Member Spotlight : Betty Galvan
When I was growing up, the "American dream" for my parents was owning a house in a peaceful neighborhood with a great school district and owning your own business. When I was in college, my father bought an ice cream shop and my entrepreneurial journey began. My parents came from Mexico, and I grew up in the South West Side of Chicago, a Mexican neighborhood called La Villita (Little Village). The neighborhood businesses, from pan dulce bakeries to wedding dress shops to jewelers, were all Mexican-owned. Those business owners were role models for me; their stores have been there for over 50 years and continue to contribute to the U.S. economy in great numbers.
Today, my team of mostly Mexican-American women are working from all over the U.S., providing a digital marketing service to a diverse group of business owners across the country. In our local community, I am still one of a handful of Latinx business owners. Most of us have gone back to our communities or have found new ones where we can support their businesses and share our experiences with them. We are proud of our heritage and our business success and look forward to continuing to grow in this space.
For those who would love to learn more about the Latinx experience here in this country, I highly recommend these books: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez (we went to the same high school!!); Esperanza Rising, a young adult novel by Pam Muñoz Ryan; The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez; and American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins.
Originally from Chicago, Betty is a proud first-generation Mexican-American. She graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a major in English and a minor in Secondary Education. Prior to her husband’s transfer to Tokyo in 2006, Betty taught middle school Language Arts and Reading. Tokyo was where she found preschool teaching and documenting online her experience of raising a Spanish-speaking son in Asia so fulfilling! As an early adopter of creating and pushing content out on social, Betty considers herself a Social Media OG.
When not scrolling through TikTok or riding her Peloton, Betty can be found on a field (soccer, football, or baseball) or on a tennis court. She lives in NJ with her husband, 3 boys, and rescue pup, Bella.
To find Betty’s website, check out the link here.
