Marta Tellado, CEO Consumer Reports, Talks New Book ‘Buyer Aware’

In today’s episode of ‘Highly Relevant’ episode, I spoke with Marta Tellado, President, and CEO of Consumer Reports. She spoke with me about her new book, Buyer Aware, which helps you protect yourself from dubious consumer deals.

You can listen to our podcast interview with Marta Tellado above and read a summary of our conversation below. Apart from her book, we discussed:

• How she became one of the few Latina CEOs in the country
• How her Cuban heritage shaped her democratic ideals
• And how technological racism is affecting society today

What Marta Tellado’s new book ‘Buyer Aware’ is about

This is Mrs. Tellado’s first book. In it, she makes a strong argument for corporate companies choosing profits over people.

It was written and intended to be a playbook for action a way of empowering ourselves. There’s a lot of complexity and a lack of transparency. What is this digital marketplace? Am I being served up something fair? There’s a lot going on in the marketplace that we can’t see, we can’t feel… we need the rules, the laws, and the guidelines so that we don’t have to keep attacking this problem one person at a time, but we have to do it as a society because the marketplace has to be fair and just. – Marta Tellado

How she became one of the few Latina CEOs in the country

The lack of Latina CEOs in the United States is a problem that has been plaguing the business world for years. Marta Tellado happens to be one of the few. Here she discusses how it happened and what factors helped her get there.

I remember being in college and seeing Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates do a television show and I was like I wanna do that. I picked up the phone and I figured out how to get an internship for myself, and that’s how I landed there. You don’t do these things by yourself. You have mentors, you have people that you look up to that believe in you, that push you, that tell you you can do this because far too many of us get to a certain place in our education, in our life and you realize the expectation is different for you than for others, and that starts to shape who you think you are and what you think you can accomplish. And so you have to be conscious of that, you have to work against that. Just be fearless. – Marta Tellado

How her Cuban heritage shaped her democratic ideals

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 led to a mass migration of Cubans to America. This migration consisted of people who had strong feelings about democracy and equality. This group of people brought their culture with them and to this day, continues to influence America in a big way.

As a Latina immigrant coming here to leave a surveillance state, I found myself in another surveillance state now by Big Tech. I saw a real connection there I wanted to tell a larger story about our democracy and how it can only thrive if we have a marketplace that is fair and just I think we can do both of those things. I think we can have our democratic freedoms and our economic opportunities together, but they really have to be in concert with each other. – Marta Tellado

And how technological racism is affecting society today

Perhaps the scariest reality that ‘Buyer Aware’ points out is how technological racism is built into our products and systems. How much does race play a factor in consumerism and the problems that are affecting us right now?

There’s one chapter where I say Bias In, Bias Out. If you think about housing discrimination, health insurance, healthcare, and now the digital space. Facial recognition does not do a great job with people of color and other tools. These inherent biases in products and services in our economy have bias and we need to be aware of that. So I think it is an issue, and that’s why I say in the book, consumer rights are civil rights. – Marta Tellado

The Takeaways

Hopefully, my conversation with Marta Tellado has helped you understand why we need to be more aware of our consumer rights. If anything, I want these main points to hit home:

• It takes a village to become the CEO of a company.
• We can have our democratic freedoms and our economic opportunities together, but they have to be in concert with each other.
• Racism now exists digitally and we must be aware of that. Remember, consumer rights are civil rights.

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