Every month, we get off our Business Chisme Sessions in The Jefa in Training Circle, the membership community I run, and someone always asks the same thing. Okay, so where do we keep this going? These conversations about what it's like to be not just Latina in this timeline, but a Latina entrepreneur, a Latina with a voice, a Latina who wants to create change with her lived experience and expertise.
We have our WhatsApp group. But it's forty, maybe fifty of us at a time. I know we cannot be the only ones who feel this way.
Our Business Chisme Sessions usually happen like this: in ten minutes or less, we go from "I don't know how to launch this offer" to "what should my next Substack post be" to filling out each other's market research surveys. Then someone asks if we've seen how Mercury retrograde is about to hit us in business this month. Then someone says, "I notice that I'm doing this thing my mom does and now I know my imposter syndrome in business is inherited." And most of us can relate. Everyone logs off with something. Feeling a little more seen. A little less alone. That's what a community is. And I think it needs to be bigger than our WhatsApp group. It needs to reach more Latina entrepreneurs, more creatives, more leaders who need to hear that they are not doing this alone. I had this same feeling when I set out to write the book Jefa in Training back in 2020.
A former editor-in-chief friend of mine said it to me plainly a while back. Jefa in Training should be a whole media company (ty Suanny). My first thought was, girl, I just had a baby, I don't have the time. But as I've gone through whatever this postpartum transformation is, I've been doing a lot of reflecting. We already have the foundation of something really good here. An incredible community. More stories than I could ever tell on my own. And in the last few years I have watched how powerful it is when we actually share those stories, especially now, when so much of who we are is being erased and quieted.
Not everyone gets to speak up right now. People are worried about being deported, or their family being deported. Books getting banned. Losing a client, or a partnership they already had, over something they said. I know the privilege I have, that I don't carry most of those fears the same way. So if I can use it, I'd rather use it here.
This might be a little crazy, but now I'm saying let's give it a shot. That's been true at every turning point in my life, and it's true again.
So here it is. Entre Nosotras is the media platform for Latina entrepreneurs and leaders, where we can be reminded we aren't building alone. Here we'll talk about the good, the bad, the opportunities we're seeing and the things we're paying attention to. Like if mitú and Fast Company had a baby, with a dose of the version of Teen Vogue that had personality.
And I'm not betting on me. I'm betting on us. On the jefas I work with, the ones who've read the book, the ones who show up to the workshops, the ones I follow and learn from every day. I have seen up close how powerful Latinas are, and I would put money on that every single time.
Some of that nerve I borrowed. This past March, Mirtle and I published The Book of Awesome Latinas, a book full of women who came up against so much more than I have and put their stories into the world anyway. Women who ended up changing their industries, and changing publishing. I'm trying to hold onto their mentality. To be that brave.
Let me be clear about one thing. I don't represent everybody. I'm a very small fraction of this comunidad, and I know it. But if I can make it a little easier for one jefa to tell her story, if I can make it feel safe, if I can give her a place to do it when other places won't or can't, then cool. I'll take that job.
I don't know where this road goes. I just know I don't want to walk it alone, and I don't think you do either. So come build this with me. Entre nosotras.
xx,
Ashley K. Stoyanov Ojeda
