Gina Romero on The Unconventional Journey in Building Connected Communities

Get ready to be inspired as we chat with Gina Romero, the Founder and Head of Special Projects of Connected Women. Gina shares her unconventional journey in founding and growing Connected Women. We discuss the importance of problem-solving and community building in creating social impact. Plus, we dive into the power of collaboration and working together to improve lives. Finally, we talk about the role of technology, the significance of inclusive innovation in promoting gender equity in the workplace.

A Things We Talked About:

• Problem-solving and aligning personal objectives with business decisions
• The flexibility to pivot while still building toward the same path
• Developing upskilling programs for the future of work
• creating community-as-a-service to involve more women in AI building projects

About the Guest
Gina Romero is a Filipino-British entrepreneur, community builder, and technology advocate. She is the Founder and Head of Special Projects at Connected Women, a socially responsible AI and digital task outsourcing community that aims to improve the lives of Filipino women through meaningful online work.

As part of her mission to better equip women entrepreneurs and professionals with the technology skills to scale their businesses and careers, Gina launched Connected Women in Singapore in 2013. In 2016 she set her heart on helping Filipino women and moved back to the Philippines where she co-founded Connected Women in the Philippines in 2017.

Connected Women has received global recognition in the categories of inclusive innovation, the future of work, e-employment and women's empowerment. Gina is a proud recipient of the TOWNS award (The Outstanding Women in the Nation's Service) which recognizes outstanding dedication, exceptional talent, and a history of contributing positively to society.

LinkedIn | Connected Women | Website

Related Links:

• Video: LinkedIn Speaker Series with Gina Romero
• Ruth Yu-Owen, Co-Founder at Connected Women
• Jacqueline Rogers, Founder at the Athena Network
• International Women’s Day 2023: DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality

Transcript

Welcome to Leader Unlocked, the podcast where we bring you insights and inspiration from today’s top leaders. I’m your host, Paige Buan.

Join me as I chat with Gina Romero, the Co-Founder and Head of Special Projects of Connected Women. Gina shares her unconventional journey in founding and growing Connected Women. We discuss the importance of problem-solving and community building in creating social impact. Plus, we dive into the power of collaboration and working together to improve lives. Finally, we talk about the role of technology and the significance of inclusive innovation in promoting gender equity in the workplace.

Paige Buan
Welcome to the Leader Unlocked podcast. Thank you so much, Gina, for joining us today.

Gina Romero
Hi. So great to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Paige Buan
We're so excited to have you on. We have a lot of topics that we're going to be covering in this episode.

Let’s kick things off. I’m sure you’ve been asked the inspiration behind Connected Women a million times. I’m curious: why focus on community building and why tech? The landscape of technology was so different back then and it continues to evolve rapidly. Did you have that foresight?

Gina Romero
Absolutely. My journey has been kind of unconventional, is how I describe it. I think a combination of my upbringing and my natural tendency to want to solve problems, and then also people that I've met along the way, I think, is the combination of what brought Connected Women to life. It certainly didn't all come from me. One of the main "whys" of my story was my mom, because my mom was Filipina domestic worker who left her small town in Porac and went to the UK in the '70s, which is why I was brought up in the UK. My dad's British. And I met so many Filipinos who had left their families behind. So I guess the seed was planted already in my mind that this was a problem: that kids were being left behind, and parents couldn't take them when they have to look for work overseas. So that was kind of the first part, I guess.

And then the second part was meeting my husband because he was in tech. I was actually cabin crew when I met him. So I had zero tech. And I was just amazed when I realized how empowering tech really is. And even for myself, right? At the time, I was flying, I hadn't really had a formal education. There was a lot of things that I wanted to learn, and I found that technology just gave me a window into all of the things that I wanted to know about the world.

And then the other significant connection of dots was I met my mentor and friend in the UK, Jacqueline Rogers. She ran an organization for women in the UK. So that's where my community building side came in. I didn't realize that communities of women even existed, you know. I was just doing my own thing. I was running an IT company with my husband, and I didn't know about that. So that was very pivotal for me to find women's communities.

