This little girl, who has never liked being in front of a camera, grew up in a unique family who lived in a beautiful part of the world called the Basque Country during a time when society was divided.
Her paternal grandparents had been two of the almost three thousand children, evacuated after the Gernika bombings to a faraway land where they raised a family and worked in engineering jobs until they had to return to a society, very different to the one they left. One where women had lost their rights.
Her maternal grandparents, who were older, had remained in the Basque Country where speaking the local language, one of oldest in Europe, or embracing the culture was not allowed and civil liberties were diminished for most.
Fortunately, by the time she was a toddler, the period of transition towards democracy started and despite the political instability, she was encouraged to dream big. She became an architect so that she could create thoughtful places.
She travelled to a different country where she worked on all types of projects. She saw communities embrace the places she helped build, businesses grow, families established, and old buildings come back to life.
She noticed her work consisted of creating a backdrop to someone else's dream and realised how different this was to what she had been told in architectural school and importantly how Important it was for her profession and industry to be representative of the groups and communities they were building for.
She decided to use her experience to help make construction a more diverse industry and became Chair @nawicldn , mentor @builtbyus , speaker at #inspiringTheFuture , and adviser at #architectsforchange @riba
Along the way she learned that:
-She could create her own path and was not obliged to follow those that did not sit comfortably with her
-The impact of what she could achieve as an individual was less than the impact of what she could achieve with a team.
-Sometimes quitting and starting again is an acceptable answer.
(Thanks @miriamgonzalezdurantez for starting this beautiful project and @womenofyear for amplifying it)
