We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexis Becerra a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alexis, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

From the outside, everything looked amazing. I was at the top of my game in my career, I was spearheading ground breaking adolescent mental health projects along with sitting on county and national organization boards all while doing this in one of the most innovative places in the world, the San Francisco Bay Area. 10 years post graduate school, on paper I had made it! I was making more money that I ever imagined, working with and alongside some of the most intellectually stimulating humans in a location where all dreams are possible. Nothing is to big to create.

Yet, on July 3rd, 2023, I found myself in the emergency room. My body filled with hives, experiencing chronic anxiety, and my doctors feared for my heart health. I sat there thinking, “how could this be?!” How could a 30 something year old who works out consistently, lives and active and predominatly healthy life style be experiecning this? I was doing everything the doctors said was “right.”

What I didn’t realize at that time, was that this was the tipping point of an accumulation of what I had been experiencing for 2 years prior. The chronic stress, the ongoing demands of me that I pushed down often times leaving nothing but crumbs for myself at the end of the day. Navigating toxic work spaces and bosses that took more than they gave back. Being a first-gen Latina balancing two worlds at all times.

This would become the biggest defining moment of my professional career. Because this would lead to the pivot my life needed to be where I am at today.

Alexis, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Oftentimes when I am asked how I would describe myself, 3 words come to mind: eldest daughter, leader and healer. But if you ask my friends, they would say I am the Hope Dealer.

I am the eldest daughter of five. I am a first-gen Mexican American and first of my family to graduate college and go on to get a graduate degree. I am an avid world traveler and have been solo traveling for almost 10 years. The last 15 years I have dedicated to my craft as a healer that first started by specializing in trauma to support adolescents and families with their mental health. Over the course of this journey and as my leadership grew, I have dived into understanding and practicing healing centered leadership. Understanding the impact of trauma and leadership combined.

It is no surprise that today I find myself as a workplace trauma healing coach, specializing in Latina Leaders. The defining moment of my career where I found myself in the emergency room, would be the moment I would need to pivot and to truly see what I had been ignoring and where my next path would take me. Today, I support latina professionals go from broken and shattered to grounded and thriving. I help them reclaim their voice, but most importantly reclaim their power. Because I truly believe that no women should ever have to pick up their pieces and put themselves together again, alone.

You see as a first-gen Latina, we are finding ourselves in spaces that our ancestors could only dream of. As much pride it is to be in these spaces, it can be incredibly lonley as well. As most often in these high spaces of leadership, you walk in to find yourself as the only or one of the few women of color. The work I do as a workplace trauma healing coach is rooted in culture and healing centered leadership. I am a firm believer that decisions are made in the body first before they are spoken. As a Latina leader who first hand lost all sense of my body intuition during peak burnout, the work we do together is rooted in coming back home to yourself.

The thing that sets me a part from other coaches, is my lived experience as a first-gen Latina leader, being a trauma trained expert, but most importantly living in authenticity. I am most proud about that everything I teach my coaching clients in our 1:1 or in my group programs is rooted in the work I do everyday, from the words used to the healing practices to be able to feel and hear themselves again, I use those very practices in my daily life. My coaching is rooted in freedom and power.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Let’s dive deeper into this pivot. That moment where I found msyelf in the emergency room and my doctor explaining her concern for my heart health was such a turning point not only in my career, but also my life. I knew more than ever something had to change. But I didn’t quite know how, yet I did at the same time. I had this deep rumbling inside of me wanting me to leave, it had been nagging at me for quite some time and yet I kept pushing it to the side, or telling myself “I am crazy” to think this.

That rumbling inside was calling me to the jungle. After I had decided to take a full leave from work to work on healing myself, I listened to this calling. 3 mos later, I found myself backpacking in the country of Colombia. Deeply emersing myself in the raw nature and going all in on me. This back packing journey would allow me to meet people along the way, to learn from their stories but also to be able to come back home to myself, to listen to what I couldn’t hear anymore and to forgive those who had harmed me along my professional career, but most importantly forgive myself for not listening to myself or staying way longer than I should have.

It was in this healing space that knew I would not be returning to my job, I would be pivoting my career. At that time I had NO idea what that would be. Or so I thought so. Yet, along the journey, I was able to hear myself, feel myself and use my specialization in trauma, relationships abuse and leadership to launch my own business as a Latina Coach.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

The most effective way for growing my clientele as a Latina Coach, has been doing the thing I have felt most vulnerable doing-sharing my story. Sharing the realness, the rawness, the journey as it had to unfold and continues to unfold. When people want to work with you, they want to work with the “real you” not the one dressed up for linkedin profiles and the one who has to use all the work jargon. They want to see and feel the real you, so they can be their real selves. Especially as Latina professionals, we find ourselves code switching, navigating dual cultures and yet this is a skill, it is exhausting! And we need more spaces for people to show up as their full authentic selves and not let that take away from how they show up as a professional. Because in order to reclaim your power as a professional you need spaces to be your whole self outside of work. Both require you to know who you are and how you show up, So the moral of the story, is just be you!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.itsalexisbecerra.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsalexisbecerra/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsalexis-becerra
• Other: Podcast: Reclaim Your Power: Where Hope Meets Purpose

  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Gpg2VgoaRf1iFmTBipgbJ?si=4fcfd8150dc94b88

Image Credits

Photographer, Carlos Requenes Business name is: walkingphoto.mx