Paige Buan
That's fantastic. You really focused on the community side. When TJ and I first met, I did not know how to network. I'm still working on that today, but my first exposure to what communities was with her. And it is very empowering to know that you can learn a lot and build things together. We see Connected Women as this huge success. But when you started, what were the challenges that you faced, and how did you overcome them?

Gina Romero
So, I think the biggest challenge, and this applies probably to a lot of startup founders and a lot of entrepreneurs, is that I knew what the problem was, but I didn't have the solution. I'm sure a lot of people listening can relate where they're like, "This is so frustrating for me. This is so annoying for me. I wish there was a solution that would solve it for me right now." A lot of the time, business ideas are born out of that frustration of a problem that you yourself are experiencing, or you're seeing other people experience and you empathize with them. But actually finding the solution is the tricky bit. Right? With Connected Women, this is not version one. This is like version three. So, a lot of people are like, "Wow, you just started this a few years back. And it's so successful, and it's grown so fast." But this is the third iteration of two previous versions that didn't solve the problem that I wanted to solve.

Paige Buan
That's interesting. And how do you balance the passion for social impact with the need to maintain a financially sustainable business once you've found the solution?

Gina Romero
Yeah, I think a lot of people see me as this sort of impact entrepreneur, which I definitely am. But I'm really a problem solver. Like, I want to solve a problem, right, like a big problem. I think life's too short to focus on small problems when there are such big problems out there to solve. And so I really want to solve big problems, even if they're difficult, and even if I don't know how to solve it. So, I think when you think about impact in that way, right, like, this is a big problem that affects a lot of people and how could it possibly be solved, then you start to automatically generate impact. So, I think the impact side comes from the problem solving.

But I think one thing that some people probably don't see in me is that I'm also very ambitious to be successful financially as a business because I believe that the future of business should be sustainable business. I shied away a little bit from the not-for-profit model: a, because I don't really understand that space. I've always started small businesses and startups. And b, I think that all businesses should do good by default. And I think consumers are demanding that, right? Expecting that now. So we have to be more conscious. We've made too many mistakes as a human race, and we know better now, and I think we need to build on that and just do better.

Paige Buan
I love that. You balanced the different sides of the business.

I watched a video of you that was published 10 years ago. This was a LinkedIn Speaker Series. I learned so much from that video and found it extremely insightful, and I have so many questions around that.

When we hear success stories, we don’t really realize the struggles that go with it. And struggles can come in the form of downward trajectory and even upward. One thing that struck me was when you were sharing a story about a company that you had that was doing well, but you made the decision to ultimately let go of it. People have the tendency to hold on to something when it’s doing well. Can you talk about that process of letting that go?

Gina Romero
You know, that whole video was such a funny thing, because it was just a small group. That was when LinkedIn was really new in Singapore, so they only had about 40 people. So including the Managing Director and marketing guy, and everyone was there. It wasn't even supposed to be video-ed or published.

Paige Buan
Oh!

Gina Romero
So someone- I think the person who was with me actually filmed it. And then they reached out to us after and said, "Oh, could we share it? Because we want to share it with our global team." I said, "Okay. It was kind of personal, but okay." So they did that. And then they reached out again, they said, "Can we publish it on our blog?" So it was really personal, right? That's why I cringed a bit when you looked it up, because it was like all my personal stuff that I didn't expect to be putting out there. But I don't have regrets. I'm glad that I put it out there because it made me more courageous in sharing my story.

But anyway, again, it goes back to that problem solving. That was not the first and last time that I had to go back to the drawing board. And I think it really is about two things. One, what is it that you're really trying to solve? Right? Is the solution that you found really solving that problem? And then the second one is, "Is this really aligned with what you want, right, what your personal objectives are right now in your life?" Because at that time, I had two young children. You know, my husband and I were not equipped to scale our business. We didn't have the skills. We were not ready. This business started scaling very, very quickly, and became very stressful for us because we didn't know how to handle a big client. And, you know, it was so stressful and miserable.

