49. Marlen Mendoza: A Visionary Force

Today we are so excited to introduce Marlen Mendoza.  Marlen is the founder and executive director of Mendoza consulting, which provides policy and research analysis, strategic advisement, bilingual market research and business development, translation services and creative community solutions.  We discuss Marlen’s childhood in a Chicago based latino community being raised by an immigrant single mother and her transformative  time in college in Iowa City and Washington DC.  She shares her reason for making the move back to Iowa City and in discussing her current work, Betsy and Kate dig deep into this wild woman’s story and the revelations made along the way…  -Marlen’s formative first ten years as the third child of six being raised by her single immigrant mother in Chicago-A lack of physical stability that included 12-15 moves within the Chicago area before ten years old which impacted the ability to create long term friendships-The drive to be a good student, to behave, to be a good girl; necessary skills that came easily to help combat stress -Finding the balance of masculine and feminine in a home where mom took on the masculine role -Taking on parental roles and responsibilities at home early on and how school helped become a safe place of working, learning and day dreaming-Marlen’s young life spent in the closed community of school, church and home and the person that came into her life to help show her opportunities in a bigger world-Finding connection to her mother’s trust and ability to manifest what the family needed -Time spent at the University of Iowa, her travels abroad, and time in Washington DC Marlen is now committed to helping support those in the community she was raised in and understands her current role is “to come back to community and be one of the people that helped save me when I was in that community”. Find more about Marlen at:https://internationalstudies.uiowa.edu/people/marlen-mendozaOrganizations of interest:LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa)https://lulac.orgIowa City Diversity Markethttps://www.facebook.com/southdistrictdiversitymarket/Tend Her Wild Costa Rica RetreatMay 20-27, 2023https://bluespiritcostarica.com/retreat/betsy-rippentrop/ Today’s episode sponsored by:Revival Apparelhttps://revivaliowacity.comMakers of the Tend Her Wild “Door Collection” of earringshttps://madecommunity.com Source