Building from zero: the founding & growth of chica chat
In 2019, I co-founded Chica Chat with a few close friends at 22 years old — no funding, no roadmap, and no guarantee anyone would show up. What we had was a clear conviction: that women in our community deserved a space to talk honestly about business, money, and building something of their own. So we built it.
What started as a monthly gathering quickly grew into a full program with structured workshops, expert-led conversations, a quarterly board, and eventually a citywide conference. When the 2020 pandemic shut down in-person events, I pivoted the entire operation online within weeks — rebuilding our programming format, migrating our community to virtual platforms, and maintaining the momentum we had built without missing a beat.
By the time Chica Chat reached its peak, we had grown to a community of 30 women entrepreneurs, hosted dozens of workshops, raised $14,500 through a collaborative fundraising campaign, and organized a business conference that drew 80 plus attendees and 20 vendors.
What we built.
Community Architecture: Defined the mission, vision, and organizational structure from scratch — establishing the foundation that everything else was built on.
Programming Design: Developed and managed a strategic calendar of monthly workshops and events covering marketing, finance, leadership, and operations, led by industry experts and community voices.
Governance and Board Management: Launched and ran quarterly board meetings to align organizational goals, track progress, and maintain accountability across leadership.
Event Execution: Planned and produced a full-scale business conference end-to-end — managing vendor relationships, logistics, sponsorships, and day-of execution for 80 plus attendees and 20 vendors.
Fundraising Campaign: Led a collaborative fundraising initiative that raised $14,500, coordinating across stakeholders while maintaining budget discipline and timeline commitments.
Virtual Pivot: Rebuilt the program for a fully online format in response to the pandemic, expanding reach and accessibility without losing the community intimacy that made Chica Chat work.
what we produced.
A thriving network of 30 women entrepreneurs with real professional relationships and business growth to show for it
A conference that established Chica Chat as a recognized platform in the El Paso entrepreneurial community
A governance model and programming infrastructure that ran consistently for three years
A proof point that a small team with a clear mission can build something that outlasts the moment it was created for
Lessons Learned.
This is where I learned what it actually means to build something from zero. Not the idea part — the staying-up-late-figuring-out-the-logistics part, the keeping-people-aligned-when-there-is-no-playbook part, the showing-up-even-when-it-is-hard part. That is the version of me that shows up in every professional environment I walk into.
