapees like myself turn decades of hard won expertise into a brand that actually reflects the weight it carries. That’s what lights me up. Watching someone go from scattered and unsure to magnetic, confident, and impossible to forget.
Because every leader has a story worth owning. And the ones who own it are the ones who get seen.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Has it been a smooth road? Not even close.
A few years after that third grade moment, I put myself through college. And a year after graduation, I was a pregnant single mom. And I lost my job. But what I didn’t lose was the confidence that I was going to be an amazing mom AND build a successful career. That season taught me that clarity isn’t just about strategy. It’s about knowing who you are and what you stand for, even when everything around you feels chaotic. Years later, I stood on stage receiving my MBA in Global Leadership with my son Santi cheering in the audience.
In 2016, I hit another wall. Burnt out. Amazing job, traveling everywhere, but I was a single mom and I wasn’t showing up the way I wanted to for my son. So I asked for a promotion. Got it. Got a raise. And I still left. Because what I was doing wasn’t aligned with the life I wanted to live. That was the moment I learned leadership starts with leading your own life first.
And finding calm in the chaos, for me, starts with emotional regulation. The energy you put out is the energy that returns to you. I’m a huge advocate of therapy. I’ve been with my therapist for years and she’s going nowhere. I need her. Because you have to be so in tune with your emotions, to love yourself, to understand what impact you’re here to make, before you can lead anyone else into a transformation.
Every plot twist became material. The layoff. The burnout. The pregnant single mom season. I didn’t build Thread Studio in spite of the messy middle. I built it from it.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I serve as Chief Brand Strategist and Founder of Thread Studio, a brand strategy practice for leaders, corporate escapees, and seasoned entrepreneurs who are done being the best kept secret in the room. We do positioning strategy, building the actual foundation your whole brand runs on.
I work with three kinds of leaders. The Corporate Leader who is still inside a company and ready to build thought leadership that opens the next set of premium opportunities. The Corporate Escapee who has built decades of credibility and is now stepping into something of their own. The Established Entrepreneur whose business has outgrown its original brand and needs language that finally meets the moment.
This work matters more right now than at any point I’ve seen in my career. Layoffs are up 118% from last year. More than 455,000 women exited the workforce between January and August 2025. Over 540,000 businesses were formed in January 2026 alone. Whether you’re going for the next promotion, stepping onto a stage, or launching a business, one day you realize nobody knows what you do or why you’re the right person. That’s the gap. Your positioning IS your competitive advantage.
What sets us apart is the lens behind the work. Most brand strategists start with a blank page. I start with you. I bring over fifteen years of Fortune 100 strategy discipline and a storytelling lens that finds the competitive advantage buried inside everything you’ve already built, lived, and believed in long enough to start. The result is The Threaded Story™, our signature five stitch methodology. The story is already there. It’s just tangled. My job is to help you see the thread that’s been running through everything, then weave it into the language and infrastructure that finally matches the level you’re operating at.
What I’m proudest of, brand wise, isn’t a deliverable. It’s the people. The clients who trusted me with their stories and let me be part of building something that matters to them. The entrepreneurship community and women founders who’ve welcomed me with open arms this year, like the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce where I serve as an Embajadora, Entreprenista, the Nasdaq Milestone Circles, and Working Moms of San Antonio. Through Nasdaq’s Milestone Circles program, my face went up on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square this year, a moment I still can’t quite believe. The friends who’ve cheered me on. And the moment we celebrated all of it together at our first ribbon cutting. That’s what brand is to me. The relationships that prove the work is real.
What I want your readers to know is this. In a world where AI can generate any caption in any voice, the one thing that can’t be replicated is the truth of who you are and what you’ve lived through. And clarity isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. The work I do blends strategy with the warmth, cultural richness, and intention that comes from Mexican artisan craft where every detail carries meaning. That’s still how I build brands. Hecho con intención, always.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
What matters most to me is that the people around me feel seen and capable.
Throughout my career, I was always the person advocating for others. Telling mentees and team members to ask for that promotion. Speak up. Write down your accomplishments. Because I know what it feels like to not have a voice. I was that little girl in third grade who couldn’t speak the language. And someone showed up for me. That’s the kind of leader I want to be, and that’s exactly what I do now through Thread Studio.
So many leaders are tangled. Contained. Performing. Showing up the way they think they’re supposed to instead of the way that’s true to who they are. Once you pull that thread, what gets unleashed was always inside you. You’re not becoming someone new. You’re finally letting the world see who you’ve been all along.
The other thing that matters most to me is family. My husband Casey, my boys, our goldendoodle Mabel, our Chief Barketing Officer, and the heritage my mom stitched into me long before I had words for any of it. Travel resets me. Family grounds me. I’m building a business that doesn’t ask me to choose between any of it. That’s the version of success I want other women, especially other Latinas, to know is on the table.
Because every leader has a story worth owning. And the ones who own it are the ones who get seen. One stitch at a time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://threadstudiocollective.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/threadstudioco/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luanamendoza/
