Season 6. Ep.8: Rebecca Contreras From Poverty to the White House to Millionaire Entrepreneur.

Chicana and Latina Moms Podcast

Quick links:

• ABOUT THE BOOK: Amazon | Book Website
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hi-Res Headshot | Author LinkedIn
• SOCIAL LINK: Website www.rebeccacontreras.com; Facebook @RebeccaAnnContreras; Instagram @RebeccaAnnContreras

Born into poverty to a drug-addicted mother, Rebecca Contreras had been a “lost girl” for almost two decades when, at age 19, she found herself to be a drop out, welfare-dependent teenage mother. As a high school dropout with substance-abuse and emotional trauma tendencies, she was well on her way to perpetuating the generational cycle of destruction and becoming a statistic lost to the system and her upbringing.

Her new book, Lost Girl: From the Hood to the White House to Millionaire Entrepreneur (Boss Media, released Oct 2021), recounts this journey from getting off welfare to advising a sitting U.S. president to eventually founding a thriving 100+ person company, her journey demonstrates that harsh beginnings or past mistakes do not need to define us; rather, we each have the power to forge our own pathways, especially when we have self-determination and the ability to recognize and accept helping hands along the way.

Rebecca’s transformative journey continued with the marriage of her husband, David, who she met while serving in a gang outreach youth community program in Austin. Rebecca and David have been married for 31+ years and live with their family in the Austin area. Together, she and David founded LaunchPad (LP) in 2008, a nonprofit that focused on serving middle school age inner city youth through a comprehensive after school program for nearly a decade in Northeast Austin. Today LaunchPad has shifted to support other philanthropic causes in the State of Texas and globally that are near and dear to the Contreras’ heart. To learn more about LP visit www.launchpadthecenter.org.

Rebecca started her government service as a single mom in a “welfare-to-work’ program under the iconic Texan Ann Richards. After she completed that program and got her GED, she then went on to work in HR for Kay Bailey Hutchison, and worked her way all the way to being a top leader serving 12 years in the George W. Bush legacy, first in Texas as his director of HR, and then in the White House as a Commissioned Officer on Bush’s right hand team supporting the presidential transition and leading the process for staffing over 1,200 positions in boards and commissions across the government, President Bush then appointed her to serve on the Board of WestPoint Military Academy.