Author's note (May 2026): I wrote these notes shortly after CNN Chile's story aired. At that moment, I wasn't fully grasping what it meant. Over time I understood: it wasn't just media coverage — it was verifiable evidence that the work was real.

CNN Chile: What You Feel When You Appear on National TV as an Immigrant

How the contact came

We didn't contact them.

They contacted us.

The CNN Chile reporter found the TALS project through the visibility chain we'd built: CORFO Capital Semilla, prior media coverage, and the stories that CORFO itself circulates about its winning projects. The television story came as a natural consequence of having worked quietly for years and that work being recognized by institutions that generate credibility.

It's a lesson I apply to this day: the best public relations isn't bought — it's built with real evidence, and the press follows.

The moment the email arrived

The initial reaction was a mix of panic and pride I'd never felt mixed together that way.

Panic because CNN Chile is national television. The scale is different from any regional story or entrepreneurship blog. There's something in the "CNN" of the name that activates an immediate level of self-demand: if the system fails in front of that camera, it doesn't fail in front of fifty people in a conference room — it fails in front of potentially thousands of viewers.

Pride because someone considered what we were building from Iquique to be national news. That, for two Venezuelans who had arrived in northern Chile with no network and a prototype in a shoebox, is no small thing.

The preparation was meticulous. We defined three central messages, brief and in non-technical language:

1. The real problem TALS solves: the communication barrier between deaf and hearing people
2. The technology that makes it possible: computer vision on accessible hardware
3. The impact we'd already demonstrated: CORFO, Computex, the deaf community validating the system

And we adjusted the prototype so the demo would be solid under television lighting conditions.

The day of recording

The recording was in Santiago. The CNN team was professional and facilitated the process: they organized the scene, guided the narrative toward what works on television — the human story before the technical details — and gave us space for TALS's demo to speak for itself.

When the red camera light came on, I felt something I can only describe as sudden clarity: at that moment I wasn't speaking just for myself. I was speaking for Darwin, for the sleepless months, for the Raspberry that overheated at Computex, for the deaf community lab technicians with whom we'd validated the system. I was speaking for a trajectory that started one afternoon walking in Guanare.

Watching it on air

I watched it with Darwin on a small screen. We didn't have a television, but we found it live online.

The moment the caption appears — "Naudy Castellanos — CEO VeanX" — on CNN Chile was surreal. It's one of those experiences your mind registers as happening to someone else, and it takes a few seconds to accept it's happening.

I thought about the afternoon in high school in Guanare. About Panama with the return tickets already purchased and the decision to head to Chile. About the 36 sleepless hours at the Arica Hackathon. About the CORFO email on a Tuesday afternoon.

I thought about my family in Venezuela. For them, that caption on CNN was the first tangible and visible proof of everything "Naudy" had been building on the other side of the continent.

The deaf community's reaction

The most important thing wasn't the ratings or reach of the story. It was what happened after.

We received emails from parents of deaf people. "Thank you for thinking of my children." Messages from deaf community associations from different Chilean cities. Contacts from people with deaf family members who had never seen a technology like this in Spanish, accessible, working.

That validation — not the institutional one, not the jury's, but the parent who writes an email at midnight — weighs more than any innovation award. It reminded us forcefully of what sometimes gets lost between forms, pitches, and reports: that behind every line of code is a person who hopes to be able to communicate.

What it means as a Venezuelan

There's something particular about appearing on CNN Chile as a Venezuelan that deserves to be said with honesty.

Venezuela and Chile have complex recent histories. Venezuelan migration to Chile in those years was loaded with stereotypes, frictions, contexts of precarity that didn't always allow people to see what Venezuelans bring in capacity and willingness to contribute.

Appearing on CNN Chile speaking about technology and innovation, as CEO of a Chilean company supported by CORFO, and representing a project with verifiable social impact — I say this without drama — was a small act of symbolic repair.

Not as a Venezuelan who "despite everything" succeeded. But as an engineer who contributed something real to the country that welcomed him, and that country recognized that contribution publicly.

To anyone arriving today in Chile without a network I say the same thing I tell myself looking at that caption: generate value, solve real problems, be rigorous in your work. This country rewards resilience.

The link as permanent credential

This CNN Chile story exists and is verified on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/596279700

I understood something I hadn't fully grasped before: media coverage isn't vanity. It's objective, verifiable evidence for anyone who wants to check it, that the work is real and was considered sufficiently relevant to cover by a medium with national reach.

In the entrepreneurship world, where self-proclamations and inflated résumés abound, a CNN link is worth what no PowerPoint can buy: external, independent, and permanent credibility.

That link has been in our company presentation since the day of publication. And it still works.