Today we’d like to introduce you to Giselle Aguiar Barquie
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
I came from Cuba at the age of 17 in 2007. I had a lot of aspirations and dreams. Coming to this country has been my biggest dream for as long as I can remember. Cuba has no hope, lacks essential freedom, and its economy is destroyed. I came as a political refugee because my family had always opposed the communist Cuban regime. I was sent to Salt Lake City, Utah, where I spent the first 6 years of my life here. I started college right away. I was in between two of my passions, healthcare, and psychology. In the end, I chose to study Psychology while taking pre-health classes. Even though I had all the desires in the world to succeed and do well, college was difficult and, at times, frustrating. My English could have been better, and I was trying to navigate a system I did not know in an unfamiliar culture with no connections. My grades at first could have been better, something I wasn’t used to because I was always an A student in my country. That started to put me down and affected my self-esteem.
On top of that, I had to find a job within a few months of being here because my mom needed the extra help. I worked first at SEARS selling shoes, then in a warehouse for a company called 3Form, and after that, I started as a teaching assistant in a high school. Within 2 years, I got a raise to night school advisor and became a Math instructor. I quickly found myself with many responsibilities and the weight of my family’s and my aspirations on me. The pressure to succeed was enormous and, at times, overwhelming. But nothing is better than a day after the other one, and due to constant exposure and study, my English improved, and I started to navigate things better.
I married on 08/2011, and my husband and I graduated with our Bachelor of Science in Psychology in May 2012. Right after that, we went through a traumatic experience with my stepfather at the time; he went to jail, and we decided to move to Miami. We struggled a lot when we got to Miami; I remember that time as one of my life’s worst and saddest times. We struggled financially mostly. We had to live in an efficiency, smaller than a studio, for 4 years. I was also sometimes responsible for financially helping my mom and sister because they were also struggling. All this time, I was still taking pre-health classes and paying them out of pocket, working low-paying jobs that did not fulfill my or my family’s needs. My husband was always very supportive of my dreams and education, and we were able to go through that time primarily because of him.
In 2015, I decided to start a nursing degree program and fulfill my dream of a healthcare career. That year was one of the most challenging years of my life; I had no time for anything except to study and go to clinical rotations. I finished that second bachelor’s in a year because it was an accelerated program, and I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 12/2015 from the University of Miami. After that, I started working at the University of Miami Hospital and spent five years there as a bedside nurse. I loved my job; it allowed me to improve my life financially and move to a standard apartment with my husband. The job was challenging and, at times, frustrating due to nurses’ lack of support nowadays, but I learned amazing things. I worked in several areas of medicine and learned from all of them. Things were getting too stressful for me around 2018 due to work conditions, and I feared burnout. I spoke to my husband, and we decided I needed to return to school to make the professional change I needed. At that time, I already had a baby, and by the time I started my master’s degree, my baby was 1.5 years old. I earned my master’s while working full-time as a bedside nurse and doing my best to care for my family, especially my baby. My husband witnessed my endless nights of studying and crying spells due to the pressure I had on myself to do well in my job and pursue my degree. He and my moms were my rock and metal to my success.
COVID came in 2020, and everything got a little more complicated. I feared I would have to delay graduation due to a lack of places to do my clinical rotations; some students already had to postpone graduating in the fall instead of summer. I found a clinic 45 minutes from my house willing to have me and other students.
Meanwhile, the hospital situation was horrible due to nurses retiring and leaving due to fear of COVID infection. We were not allowed to take vacations or take any extra days off. I finally graduated with my Master of Science in Nursing Practice as a Family Nurse Practitioner in 08/2020. This was one of the happiest days of my life. In 10/2020, I passed the state boards and got my license to practice. Miami could be a better place for nurse practitioners; it’s known to pay lower salaries. I have already decided to leave this city; I never really liked it and wanted something more family-oriented and financially better city. It was my mom’s idea to try Orlando, so I started to apply for jobs here. I was finally hired by a clinic that was starting new and was owned by Brazilians. I kept my hospital job in case this did not work out. I still had an income and began to work in Orlando Monday through Wednesday and in Miami Friday to Sunday. It was hard, mainly because I had to separate from my daughter those few days, and that was a horrible thing for me. This clinic wanted me to learn and learn fast; as a new grad nurse practitioner, I was supposed to have a doctor overseeing me and helping me, but this person never gave me any support.
