I was 17 when I wrote it. My personal mission statement, that I've never had to revise.
To be a catalyst for positive change by educating and inspiring individuals and communities.
More than three decades later, it still explains everything I do.
I left at 17 for San Diego, and being a southern girl, I understood I had to be married by 25 or go home and take care of my mother.
So I did the sensible thing and married a Jewish doctor. We came to San Miguel de Allende on our honeymoon.
I remember standing in the Jardín thinking, one day when I grow up, when my kids are raised, I'm coming back here.
Thirty years later I came back. Divorced, three grown sons, and I kept the promise.
I've spent more than 35 years perfecting one art, which is bringing the right people together.
Sometimes it looked like raising money for causes I believed in. Sometimes it looked like curating TEDx talks, advising entrepreneurs, coaching leaders, or building communities around shared values. The thread never changed.
As a founding partner of OurCrowd Americas, a global venture capital platform, I raised more than $250 million from investors across North and Latin America. I spent those years sitting across from founders and investors, learning what a good plan looks like and what people talk themselves into.
As a wealth advisor at Bernstein Private Wealth Management, I advised families on charitable giving, legacy planning, and philanthropy, inside a practice managing about $3 billion. Those were the conversations people don't have at dinner parties. What is your money actually for. What do you want to leave behind.
As Chief Connector and Curator of TEDxSanDiego, one of the longest-running TEDx organizations in the U.S., I curated more than 80 talks and spent my evenings helping brilliant people clarify their idea worth sharing.
In 2018 I stepped onto a TEDx stage myself, with a talk called How to Be a Matchmaker in Work, Life and Love. Nearly 200,000 people have watched it. The whole thing comes down to three words. Ask. Listen. Match.
Here's why I'm telling you this.
Rebuilding your life in a new country is one of the most innovative startups you will ever launch. You are the founder. Your life is the venture. There's capital at risk, a market you don't understand yet, and a team you haven't hired.
I've spent my career on the other side of that table. I know the difference between a bold decision and a reckless one.
Since then: supper clubs, networking groups, volunteer initiatives, themed dinner parties, Shabbat tables, and more introductions than I could count between people who needed to meet.
One of those communities, Audrey's Tent, grew to 613 members and produced 14 marriages. It's named for Abraham, whose tent was open on all four sides so no traveler could pass without being seen and invited in.
Casa Avra is named for Avrahama. My Hebrew name. The same tent, in a new country.
Finally, with my youngest son nearly grown, I came for two weeks. Within days I knew two weeks wasn't going to tell me what I needed to know.
So I posted a photo of myself in a San Miguel Facebook group holding two challahs and asked whether anyone had a house I could rent where I could host Friday night dinners for 12 people.
I wasn't looking for a house. I was looking for a table.
The perfect person answered, a dinnerware designer! I stayed six weeks that summer and flew in my three sons and my daughter-in-law, because I needed to know that wherever I landed, the people who matter most would want to come.
My youngest was heading into his senior year and I'd already decided to wait in San Diego for him to graduate high school. He was the one who told me not to.
Mom, please don't wait. I have never seen you happier. Please go.
Two weeks in the spring. Six weeks in the summer. Forever in the fall.
I have 35 years of building communities behind me and I still arrived alone. And felt it.
Finding a great lecture, a concert, a restaurant, a dance class in San Miguel is easy. Finding your people is harder.
What made the difference were the people who took me in and made me feel like I belong. Klaudia Oliver, who runs TEDxSanMigueldeAllende and serves as the city's cultural ambassador, became my guardian angel within days of meeting me.
One person opened one door, and the whole town opened behind it.
I got lucky. I arrived with a network that opened doors before I even got here. Most people don't arrive with that kind of network.
That's why I created Casa Avra.
If the answer is yes, we help them build it. If it's no, that's a good outcome too, and I'll say so.
Love in San Miguel is the free, bilingual, bicultural community I founded here for singles and couples looking for their people, and for the people who want to do the things they love with them. More than half our members are Mexican. I run it with Araceli Kopiloff, who was born in Uruguay, led branding for Levi's and Macy's, and is a number one bestselling author in three countries. She leads our Spanish-speaking community.
Jorge Catalán handles everything I can't. He founded NaturaSMA, this city's first organic grocery store, co-founded Mercado Sano, and has spent 24 years here. When a client needs a doctor, he takes their medical history, finds the right physician, schedules the appointment, comes along, translates in the room, then fills the prescription and delivers it to the door.
I help you find your people. Jorge helps you live well.
I don't own a car and I don't want one. I walk most everywhere, and I don't miss my heels.
I'm in intensive Spanish classes and remembering how to be in school.
San Miguel has a Jewish community of about 3,000 in high season and 1,000 year round. I'm a member and supporter of both Chabad and JC3, the Jewish Cultural and Community Center. If I'm not hosting Friday night dinner at my house, you'll usually find me at Chabad enjoying the Rabbi's amazing sourdough challah and his wife's divine chicken.
I'm a writer and a storyteller, and I'm always managing my wanderlust. Three sons I'm proud of, and a Friday night table full of song and my homemade challah.
I retired at 55 and started over in another country, alone. It's the bravest thing I've ever done and I'd do it again tomorrow.
I believe the best things in life happen around a table, in the middle of a good conversation, or through an introduction between two people who needed to meet.
Twenty minutes. You tell me what you're thinking, I'll tell you what's actually true, and we'll both find out whether I'm the right person to help you.
And if you end up here, there's a seat at my table on a Friday night.