Hi. This is Paul Zellisser, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. And I was just telling our guests this week that this is the most anticipated episode ever in now 350 plus episodes.

I am so excited to introduce you to Andrea Romero. And our title today is the social entrepreneur tipping point in New Mexico. Representative Andrea d Romero is a daughter of New Mexico. After attending the Santa Fe Public Schools, Andrea graduated from Stanford University with a degree in political science and received her JD from the University of New Mexico School of Law. She has dedicated herself to the growth of Northern New Mexico's community, economic, and environmental vitality through her small business and volunteer service to various organizations throughout the region. In so doing, Andrea serves as a volunteer state legislature for house district 46. Outside of work, she enjoys lots of traipsing around outside and tinkering with eggs with one patent issued on healthy probiotics eggs. And I can just say, in addition to just being an incredible human doing all these incredible things professionally, Andrea is just a gem of a human in our ecosystem.

Andrea, welcome to the show.

So kind, Paul. Thank you so much for having me. Super excited to be here.

There are so many things we can talk about, but we're gonna really help our listeners understand that we are in a very exciting moment in New Mexico. Different buckets just that you've given so much to and move the needle so much. Help us understand, like, when somebody is looking at your career so they understand you, what are some of the things you've done that would help a social entrepreneur audience kinda understand what you're bringing to this conversation?

That's such a generous question because I think as an elected person, I never saw myself in this role officially. Right? Being a social entrepreneur, I think, first and foremost, is that social aspect. Right? It's always what problems are we solving for our community. And when you think about that and then think about it in the entrepreneurial area, what products are we building? What services can we provide that are responsive to the social good, social need? So I found myself in entrepreneurship actually looking to solve a lot of those social problems and social issues that we come in contact with saying, like, wow. You can actually not only do this as a job, but also finding a lot of unpaid work, potentially doing that. But more so than anything else, getting involved and being able to be part of the decision making as it pertains to so many really important issues. When I really started out, I think, in so many ways, getting to law school, getting to, you know, all of these different areas, I've found myself in New Mexico in this decision making role or being able to lend my voice and then have a vote in these different echelons of of how our democracy works all by being able to say we need to do better. We can have it better.

There's a better way. And perhaps, you know, if by being part of that conversation, you know, I can serve and role to to be able to be part of the solution. And one of the magic things about being a New Mexican is that we're a very small, scrappy community of very incredible doers. A lot of people love being participant to the solution, and so it's just so great to be part of this community of of folks who really believes that they not only can enact changes, but be part of the change themselves and take on that role and really feel that responsibility within our community. So really special place here that we get to live in.

It really is. And we almost titled this episode, We Can Have Nice Things in New Mexico.

That's right. Love.