Gabby: Career Coach 2.0
Gabby is a woman on a mission.
She’s not the type to wait around for others to solve a problem. When see sees a need in her work or her community — she steps in to solve it. Work, after all, exists because of our need to solve problems.
I once read an article about how most of us, when confronted with a new or challenging task, might immediately think of all the reasons we can’t do it or aren’t qualified. Instead, when “successful people” are confronted with a challenge, they tend to task “why not me?” and proceed to take on the challenge.
Gabby is the embodiment of that article.
Gabby’s story is all about breaking down barriers — as a first generation everything — and using what she’s learned to lift up her community. I was inspired by her drive, but more than anything, by how she’s framed her career not based on what she’s doing, but who she’s serving, and continuously using that to guide her next steps.
In a Nutshell: Gabby’s Career Path
As the first child of Mexican immigrants in the US, Gabby’s story involves a lot of firsts.
She was the first in her family to graduate from college. The first to have white collar jobs. The first to ever start her own business. The first to travel beyond the southern Mexican border. The list goes on….
While this is obviously impressive, sometimes being the first can be a lonely experience. You tend to find yourself in places and spaces with others that don’t look like you and wonder why.
Yet, it was precisely being alone that helped Gabby fall in love with learning at a young age.
“I ended up being raised by a single parent — by my mom — and what’s important about that is I grew up really alone. I was an only child for 6 years. I always loved reading and writing and when I went to school it was easy for me. I fit into the mold of the school system really easily. I loved assignments. I loved following directions.”
While she was excited to experiment with everything her school had to offer — math and science clubs in particular — Gabby’s mom ended up having 3 small children that she need to help raise.
“That gave me a maturity and added life experience that not a lot of my other peers had. That’s why folks think I’m older than I actually am — because I had to parent 3 kids.”
Luckily for Gabby, she had a few prominent mentors in her life that made sure she stayed engaged in school.
The first was Veronica Medina, the librarian at Gabby’s elementary school.
“Even after I left [elementary school], she took me on every community event possible. I was face painting. I was fundraising. I got a lot of these tangible skills in high school through this person that a lot of people get in college — like I was doing that from 12 to high school, which was a really unique experience.”
Gabby’s other mentor surfaced thanks to AVID, a college prep program popular in California.
“Jessica Fuller — she made sure that I went to summer leadership camps at the local university.”
These mentors created a support and accountability ecosystem for Gabby, ultimately helping her achieve the first of her many firsts: attending university.
“They really set me up to have an incredible university experience. In high school, I already knew what I was good at because since I was 12 I already recruited volunteers, went to camps, started clubs, and just wasn’t afraid to fail and all the adults around me were like — “Go for it! Even if it sucks — great!”
Gabby graduated from UC Riverside with a major in Spanish and a minor in Theatre, but that’s that’s a far cry from what she originally started with: Math.
“In high school, I was really into math and science, but as a math major I felt so isolated in the classrooms and couldn’t connect to my teachers or grad students. That was a new experience for me because as the oldest daughter, I’ve always connected more to adults and teachers than to people my own age.”
Gabby — intimidated by the math faculty — ended up failing her first math class.
“My core class that I needed for my major and I was like — if this is what the rest of my time here is gonna be like I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
While Gabby hated essays in high school, she took an English class with a professor that had students write lots of reflective pieces, which Gabby enjoyed more than she thought she would. This new interest in writing opened her up to new areas of interest she hadn’t previously considered, like history and anthropology.
Then one professor changed the course of Gabby’s university trajectory.
“I took one class with a professor in World Literature, and I really loved him as a teacher so I ended up taking all his classes. He was on the Chinese Studies faculty, so that’s why all of my general education classes are in Chinese studies — super random, I know.”
After studying Mandarin, Gabby applied to study abroad in China. Sadly, the China program at her university was extremely competitive and she didn’t meet the GPA requirement.
Gabby’s study abroad advisors — motivated to help her get abroad regardless because study abroad advisors are superheros #notbiased — told her that if she spoke Spanish, she could study abroad in Spain instead through a UC Riverside Faculty-Led Education Abroad Program (FLEAP).
“So I went to Madrid for a month. I went with a really structured program. I went with only people from my university — who were mostly mexicanos — and it was the perfect little ecosystem for my first time abroad.”
Gabby’s experience in Spain was truly transformative.
“I came back and I was more energized. I was in that cohort community and had built such strong connections with everyone — my best friends came out of that group, my roommates came out of that group. It fostered this ecosystem of support and being enriched all the time.”
When she got back from Spain, Gabby was hired by Undergraduate Education office at her university to promote the program she had participated in. Two incredible things came out of this experience:
- She got to go abroad the following summer — to Argentina!
- She met another mentor — Beth Claassen Thrush — her supervisor at the Undergraduate Education office for the 2 years Gabby worked there.
