Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Latina to Latina.

For this episode, I flew across the country from Miami to meet a fellow Cuban who is getting a lot of buzz in Hollywood.

I'm talking about Gloria Calderon Kellett, the executive producer and co-showrunner of Netflix's one day at a time.

I even got to visit her office at the Sony Pictures lot,

which, to be honest, is like most offices, except that in the buildings nearby, crews are

taping some of America's favorite TV shows. This rare one-on-one gave me a glimpse into what makes

Gloria special, how her mind works, and how her sense of self and her creations are rooted

in her upbringing. We're in your offices. We are. So many pictures? I got sort of emotional

walking up to your office. This is such a big deal, Gloria. Like, do you remember every day

how it's a big deal? Yeah. Yeah, for sure, I remember every day. I mean, there's not a day that goes by that I don't

get an email or a tweet or something of somebody like, can you help me? And it just speaks to still the

deep hunger in our community and how it's really difficult to find that first job and to find that

first leg up. And I do a couple of calls a week, like mentor calls.

What I'm always leaving the call with is it's going to be okay. It's going to take a minute.

You know, remember that my overnight success was 12 years. Yeah, no, not a day goes by that.

I don't feel so grateful that for whatever reason I was able to

break through a very difficult industry. And it's been a really fortunate journey for me.

I'm wildly grateful. What do you see as your first big break? There's so many, right?

There's like 20 big breaks that happened along the way. I mean, Mark Reesman gave me my first job. That was a really big deal. He was kind enough to sit down with me. For someone who doesn't know Mark Reesman. For someone who doesn't know Mark Reesman, he was a writer on Frazier. And when I first got an agent and manager and I just didn't know anything, I said, I just want to sit down with a showrunner, any showrunner, and he was

kind enough to have coffee with me. And let me tell you, now that I am a showrunner, I don't have

time to have coffee with anybody. It is impossible when you are, especially with Mommy Guilt.

So now, looking back, what a huge deal it was for him to take time out of his day to have coffee with me.

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