I Followed the Script, Until I Couldn’t Anymore.

Every morning I’d wake up feeling miserable, like there was a void in my soul. Work was a toxic environment with a daily dose of stress and long hours. I had this nagging feeling that something was missing, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I felt stuck and unhappy.

So how did I end up there? It started long before that job — when my family immigrated from El Salvador to Canada, when I was very young. My parents thought it would give my sisters and me more opportunities, a better life.

The Good Daughter

In El Salvador, my dad had invested in real estate, and we always had discussions around the dinner table about his properties and his deals. When we moved, he sold some of them to buy properties here instead. And when I was just 23, he taught me how to buy my first property, using a line of credit to raise the down payment.

But my parents’ expectations for us were different from what my dad had shown me at that dinner table: go to university, get a good job with good pay. I never questioned it, not as a child and not even as an adult. It felt like the right thing to do, considering the sacrifices they’d made to get us here.

So, like a good daughter, I followed the script. I went to university. I landed a cushy government job with all the perks — good pay, benefits, pension. By my parents’ standards and by society’s standards, I was successful. My parents were proud.

But inside, I felt like something crucial was missing. Like a piece of a puzzle. I thought if I climbed the corporate ladder, became a successful, professional woman, that feeling would go away. So I did exactly that — worked tirelessly, moved up. It didn’t solve anything. I just felt more miserable.

The Turning Point

Then I became pregnant with my first son, and it stopped being just about me. There was this little person I needed to be the best version of myself for. Not for me — for him. That was the reason I needed to finally start the journey of actually becoming that person.

I decided to explore real estate first, to see if it was the thing. I immersed myself in it during my maternity leave — conferences, networking, listening to what other people in the space were actually doing.

The Woman Who Showed Me It Was Possible

One moment changed everything. I met a woman who was building semis in Ottawa with her husband. At that point, she was the only woman I’d ever come across who had actually built something. I was fascinated. I had a ton of questions. She introduced me to zoning, taught me how to read a zoning map — and that was it. My path into land development had started.

I used the rest of my maternity leave to launch a boutique shop specializing in mansion-style projects in Ottawa. I handled permitting while my colleagues handled the rest.

Finding My Own Scale

Things were going well, right up until that familiar itch came back — just before COVID. The pull to grow and evolve was too strong to ignore, so I pivoted again: infill, transit-oriented developments, mid- to high-rise. Today that’s grown into the work that actually fuels me — carefully planned subdivisions, designed on purpose, where people put down roots instead of just passing through.

That belief is where Land Development Academy started: helping people learn development the way I wish I’d learned it, so they don’t have to make the same mistakes I made to get here. I got into this industry because one person — a woman building semis in Ottawa who happened to be generous with her time — handed me a zoning map and taught me how to read it. Almost nobody gets that. Most people learn their one piece and wait to be told what’s next.

That’s since evolved into something bigger. It’s not just about teaching individual developers anymore — it’s about bringing the whole professional development community into the same room, instead of training every discipline in isolation. I’m having that conversation with colleges, universities, associations and industry organizations across Canada now, because when people understand what happens upstream and downstream of their own work, they ask better questions, collaborate earlier, and the work gets more cohesive for everyone — not just the developer holding the file.

What I didn’t expect is how much that room would change me, too. I built it to help people. I didn’t realize how much I’d get back from it. Watching a realtor finally understand what a developer is actually underwriting, or an engineer start asking about the exit strategy instead of just designing toward a drawing — I didn’t do that. They did. I just get to watch it happen. And every time I see someone get sharper at their own craft, the same way I did the day a stranger in Ottawa handed me a zoning map, it brings me a kind of joy I didn’t know I was missing.

What It Gave Me Back

None of it was easy. Every step came with its own challenge. But looking back, the thread running through all of it is growth — reframing the failures into lessons instead of letting them define me. That’s brought me more joy, more fulfillment, and more freedom than the government job ever did.

I’m not living someone else’s life anymore. I’m becoming the best version of myself, and doing it in front of my boys, so they see what it looks like to actually build the life you want instead of the one you inherited.

That’s who’s on the other side of the Land Development Fast Track course and the LDA Community — not a guru on a stage, someone who followed the script for a long time before she found her own path, and built a way to bring others into it faster than she found it.