Aida M. Toro

I always bet on myself, and I've had a big support system here at home. My mom and dad are always supportive about it. I didn't really have mentors to get me into copywriting. I did all of that by myself. One thing I always do is, if I see something I'm interested in, I'll reach out to the person that's actually hiring for it. I'll send them a private message, like a direct message on LinkedIn. I express my interest confidently in what I do, and then that's how it happened. They hired me literally 2 weeks after that. I always say to be confident and reach out to whoever posts the gig. Don't be scared.

Advice I would give is to be patient. It's very competitive because there's a lot of people that are hungry out there. With people getting laid off, they're even looking for opportunities that they're overqualified for because they just want to have a job. I tell people something I always tell people is to just be patient and know that they are worth the opportunity, but just to pitch and pitch and pitch, and always amp up their skills, whether it be watching a YouTube or taking a certification course where they could develop different skills in all types of media, not just journalism. Journalists, not that it's dead, but the media landscape is very frail right now. Something I would suggest is just try to obtain skills and other forms of writing, you know, just to get your foot in the door, so you're not waiting to pitch an article that doesn't get in. Go for other areas of writing and be patient. Because the more skills you have under your belt as a writer, you could do different types of writing, like copywriting, UX writing, everything else, even social media writing, all of that.

Kindness, honesty and integrity because without these three, there isn’t any trust and there’s no way that one could lead or inspire without spreading kindness and having integrity.