Empow(h)ering women

KIERAN ANDREW KHAN

Avalon Gomez represents the new era of the young, empowered woman – creating a business, Brand with Avelle, out of her passions and channeling those both towards helping others. Her latest venture, EmpowHer, is aimed at reducing poverty among women through business training and ties in neatly with her past experiences over the last few years.

“I’ve always believed in the power of visualisation and manifestation – tied in with hard work – and I want to share that with women as a means of escaping poverty. Last year I worked mostly seven days a week, I offered business solutions, mentorship, workshops and coaching to both men and women but realised that there was a particular need to empower women to manifest their own dreams in particular – that’s how the movement, EmpowHer was born,” she explained. EmpowHer, a registered non-profit organisation, celebrates its first anniversary in June.

Gomez, one of the few non-students of the University of the West Indies (UWI) to participate in creating a band for the Campus Carnival in the 2000s, realised that she enjoyed creating brands and experiences via events and went fully into the field just under a decade ago. “I started off being on the committee for that event with one of the biggest promoters in UWI, St Augustine. That Carnival band sold out so shortly after a friend and I came up with the idea for an event we called Zero. There was zero advertising, no tickets nothing. But we promoted it as the faces of the brand and Zero, which was first held on April Fool’s Day 2010, also sold out with over 500 party-goers on the Treasure Queen. I realised that people wanted more than a party, but an experience, so we went above and beyond to create experiences in a number of successful parties in the years that followed. The difference was that we created a concept; I wanted to tell a story through an event and not simply offer the same DJs and experience that any other party would offer,” she detailed.

When she left the party circuit a few years later, Gomez's desire to tell stories through brands grew more intensely. “When I used to do events, being the face of the event or the promoter as people would call it, I knew I had to upkeep myself, look and be a certain way or in effect to have a personal brand, that’s how I saw the importance of it. Then I soon began to realise that I could help other women do the same – create a personal brand image for themselves whether they owned a business or not and it grew into something that I cared about,” she recalled. “The core of it all for me is helping people to find their ‘why’ – their reason for wanting to achieve something or be something. I began offering courses in creating visions boards and that’s still one of my more popular courses. Then I went on to pursue studies in becoming a business coach – which I will complete this year and it would complement all the other courses I did locally through SBCS Global Learning Institute.”

Soon enough, Gomez had amassed a network of over 100 women who were advocates of her business training and realised she had an immense opportunity. In creating EmpowHer, she also created a one-time grant given to one woman to offset the costs in establishing her business which would be awarded later this year. The grant is funded through a series of events and workshops the organisation hosted throughout the year.

“Our team is out there in the communities and they identified a number of women for this grant – of which we will select one to receive (the) grant to help get their business registered, get their logo, branding and social media up and running or get their start up materials for their business – depending on the goals that they have. Then we will work with that woman for one year and mentor and guide her along the way to see that they achieve some of the goals they set out at the start of the year,” Gomez said. “In the coming years, we would like to get to the point where we do an open call and women can apply for the grant as we grow,” Gomez added.

With full time engagements between EmpowHer and Brand with Avelle, Gomez also created her own fashion label in 2014, branding monokinis and tee-shirts with her name that surged in popularity on the party circuit a few years ago. This further added to her belief that a strong personal brand could result in so many other possibilities. Recently, she also created her own business and personal planner for women which sold out and is in it’s second printing. The Purpose Planner prompts women each day to list three affirmations about themselves and express gratitude – two things that Gomez found to be immensely useful in her life. Then it allows spaces for tasks to be created which are in line with the goals listed at the start of each month to keep women on track in pursuing their goals and asks for accountability at the end as well.

As much as she invests in her business and goals, when it comes to family and personal time, Gomez has the rules she says keep her on track. “Every morning, when I wake up, I spend 15 minutes just with myself. I repeat affirmations that are positive things I need to hear when I first wake up. As for weekends, Gomez enjoys spending her downtime with her son and step-kids, usually at the movies. “Once I can I do enjoy the occasional drink with friends or whatever fun factor I feel up to for that weekend,” she happily noted. “I spend a lot of time reading as well, as most of my day is spent speaking with people I’m happy to come home and read a book every single night – no TV or radio needed. I read mostly motivational books or personal stories to draw inspiration from – the latest being Becoming, by Michelle Obama or books like Girl Code which taught me so much about what it takes to be a successful woman in business,” she added.

In closing she said, “I want to create a movement of women supporting women and to let people know that they can take their business and their own lives to the next level. I can help them do that with the experience I’ve had in building brands.” At the heart of it, Gomez is teaching women to live life on their terms – with personal power and confidence, coupled with the tools needed to compete at the right level in today’s world. And she’s manifesting her own destiny while helping others to do the same.

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