To this day, I have never seen him in person. I recall being so afraid that I had the urge to leave and never return; I never did. Instead, I forced myself to learn and pushed through. I paid and went to seminars and courses and tried to prepare myself as well as possible to be a good practitioner. I left that clinic and started working for another one that allowed me to learn about things I did not know about. These experiences pushed me hard enough to gain experience in several areas, including women’s health, primary care, hormone replacement, aesthetics, peptide therapy, stem cell therapy, antiaging, and orthomolecular/functional medicine. These experiences and being around business owners and entrepreneurs made me feel like I could be one of them, too. If they did it, I can, too. So, I started educating myself about how to open my clinic and, later on, how to open my teaching institute for aesthetics. Beautyaestheticsgab and GB Health Clinic were born from those efforts. The teaching institute is still evolving, but this one in particular has a special place in my heart because I love teaching and want to support starting, and I don’t know how. I went through everything and know how hard it is to want to start something and not know how. I still have a long way to go; my journey doesn’t end here. Whatever I want to do will be done because I came from so little and have achieved so much that I’m convinced anything is possible.
Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
No. It has been a hard road. I’m glad it was because otherwise, I would have learned less than what I know now; some of the struggles I had were language, social, and financial barriers. As I mentioned before, I came from Cuba with my family with no more possessions than the clothes I was wearing and zero money as a political refugee at the age of 17. I had nothing. We had nothing. I do not even know the language or culture of the USA. When I finally acquired that knowledge, the financial struggles persisted because I had to contribute financially to my family, and it was hard to maintain a work and study balance, do both right and succeed in both. I had no option but to ask my family for money to pay for my studies; on the contrary, my mother often turned to me for financial help, and the careers I chose were expensive.
Let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
GB Advanced Nursing Inc. encompasses 2 other businesses. GB Health Clinic and Beautyaestheticsgab are teaching institutions in aesthetics. I’m still developing both businesses, but my efforts primarily focus on the beauty aesthetics gap. I teach healthcare providers aesthetic courses. This is focused more on the beginner provider who needs support to start a career in aesthetics. I have done chiefly botox courses so far, which is where almost every provider begins. Botox, you can say, is the gateway to other more advanced aesthetic procedures. What sets me apart from others is that my experience differs from everyone I know in this field. I have prepared my courses thinking of those who, like me, have struggled to get where they are. I offer in-person, one-to-one, or online courses; I keep my classes small to have enough one-on-one time with my students and ensure understanding of the material. I’m most proud of how personal my brand is. We are not a company aiming to make a specific revenue at the end of the year; this is a unipersonal company owned by someone happy to help people who want to succeed in their careers. I want people to know us for our quality and flexibility. We can work with them in any situation; I can adapt the classes based on student’s needs, and keeping classes small helps greatly. I can also offer a Spanish class for those still needing help with English. I don’t wait until I have several students to provide a class; I will teach a one-to-one class if one person needs it done.
Can you talk to us about happiness and what makes you happy?
My family makes me happy. Spending time with my daughter is one of the things I enjoy the most. She is my most valuable achievement. Also, working on what I love makes me happy. I work long hours, even at home, and it doesn’t feel like a burden. I always feel like I’ve needed more of this. The time I spend researching and preparing for my classes helps me expand my knowledge. I love learning more and more because I see an opportunity in it. Knowledge creates opportunities and the ability to see them as opportunities.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @beautyaestheticsgab
