We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ana Trujillo Limon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ana , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I feel like I come from generational resilience. My ancestors survived all they went through so that we could be here today, but I’ve also had great role models in my life who showed me what it was to be resilient.
My dad was a Vietnam veteran of the Marine Corps, and he showed me how to turn pain into progress and take the worst experiences in life and find the positive in them.
My mom was a public school teacher for 35-plus years in a small district in rural Colorado. She showed me what it meant to be resilient in the face of limited resources and to fight for what we believe in.
My siblings are all the most resilient people I know. All of them have advanced degrees and are incredibly successful, overcoming a myriad of obstacles along the way.
And lastly, much like my dad, my husband has taken the negative experiences in his life and turned them into positive lessons he passes on to his students and athletes.
I have what some people call an “embarrassment of riches,” to see and learn from this kind of resilience.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a storyteller. Ever since I was little, I loved to talk to people and ask them questions and tell their stories. I parlayed that passion into my work as a content creator in the financial services space. This means that I essentially ghostwrite content for all different types of platforms, whether that’s blog posts, articles for magazines and journals, correspondence from advisors to clients and ad copy, among many other things. I also host a podcast and livestream shows where I talk to professionals in the industry and learn about what made them successful and what others can learn from their journeys.
I am a community builder and connector. Through my work in this realm, I have built, and helped build, a few initiatives I’m passionate and excited about. For one, I’ve spent a big chunk of my time over the past two years volunteering my time building the SER Summit for Latinos in FinServ with a team of amazing and passionate individuals who want to bring more Latinos into the financial services space. Vanessa Martinez, the other co-founder, and I want to build a community where people in our industry feel seen, valued and part of something. SER means “to be” in Spanish, but it also stands for Support, Educate and Recharge. And that’s what we are building–a place where we can be ourselves while finding support, education and a place to recharge our minds, bodies and spirits. It’s a community where we can find inspiration from each other. Our third annual event will be in early September 2025 in Chicago, which is Vanessa’s hometown. Vanessa is a magic maker, and I can’t wait to see what Chicago brings.
Another initiative I’m working on is a financial literacy and running camp called Mini Money Runners. We had our inaugural program in 2022 and will have the second program this summer in 2024. Essentially, we want to show young students in our communities that financial and physical health go hand in hand and we want to give them the skills and inspiration to take care of both of those areas. We built this program together with a nonprofit in Southern Colorado called Conejos Clean Water, a Denver-based gym called Avanyu Performance and a financial literacy business called Mini Money. As part of this program, we talk about nutrition and the students are able to see and take from the community garden. And at the end of the program, we do an outdoor excursion that includes paddleboarding and kayaking so they can have a chance to connect with nature. This program was a labor of love and a family event, as my brother, Mike Trujillo, my husband, Jamie Limon, and his longtime athlete, Lorne Jenkins (who is also the CEO of Mini Money) all built and executed the program. We are still planning out the details of our second program, but it will take place in summer 2025.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
What’s been most impactful in my journey is developing an abundance mindset, adopting a growth mindset and learning to be adaptable. Early in my career, I had a scarcity and fixed mindset and thought I was set in my ways. I learned that being like that wasn’t going to get me anywhere. While it’s a constant growth journey, these are the three things I try to develop to continually learn new things, adapt to new situations and believe that there is enough success to go around.
My advice to people early in their career is to know there is always room for growth and learning and that the only constant is change. And adopting those three skills can help you handle all of the change with grace. Our world has never had a faster pace of change, and constantly learning, whether it’s through a degree program, LinkedIn certificates or MasterClasses, can help you keep up and learn new skills. Lastly, being genuinely curious about people can help you understand and value them. It’s critical to see other peoples’ perspectives.
I’m not perfect and I’m still working on myself and working on these things, but that’s the beauty of it all–we can always change and improve no matter how old or how far in our careers we are
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
SER and Mini Money Runners are both labors of love. But programs don’t run on love alone! We are always looking for sponsors and partners to build with.
In the case of SER, if you are a person at a company who is passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion, or simply about expanding the workforce during the impending talent shortage, our team would love to talk to you and see how we could work together.
For Mini Money Runners, we are looking for donations and sponsors for our program, which is run through a non-profit called Conejos Clean Water. The students get new running shoes, two running shirts, free breakfast every day, and our goal is to eventually provide a stipend at the end of the program to start a bank or credit union account. Plus, we pay for the financial literacy lessons and running coaches. It’s all at no cost to the students. We’re also looking for financial services professionals to talk to the participants about their journey into the profession, which could either be in person or via Zoom.
It’s always important to know that while people like me may speak on behalf of programs like this, I am not the only person building. SER and Mini Money Runners both have so many people who make it all possible, including the volunteers and the sponsors. It takes a village to build! I’m looking for people who feel passionate about the same things who want to build with us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sersummits.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anatlimon/
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
