Brittany Chavez: Make vulnerability your leadership style

When Brittany Chavez launched Shop Latinx in 2016, she didn’t yet consider herself a founder. She didn’t think of herself as a leader, or even as part of the tech world. She had worked in the entertainment industry in L.A., but couldn’t seem to get past assistant-level jobs, so she quit and started driving for Uber.

Then, inspiration struck. 

“I remember one day—it's so clear—I work a 10-hour Uber shift, I come home, I'm so tired, I take a shower, hop into bed,” she told Free Radicals. “When you're a founder, you feel like sometimes you're steering the ship, it's just intuitive. You don't know why you're doing it, or how you're doing it, you just feel called to do it. That's how I felt when I opened up my laptop and I started looking up Latinx-owned businesses—any way you can spell it, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Hispanic, whatever. I didn’t see any directories, I didn't see anything to help these small business owners, especially ecommerce.”

Chavez was seeing Latinx businesses on her social media feeds, particularly on Instagram, but she couldn’t find a central place to find more, or to shop from several at once. “I was so inspired by other communities taking the initiative to create their own systems like directories, to amplify their communities, and I was so happy to patronize and support them,” she said, fondly recalling a database of Black-owned restaurants and food businesses in L.A. 

She started the Shop Latinx Instagram account that night, gathering Latinx makers, creators, businesses, and culture into one feed. “It got a lot of traction, and it really filled a void within this community,” she said. “Then, with a collective of young women, we created a directory, and started highlighting the stories of Latinx creators.”

Five years later, Shop Latinx is an online marketplace and platform selling products from more than a dozen different brands owned by women of color. The company landed pre-seed funding this spring. Chavez has experienced founder pains first-hand, and now leads a team of seven. 

Chavez is the first to say that she’s not a conventional leader, and it’s an identity she has learned to embrace. Mental health, well-being, and emotional intelligence are the foundation of the culture she’s building for her team. She considers the vulnerability she brings to leadership, and the ability it gives her to connect with employees—and consumers—to be a strength. 

Understanding people has given her insight into a huge and poorly served market. About one-fifth of the U.S. population identifies as Latinx, and it’s one of the fastest growing demographics in the country, with a projected $1.9 trillion in spending power by 2023. And yet, corporate attempts to speak to the Latinx market are often tone deaf at best.