FIU RA+DI Hispanic Heritage talks with Lily Hagen (includes audio interview)

Recently, FIU’s Ratcliffe Art and Design Incubator kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month with a discussion featuring Lily Hagen, the CEO and founder of Lingo Plaza and the creator of Plaza Aventuras, a new bilingual format for kids and family to learn English and Spanish.

Raising multicultural kids, Hagen and her husband quickly recognized the need for engaging and innovative tools to support the Spanish language learning journey for our kids. After months of searching for the right tools, they decided to launch Lingo Plaza, designed with kids and families in mind.

Lingo Plaza is an innovative platform built to provide an immersive experience and safe creative space for kids to engage and connect with cultures all around the world. The program includes 1:1 sessions with native speakers, gamification elements to engage and motivate, and progress tracking so that parents can be involved every step of the way.

Lingo Plaza’s mission is to make high-quality education globally accessible to all, regardless of their background and social status.

Maggie Salas-Amaro

Daniela Zulueta

Daniela Zulueta is pursuing her master’s degree in global strategic communications and graduated from FIU with a bachelor’s degree in digital broadcasting in 2023. She also holds an associate’s degree in journalism from Miami Dade College. Zulueta loves the city of Miami and aims to share the stories of the citizens who live here and all over the world. Zulueta runs a social media platform called @Lifestyle_Miami where she works with local businesses and does community-based work. She had a paid internship with Televisa Univisión as a Step Producer and worked as a stage manager at NBC6 South Florida & Telemundo51. Now, she is part of cohort 8 and has a fellowship at the FIU Ratcliffe where she can work on branding herself and post-production of a podcast called Tech Conversations.