Meet Alma Valdez

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alma Valdez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alma below.

Alma, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

I’ve always grown up as the shy girl that wouldn’t speak up for herself & never left her mom’s side no matter where I was at. It wasn’t until around the age of 14 or 15 I went through something very personal and that opened my eyes to actually speak up for myself because you can’t always count on certain people to always be there for you and hold your hand. Since then I learned how to get the things just by showing up with confidence and being sure in myself. That shows and allows people to not step all over you because you can show you defend yourself. Boosting my self esteem wasn’t easy either, sometimes you just have to accept that certain people aren’t good for you emotionally and learn to let them go. Removing toxic habits and people out of your life, you’ll realize how much they were affecting you and finally learn how to appreciate and love yourself.

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?

My name is Alma Valdez. I’m from Los Angeles, West LA area. Both of my parents are Mexican and I’m proud to be First Gen. Coming from an all Mexican background and being the first generation out here in the States has been interesting. Figuring things out on my own especially as an only child having no one to go to for advice has been quite a challenge. From learning how to build up a credit score to signing up for college and have no one to guide me but myself isn’t easy. Growing up hearing having to work many hours and multiple days will be enough to get you to live by day by day can be true but also seeing this led to me to want to show my parents that having a traditional job is not the only way to make money. Which is probably why I was so gravitated to wanting to start modeling, to show them that we can still work while enjoying something we are truly interested in and have fun doing it. I have been modeling for about 2 years now and although it’s a very tricky industry, I love it which has now led me to start getting paid for it. It’s led me to meet many people & open doors for me I would’ve never thought I’d step into. As well as having a social media platform, from following content creators I always found entertaining to brands reaching out and wanting to send over their products to me. Nothing is more rewarding than being known you’re being watched by brands you truly use on the daily and receive a PR package. It makes me feel I can keep going and push myself to do even more.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three most impactful qualities for me was confidence, consistency & communication. All three blended together will take you a long way. I always think of two things when I really want something, the famous quote by Kris Jenner “If somebody tells you no, you’re asking the wrong person” & a closed mouth doesn’t get fed. Each time I doubt myself, I think about where I started, knowing nobody & pushed myself to talk to people and make a name for myself I stop and think why would I stop now after coming all this way? Only advice I can give is just do it. The only things stopping you is yourself and all those negative thoughts are just in your head. If you never do it, you’ll never know if you failed at it or if you’re good at it. Try it and see what happens so like that you’re not stuck with the ‘what if’ ?

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Growing up I always struggled with my curly hair. I never knew how to take care of it up up until Covid happened and I learned everything I needed to know through TikTok. I learned how to embrace it and stopped using heat on it like I used to. Since then one of my favorite parts of getting ready is doing my curly hair routine. A goal of mine is to one day work & model for Rizos Curls. I genuinely love her products and admire even more than that it’s Latina owned especially since she’s from the same city as me, Midcity. Everytime I walk into a Target or Ulta and see her products I picture myself being one of the models on the posters. I also would love to work with Pro Club. Growing up all my uncles from my moms side would always stop by the house and pay a visit and even tho they wouldn’t come around as much the only staple memory I have of them is them walking in the door with a fresh white tee. The brand itself has blown up and has become bigger and popular now but back then that was one of the brands that was affordable and weren’t used in a “trendy” way. So to be one of their models on a campaign someday would be a goal of mine.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: almaavvaldez

Image Credits

Main picture:
@victorarriolaphotography

@ victorarriolaphotography
@joxoriginals
@wisechain_
@juniortheoutsider
@ever_santamariaa
@dipbars
@frmthelandwlove