Harlingen Has Her Own Story: Health, Business & Ganas

Nobody is sending a camera crew to Harlingen, Texas to ask what the women there are building. Nobody is calling the vendor at Booth 14 of the Harlingen Bazaar to ask how she started. Nobody asked the 19-year-old with a perfume cart what she figured out before she turned 20. That's exactly why we went. Episode 9 of the Latina Leadership Podcast was recorded live during the Texas Road Tour, deep in the Rio Grande Valley, in a city that runs on ganas, faith, family, and the particular stubbornness it takes to build something when the system is not built for you. Dr. Paulina Sosa Quintanilla, founder of Latinx Voices and holder of a doctorate in public health informatics from Johns Hopkins, opens the conversation on Latino health equity and what it means to pull up your own chair to the decision table. Then Anjelica walks into the Harlingen Bazaar, and the community takes it from there. By the end of this episode, you will have heard from a health advocate, an anime shop owner, a Bible journaling entrepreneur, a salsa maker who turned trauma into three thriving booths, a 19-year-old who found her wholesale supplier on TikTok, and a tea house owner building the kind of community space she wishes she had. Every single one of them started before they were ready.