So the decision really came from the fact that I didn't sleep all night, I lay awake in bed, trying to figure out what to do, because we were potentially going to lose everything if we lost that business, because we put so much invested so much into it. And we would go bankrupt. You know, I would lay awake at night thinking I was going to have a heart attack from stress. And I was like, what in my 30s. And, you know, that wasn't the life that I wanted to live. So we decided that we would walk away from that big client and not renew their client's contract, even though they were 80% of our business, and it would ruin us because it just wasn't aligned anymore with what we wanted from our lives. And it turned into the best decision because they actually hired my husband as their global CTO and brought us to Singapore. So you never know, right, like what a courageous decision will lead you to next, but I just knew that we couldn't carry on the way that we were.

Paige Buan
Yes. Doors do open for the brave and courageous.

I know that you cringed when I mentioned that video, but I am so glad you decided to share it. I just wanted you to know that it was so inspiring to watch you share your stories, your vulnerability. When we talk about success, people tend to focus on the end result and some have probably heard of the struggle. Not everybody really understands what that looks like. You shared it with so much detail that I felt like I was there and I was witnessing you go through all that.

I felt hopeful after watching that video. There's always hope no matter what you go through. And I want to take this opportunity to thank you for sharing your story.

Speaking of hope, it’s exciting to hear about the shift within Connected Women. Now you're leading the special projects. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the projects and initiatives you're currently working on and what do you hope to achieve with them?

Gina Romero
Yeah. So exciting things have happened with Connected Women.

Just a little bit of background on that: So, I mentioned we're on version three now. And the first version was really just the community, right? We wanted to bring women together to advocate for women adopting technology. This started in Singapore 10 years ago. And we just wanted to encourage women to embrace technology because of the benefits that that would bring. So we had all these tech partners like Google, Microsoft, Twitter, LinkedIn, all of them did a lot of events and meetups in Singapore. And then, you know, I wanted to come back to the Philippines because I wanted to bring technology to the grassroots and to the women who were less advantaged, right?

And you know, my helper in the Philippines, the first time that we had the privilege of having a Yaya now home, right for our kids. She hadn't been home for eight years when she joined our family. And I thought that was so sad because she was a widow. She left her small kids behind. And I said, “Why is this still happening decades later?” Right? My mom left the country decades back, because she was looking for opportunities. And this seems to still be a challenge. And, you know, it wasn't really ever in my life plan to come back to the Philippines, to be honest. But I said to my husband, “You know, I think there's something we can do to help if we bring Connected Women to the Philippines.”

So Connected Women 2.0 was born, thanks to the partnership of Ruth Yu-Owen, my co-founder. And the idea that I had at the time was to build a job-matching platform, like Upwork, that matches women to potential freelance work. And I thought that would be great, because then we can bring all the talent to businesses globally, and they really need entrepreneurs, need extra hands and all the rest. And then we can bring jobs back home.

But it was another one of those situations where the solution didn't solve the problem. It was actually quite interesting because we had a lot of interest around that model. But then we were so inundated with job seekers, actually, that was one of our main challenges. That's how the community actually grew and built momentum because people heard we were providing remote job opportunities and just signed up. So we had way too much supply of talent and not enough demand of customers, right? Mainly because we just didn't even have time to look for customers, we were so busy managing the community.

Paige Buan
Right.

Gina Romero
And then a funny thing happened. I started to look at the jobs that we were matching. And I was like, “Wait. The women who were getting the jobs were still the educated, relatively affluent women who have experience.” So we're still not actually solving the problem of helping those who need the most help.

Meanwhile, I would receive messages from women saying, "Can you help me? I need a job." Women send me the pictures of their children that are sick, their family members who are in hospitals, like all sorts of stuff, and ask for help. It's a terrible feeling when you can't help, right? I still can't help everyone; there are just too many people that need help. But I had to go back to my co-founder and my management team, and our investors who had invested in us building this platform and say, "It's not working. This isn't working. We need to rethink it and do something else." And I had been researching at the time, what are the jobs that anyone could learn to do so that I really don’t have to turn anyone away, hypothetically, from the opportunity.

And I found some interesting case studies in other parts of the world where people from grassroots, people from marginalized or disadvantaged segments were being trained in skills for data labeling, which is basically the backbone of cleaning and preparing data for artificial intelligence. So we took a bit of a swing, a pivot in a different direction, same problem we’re trying to solve, similar solution in that we wanted to provide jobs, but completely different application of upskilling.

