In an age defined by rapid innovation, performance dashboards, and relentless competition, leadership development has become an industry of its own. Organizations invest millions in executive coaching, communication workshops, and culture-building frameworks. Yet one of the most powerful leadership skills remains largely invisible—and it is learned long before the first job interview.
Emotional literacy.
For Mona Liza Santos, founder of World Love Press and a prolific children’s author, leadership does not begin with authority or strategy. It begins with emotional understanding—how individuals learn to recognize, name, and regulate their feelings from an early age.
Santos’s work challenges a deeply rooted assumption in modern leadership thinking: that emotional intelligence is something adults can simply acquire later in life. Instead, she argues that the foundation is laid in childhood, through storytelling, relationships, and the emotional language children are given—or denied.
From Pandemic Uncertainty to Purpose-Driven Publishing
World Love Press was born during the global disruption of 2020, a period marked by anxiety, isolation, and uncertainty. Like many parents, Santos found herself navigating her own emotional landscape while watching children absorb the tension of a changing world without the tools to fully understand it.
Writing became her response.
What began as a personal creative outlet soon revealed a broader gap: while children were exposed to increasingly complex emotions, few resources helped them process those feelings in a meaningful, age-appropriate way. Santos recognized that stories could do more than entertain—they could teach children how to feel, communicate, and empathize.
That realization evolved into an independent publishing platform with a growing global audience of parents, educators, counselors, and advocates of social-emotional learning.
Stories as Emotional Infrastructure
Since launching World Love Press, Santos has published across a wide range of genres, including mindfulness-based narratives, cultural identity stories, and fiction designed to support emotional growth. Her bestselling debut, Mama, I Love You, quickly found its way into classrooms and therapeutic settings, praised for its quiet yet powerful emphasis on presence, reassurance, and emotional awareness.
The book’s resonance reflects a larger cultural shift. As conversations around mental health become more open, parents and educators are seeking tools that help children develop emotional vocabulary early—before misunderstandings, suppression, or shame take root.
For Santos, emotional literacy is not an abstract concept. It is practical. Children who can identify their emotions are better equipped to manage conflict, build relationships, and develop confidence. These same skills, she notes, are the very qualities organizations later attempt to cultivate in adult leaders.
A Global Perspective on Emotional Needs
Drawing from her Filipino heritage and experiences traveling to more than seventy countries, Santos approaches publishing through a distinctly global lens. Across cultures, she observed a consistent truth: while emotional expression varies, emotional needs do not.
Children everywhere want to feel seen, safe, and understood.
The difference lies not in the need itself, but in how societies encourage—or discourage—emotional expression. Santos’s work seeks to bridge those gaps, offering stories that honor cultural diversity while reinforcing universal emotional experiences.
This perspective has helped World Love Press resonate internationally, positioning emotional literacy not as a Western ideal, but as a shared human foundation.
Leadership Beyond the Boardroom
Beyond authorship, Santos leads the creative and business strategy behind World Love Press, overseeing everything from concept development and production to distribution and partnerships. Her leadership style mirrors the values embedded in her books: intentional, long-term, and impact-driven.
Rather than chasing trends, the company focuses on cultural sustainability—how early storytelling influences empathy, decision-making, and resilience over time. It is a model that measures success not only in sales, but in the lasting emotional tools children carry forward.
Rethinking Leadership Development
As organizations grapple with burnout, disengagement, and fractured workplace cultures, Santos’s work offers a reframing of the leadership conversation. The qualities companies seek—self-awareness, communication, emotional regulation—are not developed overnight. They are shaped years earlier, often before formal education even begins.
By treating kindness, empathy, and emotional understanding as skills that can be intentionally taught, Santos positions leadership development as a generational investment rather than a corporate intervention.
Her work suggests a powerful idea: the most effective leaders of the future are not being trained in conference rooms today. They are being shaped quietly, through stories read at bedtime, conversations held with care, and emotions given language.
- Follow on Instagram: momosvoyage
- Website: monalizasantos.com
