I’ve been part of the RISE Women’s Leadership Conference for years — speaking, advising, supporting — but nothing prepared me for this year. Nothing. Because this year, I wasn’t the one on stage.
My daughter Taina was.
She was invited to speak as part of the Young Women’s Circle, and she stepped onto that stage — in front of more than 1,200 people — with a confidence and calmness that stopped me in my tracks. She talked about her journey, her mental health, and what it means to find your way as a young woman today. She didn’t hold back. She didn’t shrink. She didn’t try to be perfect. She was simply herself — and that was more powerful than anything she could have rehearsed.
Then she was honored with a RISE award and received a Citizenship Citation from the Mayor of Providence. And in that moment, watching her walk across that stage, something inside me shifted.
Because as a Latina mother, this meant something bigger. I grew up without seeing many women who looked like me in leadership spaces. I didn’t know what was possible. I learned the hard way. I stumbled. I guessed. I pushed myself into rooms where no one prepared me for what I’d find.
But she’s stepping into a world where her mother has already done some of that heavy lifting — and it shows. She didn’t enter that room wondering if she belonged. She entered knowing she did.
It hit me that this is what generational change looks like. This is what breaking cycles looks like. And this is what happens when representation is no longer theoretical, but personal.
I looked around that room — at the community RISE has built, the honesty of the conversations, the women who show up for each other — and I felt grateful. Grateful that my daughter gets to see leadership through a lens I didn’t have. And grateful that she feels safe enough to use her voice before the world tries to quiet it.
This year’s conference gave me a moment I’ll carry for the rest of my life.
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