After launching her podcast highlighting women of color, Kristina Gonzalez-Sander, the community builder shares what she’s learned.
By Katya Bandouil, Illustration by Madison Weakley
Kristina Gonzalez-Sander never expected to end up in Austin.
After a year abroad in Spain, travel blogging and teaching English, Gonzalez-Sander visited a friend studying at The University of Texas. The capital city’s creative energy and strong sense of community tied her in. While searching for a sense of belonging after college, Gonzalez-Sander found it in Austin.
Gonzalez-Sander had struggled with her Asian-American identity from a young age, growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood in the suburbs of Chicago. Initially she put off her idea creating a platform for women of color, fearing her identity wasn’t strong enough. Through encouragement from her friends and the Boss Babes ATX community, Gonzalez-Sander built up the courage to create In Bold Company, a community and digital platform for women of color to share their experiences through diverse storytelling and digital content.
Thanks to her experience managing In Bold Company, Gonzalez-Sander’s confidence grew in her identity as a Filipina. She wanted other women of color to feel the same way. In April 2020, Gonzalez-Sander launched the In Bold Company podcast, which aims to understand and celebrate the experience of being a woman of color.
Based on her experience starting In Bold Company and completing the first season of her podcast, Gonzalez-Sander compiled five things she’s learned as a community builder.
The Importance of Belonging
“I think that innately everybody wants to belong in whatever community they find themselves in. As a community builder, I really intentionally take the time to listen. I think I’ve messaged almost every single person on Instagram that has followed us and had a conversation.”
Intentional Representation is Really Powerful
“When you are representing an actual diverse group of people on any media or brand platform, doing it with actual intention and care is really important because I think that shows. Something I’ve been noticing lately is that people are resonating a lot with certain companies and brands that give off that vibe of authenticity.”
Trusting Yourself and Your Intuition
“I think it’s really easy to get caught up in everything going on in the world; on social media, there’s a lot of information. I think as long as you continue to trust yourself and to trust your intuition, you will end up where you need to go.”
Making Mistakes is Okay
“We’re going to make mistakes. You should do them and learn from them. It doesn’t mean that you’re a failure; you are learning. It’s not like I knew how to launch a podcast successfully in my sleep. I was really nervous, [wondering]what people were going to think. I just had to do it and make a bunch of mistakes.”
Just Do It
“If you have an idea, I think you should just do it and don’t let yourself self-sabotage. Just start and see what happens. In the beginning, no one is paying attention to you yet. Just do it for yourself and do it for fun and then all of that other stuff will come. I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make things really perfect and amazing. It doesn’t really have to be perfect and amazing, because you haven’t even done it yet.”