Today we’d like to introduce you to Carina Boston Pinales.
Hi Carina, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My roots in Central Texas run deep, going back several generations, which inspires me to build here and dedicate my work to my legacy. I come from a humble background and a bi-racial household that shaped my identity. My upbringing inspires me to connect and learn from others while staying true to my roots. Considering my heritage and background, I found power through overcoming assumptions about myself. My experience in doing so has motivated me to support and foster that ability in others and encouraged me to empower my community. At one of the most trying times in my life, I found a lack of community. I used this reflective time as motivation to search for community and learn how to make it more accessible for not just myself but everyone a part of it. Now, community and uplifting my ecosystem are what both guide and have propelled my success. The results of this first came to light with my TEDx talk, “Alchemy – The Duality of Our Experience.”
My TEDx experience helped me realize I am right where I am supposed to be, and my journey and story have value in every chapter. Before this experience, I had great expectations of where I needed to be in life to deserve the space to share my story. I had the goal of giving a TEDx talk eventually, but I thought that was far-reaching, and I had so much more to live still before I was there. The reality was the community I had around me embraced my story, valued what I had to share, and provided me with an opportunity at that stage in my life. That experience was more than just the process of giving the talk; it showed me two things. One, when I set a goal, I better be ready to receive it when it arrives, and second, community is the most powerful aspect in life when it is available and embraceable.
I have always enjoyed creating and developing something that wasn’t yet in existence. Early in life, starting clubs and leading them in high school and college made me realize I have a knack for organizing around good causes and making an impact. A big part of this ability meant I had to understand who I was and the value of having faith in myself. This understanding grew at a younger age during my study of fine arts. Art is about thinking “out of the box.” As trite as that might sound, business is no different—you must have faith in your concept, execution, and skill. I knew how to create something, and I knew how to believe in my concept. I was able to apply that to business.
Critique is also integral to art. You learn to stand before your peers and defend your decisions. Business is no different. And as in art, creating a business is about making an informed decision. Filtering out the noise and focusing on your passion and the decisions that you know are right is a critical skill for an entrepreneur. It’s something I promote in my work. Art also tells a story, and I found that telling stories is important, too, for other future business leaders.
Translating these skills and my background into my professional career, I have made a habit of observing and learning from others to create change. With my current position in life, something very important to me is making sure to generate accessibility and fairness. My professional journey has been that of embracing discovery, moving with confidence, and creating change for the overall good of the ecosystem.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been anything but smooth. A few years before turning thirty, my mother died and then personally, being in a near-death car accident, my mindset shifted and I developed a newfound fearlessness. However, personal growth was one balancing act, the economic juggle was a whole other set of challenges.
My determination stirred me to take chances and create something within my community that had never been done before. However, the isolation of entrepreneurship is a real challenge.
The assumed image of an entrepreneur is that of a glorified superhero, a typical risk-taking, self-sacrificing, traditional white male. As a young, white Latina, bootstrapping, or should I say scraping, entrepreneur, expectation to perform and please was a big struggle. Working any and every possible side hustle and grind to make ends meet while playing Tetris with my calendar was no easy feat. I would time my networking events to be my dinner, fueling up on bite-size cheese squares and grapes and grabbing a KIND bar for the next day’s breakfast just to hit two birds with one stone and save money while I was at it. I would repeat to myself, this is just for now, and soon I’ll be the one hosting these events and get to choose something hardier to serve for that next person who was me at one time.
Being in my early 30s, it would have been easy to be sidelined by others, so overcoming certain situations took a serious backbone. My motivation from other female mentors enabled me to find the validation and strength to push past those barriers. Learning from the mistakes that they would share with me helped to navigate the rocky roads ahead. Marginalized in most business situations, I would have to navigate those territories with lessons learned in hand from others which helped expedite my journey to where I am now.