Paige Buan
I can only imagine how heart-wrenching it must have been to witness all of those challenges firsthand. You want to help, but one can only do so much. I love that. But if you have your "why", the problem you're trying to solve, and an idea how to solve it, it’s easier to pivot. Having the flexibility to move things around is just as important. It doesn't mean you have to scrap the idea completely.

Gina Romero
Yeah, it kind of felt like we were scrapping the idea completely at the time. But actually, you're right, we really built off everything that we've already built: the brand, the community, the track record that we built in terms of attracting talent. But some parts of the business, because now, of course, we're more B2B. So, before we were more B-to-small business, but now we're like B-to-big business. And so our clients are like PLDT, Aboitiz, our partners are SM. So, this allows us to scale up bigger and create a bigger impact.

Paige Buan
Wow. And as a community builder, what strategies do you use to foster a supportive and inclusive culture within Connected Women and the other organizations that you work with?

Gina Romero
Community building is really hard. It’s really hard work. Anyone who has been building communities will know that it's very difficult to do and it's very difficult to get it right. And again, I've had opportunities to make mistakes along the way and learn better ways of doing it, and I'm still learning.

I think the most important thing for me in community is creating a sense of contribution because a community is only as strong as the contribution of its members, right? Like, I can't serve every single one of them individually, and neither can my team. So for a community to thrive, everyone has to put in. It can't be like everyone's taking out, right? The best people are putting in. That’s the important thing. How do you foster a sense of volunteerism? How do you foster a sense of ownership where members really feel that it’s something that they're not just a part of but they are accountable for?

So I think that's the sticky bit of communities. But definitely, there’s a lot of effort that needs to happen, in not just building actually, because building is not the difficult bit, but in sustaining engagement. You only have to take your finger off the button for a few months or whatever, and engagement and everything can tank. In fact, right now, we're doing a big re-engagement sort of effort for the community because, of course, we were busy pivoting our business model so that we could be sustainable and provide jobs. So for the last two years, our main focus has been on the solution to provide jobs. And now that I have our new CEO- well, she’s not that new. She has been with us for six months now, taking care of the business operation side, I'm reinvesting myself and my time back into re-engaging the community.

Paige Buan
It's an exciting time. You see all of these pieces falling into place, and it's just going to get bigger and bigger, and it's going to grow.

You now have 100,000+ women in your community. Very excited for you. What's the next step?

Gina Romero
So you asked me about the special projects earlier. So for me, it's all about two things: creating specialized upskilling programs so that we can create a future-proof talent pool, right? Because right now, there's so many things happening, of course, with AI, with technology, I mean, even this whole ChatGPT thing. I was playing with these tools like two, three years back, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is happening,' and I find it so fascinating and interesting. But it's also a time when we really need to be very creative in how we continue to upskill ourselves and others and stay on top of these developments so that we remain relevant.

So the special projects that I'm involved in are around developing upskilling for the future of work, and then looking at what I call community as a service, because right now we have around 1,000 women trained in AI skills, specialized skills. These women come from the grassroots; we even have a fisherman's wife who upskilled with us, and it's very good. And then we have our wider community, right? Where we have other entrepreneurship and tech programs. But how do we bring the wider community into participating in these AI building projects? And so that's exciting for me.

And the other thing is working on very specialized and interesting projects, solving big problems in industries like health, right? Like, how do you bring AI solutions to the ground so that they can solve problems like disease tracking or whatever it could be, the problems that we have here in the Philippines and in other countries?

So it's really fun and exciting for me now because I get to play with all this stuff that I like to play with, having put in quite a lot of effort doing things that I'm not that good at, like managing finance and cash flow and legal and all the CEO has to do in the beginning.

Paige Buan
Right. Yes, technology does play a huge part in today's world. And it's not going to stop, it's just going to continue to grow. But what do you think is the role of technology? How do you think it can play in empowering women and promote gender equity in the workplace?

Gina Romero
So this year's International Women's Day theme is DigitALL, right? Digital for all, which is technology and innovation for everyone or for inclusivity. And I was so happy when I saw that UN Women announced it because this has been my topic for the last 10 years.