Working at the Undergraduate Education office helped Gabby see study abroad from all angles — as a student, as an administrator, and as a provider abroad, which might have planted the seed for some of her future career choices.
In the meantime, Gabby was still navigating life as a university student.
“I combined my majors and created my own curriculum. I focused on Latinx Theatre and International Education. I got to act. I got to do a lot of marketing. I got to promote a lot of programs as part of my curriculum. I was getting credits and I was getting paid to do things I already wanted to do.”
That experience resulted in an incredible insight — things you enjoy doing can count as “work” that you get paid to do!
“I kind of figured out the formula — how do you experiment and tap into these things that you want to do while still fulfilling the credentials that you need to be marketable in the workforce?”
After graduation, Gabby knew 4 things for sure:
“I knew that I did not want to be in the US anymore. I knew that I wanted to be in a Spanish speaking country. I knew I wanted to keep working in higher education and global engagement. I knew what I was good at — teaching, mentoring, curriculum design, basic administration.”
Fortunately, as the only student assistant at the Undergraduate Education office, Gabby received tons of suggestions and support from her colleagues. It’s from them that Gabby first heard about Peace Corps and WorldTeach.
“I actually applied to Peace Corps and was a step away from getting my ticket to Peru. And then they cut me off because I wasn’t medically cleared. But it was such a great process overall — a 6 month application process where I learned how to interview, how to write things really well, how to get support.”
No matter — Gabby ended up with an even better position instead: Assistant Field Director with WorldTeach in Ecuador.
“I checked on their website and saw they had an opening in Ecuador. Keep in mind, I think I had read one book about Ecuador — on indigenous literature — and that was all I knew. I had never met an Ecuadorian. I had no context. I did some research and was like — I can do it!”
Gabby spent a total of two years in Ecuador. The first with WorldTeach. The second with Global Citizen Year working with gap year students.
In all of her first three jobs, Gabby noticed a gap: there wasn’t sufficient support for women and people of color.
“There was this huge gap — people usually enter these experiences to have some sort of transition to help you get paid. International experience is supposed to help you gain skills that you otherwise wouldn’t have. But I noticed people getting a lot of anxiety like — I’m a month away from going home, how am I gonna get a job after this?”
Each time, Gabby sprung into action. At UC Riverside, she created questionnaires to help students who had never traveled abroad pick a study abroad program, and held presentations in Spanish for parents. At Global Citizen year, she created a built in curriculum to address incorporating international experience into your resume and how to look for jobs.
Helping people translate their experiences in meaningful ways for future employers turned out to be a catalyst for her next career transition: career coaching.
“I’ve always had this hunch because my senior year in college I became this unofficial mentor default for a lot of people. Then at WorldTeach, I would do all my duties and then stay after work to go over people’s applications. And a lot of people that I worked with previously would keep emailing me — Can you write me a letter of recommendation? Can you write my resume? This just kept happening — it’s almost like a part time job and I’m not getting paid for it.”
That’s when it clicked:
“I loved it and I didn’t even think of it as work. I realized I always gravitated towards professional development. I look up resume templates in my free time. If I’m already spending so much energy on this — I’m just gonna do it!”
So after a year with Global Citizen Year, Gabby took a 6 month sabbatical in Ecuador, Colombia, and back in California to design her career coaching curriculum. She was very intentional about the community she hoped to serve: her own.
“I’m from the Inland Empire — a highly underserved part of Southern California. There’s a huge saturation of opportunities in LA, but not here. We’re ignored by government. We’re ignored by the job market. So one of the reasons I wanted to come back here was to create resources to increase accessibility here in the Inland Empire.”
Instead of searching for opportunities elsewhere, she saw a need, and filled it.
“There were no jobs doing this in Riverside, jobs where you help people of color and women navigate these systems, so I just did it myself. And it’s because there’s a real need for it.”
She decided to focus specifically on helping women of color, black, indigenous folks, first generation graduates and first generation travelers navigate the job market.
“I think career education is not up to 2019. It’s boring. It’s not fun to do. And on top of that, it’s also very white washed. It’s not conducive to communities of color, to people who are going through first generation immigrant trauma.”
Gabby’s goal is to change the way people view career education.
“We’ve been fed this really sterile, oppressive curriculum about how you get your next job, when it doesn’t have to be that way. I think the career coaching process needs to be empowering. There’s such great opportunity to really validate and celebrate your accomplishments in an application. So that’s what I’m trying to do — create community, make people feel good about what their career experiences have been, and also be unapologetic that to go to work and not hate my life, I deserve to get paid x, y, and z.”
How is Gabby reaching this community? In a number of ways:
In addition to her 1:1 virtual clients, Gabby just launched her first scholarship for 1:1 career coaching. She’ll be working with a young woman of color from Southern California who attends a predominantly white university on the east coast — a niche she’s especially keen to serve, as career centers at PWIs (predominately white institutions) aren’t fully equipped to serve the needs of students of color. Additionally, she’ll be offering reduced price group coaching to everyone that applied to the scholarship.
