Built Different: Leadership Lessons From the In-Between
- May 6
- 3 min read
By Laura Camila Rivera
I grew up between worlds. Moving across the US and back to Puerto Rico, over and over, twelve schools, never quite fitting into either side. Stateside, I was the Latina. Back home, I was the girl from the States. I learned early that I was always going to be a bridge. What I didn't realize until much later was that bridge-building is a leadership skill that no one puts on a competency framework.
I call myself a boomerang Diasporican. You leave, you come back, you leave again, you come back changed. At some point, you stop trying to belong fully to either place and start building something that holds both. Turns out that's also a pretty good description of how I lead.
Nobody handed me a roadmap for that.
My first real job out of college was at a change leadership consulting firm founded by a Harvard professor. One of three Latinos in the entire organization, I absorbed everything I could about how institutions transform, how resistance works, and how people need to feel safe before they'll move. Then I moved to a government agency, founded CAMI Studio, started supporting retired NFL players through the Player Care Foundation, and returned to Puerto Rico to rebuild ALPFA's chapter here. I also finished a Master of Public Policy at Georgetown in there somewhere.
None of it was linear. Most of it was simultaneous. Here is what I learned:
The skill that accelerates everything else is learning to read the room at a systems level. Not just reading people, but also reading why the room is configured the way it is. Who has real proximity to power. What's actually being decided versus what's being performed. I've been in boardrooms, community meetings, and career fairs, and the leaders who move fastest are the ones who can answer those questions without being told.
You develop this by putting yourself in rooms where you are not the intended audience and paying close attention anyway. You develop it by studying how decisions are actually made within organizations, not how the org chart says they are.
For women specifically, stop waiting for permission to think strategically. A lot of what gets framed as "not ready" is really just women being told their instincts aren't data. They are. Pattern recognition from years of navigating spaces that weren't designed for you is strategic intelligence.
But sometimes it’s hard to trust your instincts, so the practical move is to build a personal board of directors before you need one. A wisdom council that goes beyond the people who validate you to the people who challenge your assumptions and tell you the truth. Champions, sponsors, and advocates. My career shifted when a Latina I met through ALPFA recommended me for a role at an organization where she sat on the board. She hadn't known me long. She knew me well. That gap matters more than most people realize.
On staying adaptable: the leaders I watch struggle in uncertain times are usually the ones who confuse a system with a plan. Systems flex. Plans break. I run a consultancy and keep a lot of balls in the air at once. What keeps it coherent is sequencing and knowing which version of myself a situation actually needs. The habit that helps most is auditing your assumptions every few months. Ask yourself what you're treating as fixed that isn't. What worked last year might be exactly what's slowing you down now.
Most women I know are already doing the hard version of leadership. Navigating more, code-switching more, building with less. You don't need more grit. You need to stop apologizing for how much you already know. Leadership isn't something you arrive at. It's something you keep earning, in every room, every role, every return. Con todo.
Connect With Laura Camila
Instagram: @lauracamilacreates
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