One of the major game changers of technology is just simply working from anywhere, like being able to work flexibly from anywhere is incredibly game changing, especially for women who have so many things to juggle, which is why we always focus on flexible and remote work opportunities. So that was already happening, but sadly, not as adopted as it should be. I mean, considering that in the US alone, 43% of women drop out of the workforce after they have kids, right? Just imagine the talent that's draining out of the workforce. And most of these women leave because they just can't make the traditional workplace work for them. So I think that is an under-addressed massive solution that is under-addressed, under-implemented and overlooked. So I still push for flexible and remote work. Pre-pandemic, I was talking about it, nobody cared. During the pandemic, everybody had to. Post-pandemic, some people care, sadly. So there's that.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have all this scary talk about AI and exciting developments in AI that are really mainstreaming now. And these are tools that are designed to help us as humans be more efficient, be more effective, hopefully have more balanced lives, work on the things that we love to do. That's the shiny and bright side. The other side of things is how does this potentially negatively impact different parts of society? And how does this negatively impact those who don't have access to another option? If they lose their job, for example, a manual job, what will they do?

So yesterday I was at a panel, actually. That was very interesting. And I learned a lot from my fellow panelists. And one of the things that the other panelists mentioned is she said, “We tend to focus a lot on the jobs that AI is going to take away, but we tend to not focus on the jobs that AI is creating.” And I thought that was a nice and good way to look at it because it's true. But you know, the upskilling component, I think, is the other underlooked- or overlooked, undervalued and underutilized secret weapon that we have because if we could just upskill more people then everyone would benefit.

Paige Buan
Absolutely. It’s great to see all these initiatives. There's a study that I read that despite all the efforts on DEI, only 8% of companies worldwide have DEI initiatives targeted for women who are over the age of 50. There's a huge population of women who are retiring, and AI and technology is giving them all the opportunities. I love that you're focused on the jobs AI is creating.

I want to share a story. I have a nine-year-old daughter. She bought a Rubik's cube, and I've never solved one in my life.

Gina Romero
Same.

Paige Buan
Most people haven't solved one. She saw it in another video and said, “I want to solve this.” And I love the initiative. I told her, "I want to see you solve it. Use any resource you want: tutorial, videos. Go for it.” I want to encourage her to be resourceful. And just yesterday, 5 days later, she solved it.

Gina Romero
Wow.

Paige Buan
I was so surprised. I figured she watched a tutorial, and that's great.

Gina Romero
Yeah, it's a big deal.

Paige Buan
It is a big deal. I’m very proud. And today, I found out how she solved it. It wasn't through a tutorial. She found an app that can help her solve it, and now she's doing it over and over again until she learns how to do it on her own, but that's the power of AI.

Gina Romero
Yeah. I love it.

Paige Buan
It's crazy. I'm very excited. I'm also very scared because I don't know what it's gonna look like.

Gina Romero
We should be. Yeah, nobody does, really. Nobody does.

Paige Buan
Exactly. Ten years ago, if we were asked, "How can you imagine the next five years?" you could still picture it. But now it's kind of hard to do that.

Gina Romero
Yeah.

Paige Buan
So how do you stay up to date with the latest trends and developments in technology? How do you incorporate them into your initiatives?

Gina Romero
I absolutely love to learn. I mean, I know most people love to learn, but I am constantly tinkering, playing with things, reading things. Like, if I see a new app, I'm gonna have that app, I'm gonna play with it. I might have deleted it after, like, 30 minutes. Like, I just really, really love to learn. But it's funny because I was okay in school, but I didn't enjoy school. And I was reflecting on this recently. It's like, well, I just wasn't the right fit for a traditional school environment. And, you know, from the first thing I do when I wake up until the last thing I do when I go to sleep, in all of my windows, right, I'm reading articles, you know, I'm on Reddit, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm everywhere. I'm just reading and trying to understand.

