Hi, I'm Natalie.
I’m a founder, educator, writer, speaker, and mom from New York City. I’m also Nuyorican, a chronic overthinker, and someone who has spent most of her life figuring out how to make people feel a little more seen.
For more than six years, I’ve been the owner of Industry Gymnastics, an inclusive recreational gymnastics program in Queens built around a pretty simple belief: kids shouldn’t have to change who they are to belong in the spaces created for them.
But the gym is only one part of my story.
I write about motherhood, identity, mental health, entrepreneurship, Puerto Rico, and the complicated parts of life we’re usually tempted to crop out. I speak about inclusion, belonging, and building businesses that actually live their values. And lately, I’ve been finding new ways to tell those stories—including writing my first children’s book.
Somehow, all of those things have become my work. And I’m really glad you’re here.
HOW I GOT HERE
Before I owned a gymnastics gym, I was an early childhood educator. I understood kids. I understood families. And I knew how much the environments we create for children matter.
Then, in January 2020, I bought a gymnastics gym.
Yes. January. 2020.
A few months later, the world shut down.
I found myself trying to keep a brand-new small business alive while raising my own kids through a pandemic. I streamed gymnastics classes from home, took meetings wherever I could find a quiet corner, homeschooled my kids, worried constantly, and kept trying to make everyone around me feel like things were going to be okay.
We made it through.
And somewhere along the way, Industry became much more than the business I had purchased. It became an opportunity to rethink what a children's space could look like when belonging—not competition—was the goal.
We built gender-inclusive programming. Expanded sensory and adaptive offerings. Rethought curriculum, language, policies, and the way we support kids and families. We stopped asking children to fit the gym and started asking how the gym could better fit the children.
That philosophy has shaped pretty much everything I've done since.
BELONGING
People deserve spaces where they don't have to earn their right to be there.
KIDS BEING KIDS
Not everything has to become a competition, achievement, resume builder, or path to the next level.
TELLING THE WHOLE STORY
The beautiful parts, the hard parts, and especially the parts we're usually afraid to say out loud.
PUERTO RICO
Its people, culture, stories, contradictions, beauty, struggles, and my connection to all of it.
THE THINGS THAT MATTER TO ME
AND OUTSIDE OF WORK
When I’m not doing all of that...
I’m a wife and a mom to two pretty incredible humans who are now old enough to regularly remind me that I have no idea what I’m talking about.
My husband and I met on an airplane—which still feels like the kind of story that should have happened to someone else. Somehow, a chance encounter at 30,000 feet turned into a marriage, two kids, and this whole life we’ve built together.
Our house also includes two rescues: Chichi, our senior chihuahua from Puerto Rico, and Bandit, our cat, who I’m fairly certain believes the house actually belongs to him.
I love Puerto Rico fiercely. I love traveling, but I’m equally happy at home with my family. I have approximately 47 ideas happening in my brain at any given moment, will turn almost anything into a Canva project, and spend far too much time on the internet.
Mostly, I’m someone who cares deeply about the people I love, the work I put into the world, and leaving things a little better than I found them.