This year is one for the record books.Juggling online learning for two small school-age children, working from home, tackling grad school, and just trying to stay alive and sane has been challenging.
I have driven through a drive-thru of a fast food joint more times than I care to admit. Cue the mom-guilt. The insidious nag that makes you wonder if you are doing enough. Luckily, a few months ago, I made a decision to seek and support media content created by Latinas.
Enter Level Up Latina, a company founded in 2018 and launched in 2019 whose mission is to partner with working women and mommas alike to guide them in achieving a fulfilling career and life goals through a truly guilt-free evolution.
The Level Up Latina podcast has been a port in the storm to me as I face the 2020 storm. According to LUL founders Cecilia Rodriguez, Irene Quevedo, and Veronica Burgos-Gudiel, that’s the intention. The three ladies were kind enough to be interviewed for RGVMomLife and I am very grateful.
Listening to the podcast feels like you’re catching up with your cooler sisters. There are laughs, insight, and lots of can-do positivity to inspire you. Topics range from childcare, money-management, career advice, relationship tips and everything in between.
The podcast is an extension of the Level Up Latina(LUL) life coaching business that “offers women the gritty guidance to achieve financial success, worthwhile career leaps, and fierce self-love.”
Through LUL, Rodriguez, Quevedo and Burgos-Gudiel are on to something.
The first-ever Latino podcast listener report released by Edison Research in June 2020, found that 25% of U.S. Latinos age 18+ have listened to a podcast in the last month. The study also shows increases in podcast listening for over half of U.S. Latinos age 18+ since the outbreak of COVID-19.
“When we wanted to start Level Up Latina our first vision was that we wanted to do for other women, what we felt that had been missing for us on our journey,” said Quevedo.
Friends since college, the three working professionals and mothers united to create LUL after successful careers with disturbingly similar patterns.
“I was working with another woman that was 10 years younger than me and she was going through the exact same things I went through and I thought my goodness, we don’t need to repeat the same mistakes,” said Quevedo.
Now the women are on a mission to eradicate barriers like guilt.
“We all have experienced some kind of guilt in our careers or personal lives or just the fact that we are first-generation college-educated,” said Rodriguez. “For example, during college, we didn’t spend as much time with our families because we were the first in our family to go to college. We were learning to navigate college life because no one else before us went, no one else tutored us or told us how to navigate college. That was one of the first guilts.”
Burgos-Gudiel said that listeners contact the trio from all over the country and the world because many can relate to the experience of being a first-generation Latina.
Burgos-Gudiel explained that immigrant parents who come to the United States arrive with the best intentions to give their families a better life at unseen costs.
“Yes, you will be able to go to school and possibly further your education, get a Master’s or Doctorate degree, enter a different workforce instead of working with your hands. It’s a better life with different opportunities but its a whole new world to our families and we have to guide them through it. Let’s evolve and have this guilt-free feeling as we realize our parents’ dreams for us. Let’s live it and bring our family along.”
The women represent a wave of Latinx making their mark in media, where Latinx have been underrepresented.
“I think we have been traditionally very competitive with one another but I think that is changing. I see another Latina, regardless of her background and I want to support her,” said Rodriguez.
The message of hope and resilience on the show is a universal theme for marginalized women.
“We understand that this can resonate with all women and it is our belief that if you level up a Latina, you just level everything else up. We have to help Latina women who are vastly underpaid and at the bottom of the success threshold for many corporations and industries,” Quevedo explained.
“We have a lot of work to do within our own community to make sure Latinas are in the room, at the table, in positions of power, commanding great salaries and living their best lives.”
What’s next for LUL?
As their audience grows and they continue to serve clients through life, professional and financial coaching, the women are determined to connect with more women while promoting Latinx businesses.
“We are excited about creating virtual events because that is the new normal for conferences and highlighting Latina-owned businesses through sponsorships on the podcast,” said Rodriguez. For more information visit www.leveluplatina.com
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