An example of this dynamic was at the beginning of my journey to start my business. The start-up scene is a very male-dominated space and cliquish. There was this one instance where a male colleague told me to “just let him go to the big meetings and that when I am needed, he will let me know. “ In other words, he wanted to use my human capital when it benefited him and, in this particular circumstance, hand over all of my work and research for him and the big boys to learn how to capitalize on it. This, along with countless other situations, fueled me to own my work, represent my value the way I choose, and trust myself to get things done. I could share countless situations where cultural, gender and economic bias just came with the territory. In particular, there were several situations where I trusted other male counterparts to do their part. Meanwhile, overseeing the execution of my work and ensuring my contributions were carried to the finish line came with a heavy cost at several opportunity crossroads. I learned from these particular areas of challenge that I should never depend on someone else to make opportunities for me. This was a hard lesson learned when I had one of my biggest public/private initiatives squashed after months of dedicated relationship building and boots on the ground work that professionally rewarded so many others involved and left me just accepting thank yous.
From all of this I’ve mentioned, most importantly, I had to step into a space where I could trust myself. I knew how to navigate business decisions and get things done, but I needed to know that these skills were a part of who I was. Overall, having a shift from a reactive resilient operating place towards a thriving mindset has helped ground my choices.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
For over a decaded now I have consulted in various areas in the public/private sector. I founded and own Splash Coworking (Splash) which is the first ever award-winning coworking business center of its kind in the Texas Innovation Corridor. Splash just celebrated our 5th anniversary this past year. Splash’s intentional efforts in the community have given opportunity and inspiration to many – resulting in new start-ups, innovative technology solutions for local non-profits, solved long-standing community challenges, broken barriers, and bridged relationships that would have never formed otherwise. With a community body of over 600 people, we have created a ripple effect that affords our community a safe, inclusive, and inspiring foundation filled with hope, support, and motivation to succeed. We are a place where people come together to create what they are intended to through living their life’s purpose while building long-term relationships and community.
Splash is a shared space community and business pollinator where entrepreneurs, independent professionals and creatives connect, collaborate and make business happen. Pop in, grab a desk and hammer out some work. Book a conference room and present to a client and land the next big deal. Transform our space into a destination and host your next special event.
Splash incubates community. We aren’t like other coworking spaces. We show up for our community and keep a safe space for everyone. As a community hub we have served as an emergency distribution center and coordination leader for our county and city during the historic freeze here in Texas and during COVID. We show up for our community and use our network from our Global relations to our hyper-local resources by meeting the need where the need is.
My consulting company I.O., Infinite Opportunities (I.O.), implements a blend of best practices and innovative nontraditional collaborations. We engage organizational strategies to foster internal and external communities. We primarily operate with public and private work relations.
I am sourced as an expert in:
• Mobility
• Systemic Global Solutions
• Team Development and Change Management
• Entrepreneurial Innovation
What was your favorite childhood memory?
There are two childhood memories that come to mind and were very formative and both explain a lot about how I developed.
One memory was where I was in a frequented spot my family would go to at our San Marcos River. There was a crowd of curiously loud kids huddled around something on the bank of the water, I was around 8 or so then. When I approached the other kids, I saw everyone was intimidated by what they were all towering over. It was a crawdaddy! A large-sized crawfish. I innocently didn’t understand what the commotion was, so I broke through the crowd of children and reached down, then picked it right up to look at it closely. The surrounding kids screeched and pulled back in fear, I put it back in the river once I looked it over to see if there was something wrong with it. I was confused by the commotion then find out there was nothing to be intimidated by and to just look at the crawfish directly to examine what was going on, then make my assessment of the situation.
I was a little younger taking swim lessons when it came to the part where we were to dive off the diving board. We went over the different heights of the boards which were three at the pool we were at. Our instructor told us we could go over to the diving boards and take what we went over earlier in the lesson on how to dive safely. I walked straight up to the highest board and walked right down to the edge of the board and just jumped with no hesitation just a pure, “let’s do this” attitude. What irony would come later in life when I named my business Splash?
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.splashcoworking.com/
- Instagram: @SplashCowork
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SplashCowork/
- Twitter: @SpalshCowork
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5LUK7ucU7c