As if that weren’t enough, Gabby also hopes to do a series of workshops at local universities and conferences for parents of students and young professionals in Spanish, and is considering translating her entire curriculum into Spanish as well.
As a proponent of professional development, Gabby knows she needs to keep learning too. Her next area to tackle: Finance.
“I’m thinking of helping people navigate finances when it comes to going abroad or career planning. I think finances are a huge element that we don’t talk about enough — especially with higher education and the student loan crisis. I’m still gaining that financial literacy, but I definitely want to add that level to career coaching because I target latinx communities, and they are the most in debt. Latina women are the most underpaid community in the entire country — we don’t negotiate our salaries, benefits, so talking about money and reducing the stigma of money, work, university, and travel is likely my next move.”
Because that’s what Gabby does. She sees what her community needs and she creates it. That’s part of her philosophy of work:
I strongly believe that there’s work everywhere. Why do jobs exist? Why do careers exist? Because we’re solving a problem. Any job description — what it really is is — “Hey! We don’t know what we’re doing and we need someone to solve it.”
Sometimes a job asks for a problem to be solved. Sometimes you create something to solve a problem directly. Either way, I have no doubt that Gabby will keep pinpointing gaps in career literacy and spreading it throughout her community — one person at a time.
Adding It Up: Confirming My Happiness Formula Assumptions
Here’s how Gabby’s journey adds up to my assumptions about finding happiness in your career:
Hands-on Opportunities
- Gabby’s experiences experimenting in high school and college — from starting clubs, to designing her own major — solidified her hard skills and showed they could be fun: marketing, fundraising, coordinating.
A Supervisor’s Faith
- Gabby was given free range at the Undergraduate Education office and in Ecuador to design programming that fit the needs of her students — specifically when it came to how to choose a study abroad program and then translating their experiences abroad to be marketable to employers.
An Inspiring Mentor
- From her high school mentors Veronica and Jessica, to her mentor at the Undergraduate Office at UC Davis, Beth Claassen Thrush, Gabby is the poster child for mentorship done right — pushing her to try more and think bigger.
A Supportive Community
- Gabby has sought out supportive communities in literally every step of her journey. First in high school by being super involved, then when she studied abroad in Madrid, then at the Undergraduate Education office at UC Riverside, and finally while in Ecuador.
- She’s also recently joined a Business Accountability group for young women entrepreneurs led by Gloria Lucas of Nalgona Positivity Pride. Since working for yourself can be alienating, Gabby says joining this group has been one of the best decisions she’s ever made.
- Gabby builds community by supporting her community — consistently using empathy to determine her community needs, and building the resources to fill the gaps.
Gabby’s Tips for Career Shifters and People that Feel Stuck:
Show Up
“Show up. That’s one of my biggest pieces of advice ever. I showed up. And that’s a reason I became a mentor at UCR, because I went to the meetings. I went to the events. I participated and I showed support. And I still do — I try on my instagram to shout out Latina Businesses. And that’s actually part of my networking philosophy and how I approach any relationship: it has to be mutual. It can’t be one way. I tell my clients my networking approach: I succeed if you succeed.
Make a master resume
I don’t care if people are employed, not employed, transitioning, I think everybody needs to work on a master resume — an inventory of their professional and education history. Because when you do that reflection of what you’ve done and write down what you’ve accomplished and how you’ve impacted organizations, it’s like built in celebration and built in self-accolades.
I can’t tell you how many women of color that when I’m revising their resume and we’re working through things and I ask for little more detail they say — “Oh yeah I did do that! That’s right! I never even thought of it that way, but I actually did a lot!” And they think that they’re still underqualified and I’m like no!
But you really need to think back about what you’ve done, because when you’re in that position of reflection and celebrating yourself you just get that positive mojo going and just changing the vibration about how you feel about your state. You know what? I can get out of this situation or I can change this.
Don’t compromise your non-negotiables
I want to make sure people’s’ basic needs are met. Yes, not feeling fulfilled by their work is one thing, but even if you hate your job but can meet your basic needs — celebrate that a bit! And if you hate your work because you’re not meeting your basic needs, that needs to change. Period. That is not negotiable for me. At all.
So I think it’s being able to understand — Why am I unhappy? Is it because I feel harassed at work? Attacked at work? Safety in the workplace is so important. So that’ the second thing that I tell people to consider.
If it’s not those things? Then think about your timeline — can you do something outside of work? In the meantime to get you going? You need something to propel you forward. At the end of the day you might not be able to leave your job and just quit because you have to pay your bills, but you do need to find some sort of momentum to spring forward to that next step. I think it’s so hard to do that when you don’t have that energy.
Find Gabby on Linkedin, check out her website, and follow her on instagram.