But, you know, the interesting thing that I noticed about the AI space recently, which is actually very scary, is the experts themselves, like those who are really advanced and working on like the most cutting edge applications and really involved in this space, are also surprised at how fast it's moving forward. And that's quite scary, right? Like, when you're following like the world's experts in AI on LinkedIn, people who are building this stuff as their job and have been doing this for the last five years or more, and they're like, 'Oh my gosh, look at this. I'm so amazed. I can't believe this is happening,' then it becomes kind of worrying, right?

Paige Buan
Right.

Gina Romero
Because we're building something that we don't even really understand. So, you know, it's really important, I think, to stay in tune with what's happening, right, and follow people who are part of this space. So LinkedIn is a great venue for that. There are a lot of global experts having conversations about what's happening. And so I think to answer your question, I told you I do long answers to your questions, don't just read the articles, and don't just look at the Facebook feed of your own friends, right? Venture out a little bit, and then look at comment threads around some of these topics, because that's where the real gold is. And that's what I love to do: stalk the comments.

Paige Buan
I love that. Yeah. The comments provide the most useful insights into getting updated. Sometimes it's even more useful than the article itself.

Gina Romero
Exactly. And everybody's opinions, right? I think people love to read comments when it's political so they can get in fights.

Paige Buan
Right.

Well, I know we're about to close our discussion. Looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges facing women in technology and entrepreneurship? How can we best address them?

Gina Romero
Such a big question for the closing question. Well, there are so many challenges, right? I mean, it's not just women, there are all different segments that are at risk of being left behind and sub segments. That's why I always talk about inclusive innovation, right? Whatever we create, we need to think about making it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. I don't think it's time for being elitist and locking people out in the world that we're moving into. So I think we need to be as inclusive as possible in everything that we build, of course, we can't be entirely inclusive, right?

Like even within Connected Women, those who join our community, they still need access, really, to internet. They still need access to basic devices. They still need general ability to move around the internet to be able to even participate. So I know that it's not always possible to capture everyone. But there are people that go to the grassroots and work with the other groups. So I think collaborate with each other so that we can reach and improve, you know, elevate the lives of more people. And no matter what business you're in, even a commercial business, even if you're part of a big corporate, even if you're part of a tiny startup, just ask yourself the question, “Is there something small that I could do to improve access to my product or service?” And I think that if we all thought a little bit like that, the sense of contribution, then I think that alone would already make a better world for ourselves and for everyone else.

Paige Buan
Absolutely. We have to stick together, especially as we're coming into this age that is so unpredictable.

Gina Romero
Agreed.

Paige Buan
So Gina, what advice would you give to someone who is struggling to find their community?

Gina Romero
Oh, that's a good one. Well, I mean, I bumped into my community by accident in the UK. I was just sitting at my desk and someone phoned me and said, "We'd like to invite you to a Business Women's lunch." And I remember thinking, "They think I'm a businesswoman." You know, I've been running my business already for like a few years, but I didn't think of myself as a businesswoman, so I wouldn't have gone to a Business Women's lunch. It's a bit different now, right? Because we have a lot of online forums, online communities, online groups, so it's easier to tap into people that have similar interests to us.

But I think my tip would be, to the introverts specifically out there, don't dismiss networking or attending communities or even being a leader as something that is not for introverts. Some of the best community builders and the best leaders that I've met are extremely introverted.

Funny story, I don't even like networking. I wouldn't say I'm an introvert, but I'm the type of person that would happily just stay home and do stuff. I'm not super extroverted. I'm definitely not the person to volunteer myself to get up on stage and, you know, anything like that. But, you know, I wanted to lead from behind, most of the time, given the opportunity, and I think that's my strength. But then there are also times when you need to step up, right? Like, I realized that my story from incidents like what happened with LinkedIn where I shared it to a small group, and then people, they shared it to a bigger group, and people would reach out to me and tell me that they found it inspiring. And so I share it because even if one person could be inspired, then at least, you know, I made a small difference. But I hear a lot of people at events saying, "But I'm an introvert. You know, I don't like networking. I don't like public speaking." And I don't think that that should hold you back from your contribution to others, right?

Paige Buan
That's very beautiful advice. Thank you so much, Gina.

To end this episode, I’d like to pass it to TJ for the final question. TJ?

