{"id":463443,"date":"2026-09-14T15:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T15:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463443\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T15:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T15:36:10","slug":"2026-change-maker-honoree-lilly-cortes-wyatt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463443\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Change Maker honoree: Lilly Cortes-Wyatt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Sacramento Bee and Nehemiah Leaders Programs are celebrating this year’s 60 Change Makers. Join them at our gala at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at the Grand Sheraton in downtown Sacramento. Buy tickets at sacramentochangemakers.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Lilly Cortes-Wyatt was always fascinated with storytelling.<\/p>\n

She grew up bilingual, speaking both English and Spanish, and spent her formative childhood years living in Mexico City and before moving to Concord, California, as a teenager.<\/p>\n

Her love for storytelling led her to a career in broadcast journalism. She spent almost 20 years as an English and Spanish-language reporter, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I was born with the desire to help and communicate,\u201d Cortes-Wyatt said. \u201cTo share stories and do it in both languages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cortez-Wyatt is the founder of SociosPR, a women-owned public relations firm specializing in multilingual services. SociosPR is the only Latino-owned marketing agency in Northern California, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people like me who think in Spanish, dream in English,\u201d Cortes-Wyatt said. \u201cWe are fully bicultural, fully bilingual. We love living here. I wanted to have a communications firm that really connected with all audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lilly Lilly Cortes-Wyatt \u2014 a prominent multicultural communications expert, public relations executive and former broadcast journalist \u2014 poses for a portrait after being recognized as one of this year’s Change Makers on Saturday, July 25, 2026. JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS jvillegas@sacbee.com <\/p>\n

Inspiration to create SociosPR came from a mistranslation. In 2016, she spotted a \u201chorribly translated\u201d bus ad. The ad was translated into Spanish for Hispanic and Latino residents.<\/p>\n

The mistranslation surprised her. At that moment, she knew she had to do something.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018there has to be a change,\u2019\u201d Cortes-Wyatt said. \u201cI need to solve that problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cortes-Wyatt has spearheaded numerous multilingual campaigns serving California residents. With the Department of Aging, she led an informational campaign about support services for seniors.<\/p>\n

During COVID-19, as agencies needed urgent assistance providing health information to non-English-speaking communities, Cortes-Wyatt answered the call. Then, she led campaigns debunking myths about vaccines and encouraging vaccinations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in all of us to make this world a better place,\u201d Cortes-Wyatt said. \u201cAll of us can do our part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Emma Hall<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n

Emma Hall covers retail and business for The Sacramento Bee. Hall graduated from Sacramento State and Diablo Valley College. She is Blackfeet and Cherokee.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sacramento Bee and Nehemiah Leaders Programs are celebrating this year’s 60 Change Makers. Join them at our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-463443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}