How Leticia Romo’s Approach to Inclusive Communities Applies to Video Production

Dr. Leticia Romo is the Director of Inclusion & Community Relations at Alliant University. Her work centers on building environments where students, faculty, and staff feel they belong, with an emphasis on shared ownership, genuine relationships, and community participation.

Her Authority Magazine conversation offers useful lessons for video teams because representation is not only a casting decision. It also affects who helps shape the message, how interview subjects are treated, which perspectives are included, and how feedback is handled before the final edit.

Romo’s five principles are “Build with the community, not for it,” “Meet people through their differences, not despite them,” “Identify the real concern behind resistance,” “Create space for people to be authentically themselves,” and “Measure impact beyond the numbers.”

Beverly Boy’s interpretation for video teams is that the people represented in a video should have meaningful opportunities to inform its development. The production examples below apply Romo’s ideas beyond the interview.

Build With the People the Video Represents

Romo’s first principle is to build with the community, not simply for it. When she helped create a Cross-Cultural Center, students, staff, and faculty were involved in decisions ranging from operating hours to décor. The space worked because the people it was meant to serve helped shape it.

Video teams can apply the same principle during pre-production.

If a company is producing an employee story, community campaign, recruitment film, or customer-facing piece, the people closest to the subject can provide context that does not always appear in the original brief.

That does not mean every participant becomes a creative director. It means the production team makes room for useful input before the concept is locked.

A producer can ask what the audience already understands, which language feels natural, which details may be missing, and what would make the piece feel accurate to the people represented on screen.

Shared input early can prevent larger corrections later.

Represent Differences Without Flattening Them

Romo’s second principle is to meet people through their differences rather than asking them to set those differences aside. She describes a multilingual campaign built from quotes submitted by students, staff, and faculty in their own languages, including Arabic, Tagalog, Mandarin, Spanish, Farsi, and others.

For video production, representation should work the same way.

A campaign featuring employees across regions should not assume every person needs to speak with the same tone or tell the same version of the story. A customer film involving several communities may require different examples, language choices, or cultural context.

The goal is not to exaggerate differences. It is to avoid editing them away simply because uniformity feels easier.

That can affect casting, interview prompts, subtitles, translation, graphics, and the final selection of sound bites.

A consistent brand can still make room for people to sound like themselves.

Listen Before Solving Resistance

Romo’s third principle focuses on resistance. When leadership questioned the Cross-Cultural Center because they feared it might create more separation, she did not dismiss the concern. She asked why they felt that way and identified the real issue as fear of division rather than opposition to inclusion itself. That allowed her to design the project around collaboration and shared ownership.

This approach is useful when a video project meets stakeholder resistance.

A legal team may push back on an interview question. An executive may dislike a proposed story direction. Employees may hesitate to appear on camera. A regional team may feel that the central campaign does not reflect its audience.

The first response should not automatically be persuasion.

Ask what is behind the concern.

A stakeholder saying, “This does not work for us,” may actually be worried about accuracy, risk, tone, or how the audience will interpret the message. Once the real concern is clear, the producer can address the issue instead of arguing with the first objection.

Good production communication often starts with diagnosis.

Create Space for People to Be Themselves on Camera

Romo’s fourth principle is about authenticity and belonging. She argues that people should not have to shrink or perform in order to fit into a community.

That translates directly to interviews.

Subjects often become stiff when they feel they need to deliver the “correct” corporate answer. A producer can help by creating enough structure to keep the interview focused without turning every response into a rehearsed line.

Use prompts that invite experience rather than slogans.

Instead of asking an employee to explain why the company is inclusive, ask about a moment when they felt heard. Instead of asking a customer to describe the brand, ask what happened before they needed help and what changed afterward.

The goal is not to remove professionalism. It is to make the person recognizable inside the professional message.

People tend to give stronger material when they are not trying to perform someone else’s version of what they should sound like.

Use Active Listening in Pre-Interviews and Reviews

Romo says treating people the way they want to be treated requires stepping away from assumptions, listening actively, and respecting other people’s experiences.

That is useful guidance for pre-interviews.

Producers often enter a conversation with a story already forming in their heads. The risk is that every question then becomes an attempt to confirm that story.

Listening closely can reveal a better direction.

A participant may emphasize something that was barely mentioned in the brief. A community partner may use language the marketing team would not have chosen. An employee may explain why a seemingly small moment mattered more than the larger company initiative.

Those details can make the final piece more specific and credible.

The same principle applies during review. Feedback should not be treated only as approval or rejection. Ask what feels inaccurate, incomplete, or disconnected from the intended audience.

That information is often more useful than a simple request to “make it better.”

Measure More Than Views

Romo’s fifth principle is to measure impact beyond the numbers. She says she surveys after every event, program, or initiative and reports that attendance at her programs grew by 10 percent year over year. But she also looks at outcomes that may appear later, such as changes in language, behavior, and how people engage with one another.

Video teams should use the same discipline when evaluating content.

Views, completion rates, clicks, and inquiries matter. They tell us how people interacted with the asset.

But some projects have other goals.

An internal video may need employees to understand a new policy. A recruitment film may need candidates to arrive with clearer expectations. A community story may be successful because the people represented feel the final piece is accurate and respectful.

Define those measures before production begins.

If the only success metric is reach, the creative choices may favor attention over understanding. If the goal includes trust, clarity, or participation, the review process should account for those outcomes too.

Keep Shared Ownership Without Losing Production Control

Romo describes inclusive communities as co-created rather than designed top-down. She highlights shared ownership, transparent communication, and accountability as key parts of the process.

For producers, shared ownership does not mean endless approval rounds.

The production still needs defined decision rights.

The difference is that important voices are included at the right stage.

A subject matter expert can check accuracy before filming. A community representative can flag missing context during development. Legal can review sensitive language before the edit is nearly finished. The producer can then make creative decisions with better information.

That is more efficient than bringing people into the process only after the final direction has already been established.

Team Beverly Boy’s Takeaway

The strongest production lesson in Romo’s approach is that representation should not begin when the camera turns on.

It begins with who is invited into the planning, whose concerns are taken seriously, how interview subjects are prepared, and how feedback is handled.

Her emphasis on shared ownership does not require making the production process complicated. It requires asking the right people for input before their perspective becomes expensive to add later.

For video teams, inclusion works best when it is part of the workflow rather than something added to the final cut.

Conclusion

Leticia Romo’s principles give video teams a practical way to approach representation and participation.

Build with the people the content represents. Respect differences instead of flattening them. Understand resistance before responding to it. Give interview subjects room to sound like themselves. Measure impact using both data and human response.

Those habits can help producers create work that is accurate, respectful, and connected to the people it is meant to reach.

This article is based on an interview originally published by Authority Magazine. Read the full interview here.