TJ Quilaneta
Yeah. So Paige mentioned the video from 10 years ago, and it's really inspiring, the journey that you went through all the struggles. It's very relatable because a lot of people have their own struggles that they deal with on a daily basis. And your story is just so inspiring in a sense that even when you're struggling today, you just really need to find something that you really want that you know would affect more people than you. And even if you're struggling, you still have the power to help other people.

I also got inspired when you talked about yourself being someone who raises their hand first, whenever there's a task that other people would say no to. So that's also inspiring me. We used to be the opposite of that, me and Paige, but then with women around us, or like a community around us, helping us and pushing us to explore and embrace what we're good at. And it's really helped a lot.

So my question is, I also give long questions…

Gina Romero
Maybe I'll give a short answer for change.

TJ Quilaneta
Is there someone in particular- well, you mentioned your mom earlier. But is there someone in particular who you look up to and someone who you really trust so much that when they say, “Jump,” you would ask, "How high?" I have someone like that in my life, and that’s Paige. But who is that person in your life right now?

Gina Romero
Well, I've been very lucky that, different times of my life, I've met the right person to help me move to the next level, right? And I think everyone has that, but sometimes we don't notice it. I mean, I have a mentor from the UK from the business network that I joined, who at the time said, what's your goal? What's your objective? How can I support you? And I said, I wish I could be a public speaker like you. Like, I wish I could just not be afraid when I stand up and speak because I used to shake you know, I still do sometimes. And she helped me with that. She pushed me to get over that fear. Because it was a fear that I really felt was holding me back. Sometimes I would have something to say, and I can't say it right because I'm too afraid to say it.

And then, of course, my husband and I have always run businesses together. And whenever I tell him, “Do you want to have another baby?” He's always like, “Sure.”

I'm like, “Do you want to quit your job and go to the Philippines? He's like, “Sure.”

“Want to start something new?” “Yeah, let's do it.”

He's always said yes. To me. And I think you know, because of that we've got ourselves in trouble over the years as well, because I'm not risk-averse, and he just goes along with my ideas. But that's been an amazing adventure. Right? We've done a lot of things together because of that.

And then when we came back to the Philippines, I think the answer that I'm building to is my co-founder, Ruth, because when we came back, we had a very basic plan. We didn't have connections. We didn't know how to set up a business. We didn't have funding. We had nothing. It was crazy that we even came back and did what we did. And I met Ruth just for tea. And you know, I told her my passion, my vision, it didn't even have a solution, but not a full blown solution. And she just said, “I want to help you, how can I help you?”

And you know, those are the people in life that you need to look out for, the ones that just say, “How can I help you?” And I honestly, I was like, “I don't know, there's so many things I need help with.” And I said, “Let me think about it.”

And about two weeks later, we met again, and she said, “I can be your co-founder.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I mean, she has her own business to run. She's a successful entrepreneur in her own right. But she was willing to come in and take a bet and bring all her contacts, bring investors, put her name, her reputation on this. And it was just a dream that she believed in.

So you know, shout out to all of those people. But different people come into your life at different times, and take a bet on you. And you also have to take a bet back on them and on yourself as well, right, on your dream. And then magical things, miraculous things actually can happen.

Paige Buan
Thank you so much for sharing that, Gina. Thank you, TJ. I hope that 10 years from now, we will be having another episode, and we'll look back at this moment just like we revisited the LinkedIn Speaker Series.

Gina Romero
I’d love to do that.

Paige Buan
Fantastic. Thank you. To wrap up, please invite our audience to Connected Women.

Gina Romero
Of course, please look up Connected Women. If you feel that you would like to be part of a tribe of women, we're very, very diverse, from women in the grassroots all the way to corporate CEOs of the biggest companies. So we'd love you to be part of it. We're very inclusive.

But also, if there are any partners listening that want to support our programs or any potential clients who need help with their data work, we have an amazing talented pool of women who are very dedicated and need, you know, flexible and remote work. So you can work with Connected Women so that we can bring more opportunities home.

Paige Buan
Thank you so much again, Gina, for being on the Leader Unlocked podcast and for sharing your story, and thank you, everybody, for listening to this episode.

Gina Romero
Thank you. Bye.