I Didn't Start with a Business Plan. I Started with a Problem.

Women's History Month has me thinking about something we don't talk about enough: The moment when everything changes and you must decide who you are without the title.

My story didn’t start in the boardroom. It started in a doorway.

I grew up with privilege. My father was a doctor in Peru, a respected leader in his field. Our life was full: good schools, a tight family, a foundation many people spend their whole careers trying to build. I was thirteen years old and we left everything behind. Terrorism made staying

impossible.

My father: a man with everything to lose, gave up his title, his practice, his reputation, and the country he loved to keep us safe. We arrived in the United States, and he started over from nothing. For us.

He had one rule in our house. From the door in, we were in Peru. Spanish only. Our culture, our food, our traditions are preserved deliberately and with pride. From the door out, we were in the United States. English only. Learn customs. Respect the space you're in. Assimilate; not by erasing who you are, but by honoring where you are.

My mother held everything else together. She used to say: “Be the fire that warms the home. Not the fire that burns it.” The kind of fire that draws people in. Keeps everyone fed. Keeps everyone whole. She made it look like love. It was also discipline.

 And without realizing it, that doorway became the first leadership framework I ever learned:

• Understand the context you're in

• Honor the people around you

• Lead without losing who you are

I carried that lesson with me into my career. Over the next fifteen years I worked inside large organizations leading transformation initiatives across the United States, Spain, and Chile.

Different languages. Different cultures. Different assumptions about how work should work. That experience taught me something I still carry into every room today: Understanding someone's context is not a soft skill. It is strategy.

 You cannot lead a team you do not understand. You cannot transform a system you haven't taken the time to see clearly. I built programs that worked. I built systems that lasted. And then one day that chapter ended. Not on my terms. What mattered most was what happened next.

Women's History Month celebrates the women who built movements, institutions, and companies. But it should also acknowledge the quieter reality many women experience: The moment when the title disappears and you must decide who you are without it.

The part of the journey that never makes it onto the highlight reel. The uncertainty. The rebuilding. I didn't start SimplexityPM because I felt ready. I started it because I had no choice and it became the most important thing I've ever built.

When everything shifted, I kept thinking about my parents standing at that doorway. They never talked about resilience. They demonstrated it every single day. Under real pressure and without performance.

I wanted to be that example for my children. Not someone who stayed comfortable when the ground shifted. But someone who built something new on it, someone who showed them that discipline and identity don't collapse under pressure. They clarify.

There is another part of this story that deserves more attention. None of this happened alone.

My husband is a Chiropractor and when the moment came for me to build my career, he made a decision that doesn't get talked about enough. He stepped back from his career to become a stay-at-home father so that I could build. That is not a small thing. That is belief. That is partnership. That is love expressed as strategy.

We don't live by traditional roles in our household. We live by alignment and we decide together what the goal is for our family. Then we structure roles around that goal. Some seasons look one way. Other seasons may look completely different. What stays constant is the commitment to the goal and to each other. The most important business decision I ever made was choosing a partner who sees the goal the same way I do and is willing to do whatever it takes to reach it together.

That principle is also how I run SimplexityPM. Strategy first. Structure around the strategy. The right people in the right roles; not the traditional roles, the right ones. Our work helps organizations close the gap between strategy and execution using Lean thinking, Agile practices, Kaizen discovery, and the discipline of asking “why” one more time than feels comfortable.

But the real reason the company exists is simpler. People believe in me. Mentors. Colleagues. Allies. Friends. Men and women who invested in my potential before I had business cards to prove anything. That investment is something I carry into every room I walk into today.

And it’s also why I started building something new. SPARK: Strategic Partners, Real Knowledge.

When I was navigating the early months of building SimplexityPM; figuring out contracts, positioning, cash flow, confidence, I kept asking the same question:

• Where are the people who have already done this?

• Who will tell me the truth about what it actually takes?

• Who will share what they know without gatekeeping it?

I had support, and I also know many people don’t. I've watched talented entrepreneurs stall; not because they lacked ability, but because they lacked access. The right conversation. The right partner. The right insight at the right moment.

SPARK is my answer to that gap: A community where solopreneurs share what they actually know about building businesses. Where the person two years ahead of you on the road shares what they learned so you don't lose six months figuring it out alone. Where the currency is contribution, not credentials. Where the partners who step back so others can step forward are just as valued as the people stepping forward.

Women's History Month celebrates the women who marched, organized, led, and refused. But history is also being written right now. In the businesses being built by people who were told no. Or who had the choice made for them. And built something anyway.

The people who come next need more than a seat at the table. They need someone already seated to pull the chair out and mean it. That’s what I’m building with SPARK and I’m building it in the open because that’s the only honest way to do it.

One question for you:

What's the one thing you wish someone had told you when you were just starting out, the real thing, not the polished version? Drop it in the comments. That answer is exactly what SPARK is built on. And if any part of this story is yours too, I'd love to connect.

 #WomensHistoryMonth #Leadership #Entrepreneurship #WomenInBusiness #Community #SimplexityPM #SPARK