We continue with our special playlist to celebrate the incredible women who've been on this show.

Enjoy.

Anna Flores is the gracious and kind founder of We All Grow Latina, a network of influencers that connects online at local events and at an annual summit.

If you've followed what Anna's built, then like me, you might have imagined that it just blew up overnight.

In reality, Anna's journey has included many detours, she almost filed for bankruptcy,

and offers lots of powerful lessons about tenacity, adaptation, and the art of re-advention.

Anna, thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you for having me, Alicia.

It's just so wonderful to have you face-to-face to me.

I know, in person, because we're Internet friends for years.

I have been following your journey since Latino Bloggers Connect. You have. Not a lot of people remember. I mean, it's only been five years since we switched the name, but that's incredible. Why were you following? Because I was blogging, and someone probably said to me, you're a Latina who blogs. You should know Anna. She's a Latina who blogs, which is sort of the genesis of the whole thing, right?

That's how it all started. I was a Latina mom blogger, like some like to say la Mami bloggers. I was at the top of the game back then. It was 2009 when I launched Spanglish Baby with my best friend from college, Roxana Soto. And it was really out of the need of I was looking for bilingual books.

I knew I wanted to raise my daughter at the time.

She was like nine months. And I knew I wanted to raise her not only entrenched in the culture, but being completely bilingual as I was. But that's really what started out the need to monetize, right? Because I found a medium that I loved. I found a medium that democratized

our voices, our stories that allowed us to tell our stories without anybody needing to edit it or

tell us that it's not good for the bottom line. And I come from TV. I had been producing content for

Latino TV for over 15 years, Wunvician, MTV Latin America, et cetera.

So all of a sudden, I'm faced with this, like, new digital media platform that I could create on my own.

And I was out of work because I had quit when I became a mom and then I was faced with the recession and try to get a job, but it was impossible to do

making enough to be able to support having somebody take care of my daughter. So child care

was just impossible. So anyway, I found this medium. I started blogging. Spanglish Baby became a

really big hit, but we weren't monetizing. I was about to say it's a platform that you have so much

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