Mexico is an inland city with an estimated population of 10 million residents and an estimated 9,6 million cars. Its busy busy busy like any mega city. City life can feel chaotic but Andrea thrives off this. She lives 30 minutes from central downtown where she enjoys all the things that city life has to offer a self confessed “geek”. Public transport is reasonably good and safe and most commuter services offer a female only space, so getting to town is not difficult. Most hanging out with friends is done in the safety of malls.

Andrea says there are many many many nightclubs in Mexico City from the extreme 7 star luxury to the not so stellar, catering to every taste of music and of course what city would be authentic without an underground rave scene! For her and her friends, nothing compares to a night on the town, followed by tacos from one of the many many street food vendors but their  preferred choice of hang, like so many of us, is a house party with friends. Everyone brings a bit and together they all share in friendship.

I am always interested in people’s favorite food from their own countries but Andreas’ answer surprised me. Sushi. I mean I love sushi too. Andrea says the sushi she loves is the unconventional sushi created by combining Japanese and Mexican styles. She says it is very spicy sushi and my mouth is watering again as I type this. She also loves pizza and again, who doesn’t. 

As far as more traditional Mexican dishes, her favorite is Pambazo. Pambazo is a Mexican dish similar to the torta. It is made with pambazo bread dipped and fried in a red guajillo pepper sauce. It is traditionally filled with potatoes with chorizo but there are different varieties. The bread used to make pambazo is called “pan basso” which roughly translates as peasants bread. The bread is first filled with the potato and chorizo, then dipped in warm red guajillo pepper sauce, which gives the bread its famous orange-red sprinkled coloration. Once the bread has been soaked, it is passed on to fry in a bit of oil and is ready when it is crispy. It is then dressed with  lettuce, salsa, cream, and fresh white cheese. I had to go eat and come back to finish this blog. I cannot wait to try it in Mexico City myself one day soon.

An average day in the life of Andrea, is waking up early (but not always). A good skin care routine before breakfast and then it is studying, working on Empowch, some socializing and then spending some time on social media. Her passion is the music industry and her dream is to be in the management/promotion side where she can be paid to travel and promote a band/musician! AWESOME! Her last favorite live show she attended was to see The Killers.

Andrea tells me she is inspired by her older sister whose passion is now her career which is acting. Her sister is a theater performer and teacher who also knew she wanted to do this from a young age. The Film and TV industry in Mexico; it has some of the world’s favorite directors such as, Guillermo del Toro who directed The Shape of Water and Alejandro González Iñárritu who directed greats such as Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel, Birdman and The Revenant.  

What has Andrea enjoyed most about her experience at Empowch? The people that work on the project, the project and what it stands for in its empowerment message and how she has been able to learn so many different aspects of building a business. She has identified one of the greatest hurdles to financial empowerment in Mexico, which is the vast size of the country and the rural nature of it. 63% of the population are unbanked and only 65% have access to mobile phones so the reach of technology needs to increase. The other key issue is financial education which needs to be seriously addressed within the whole country.