PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — We continue our Her Story series with a woman on the first coast who made a top 50 Women Leaders of Jacksonville list for 2023.
I featured Tara Travieso on Good Morning Jacksonville back in 2020. Today, she is showing us all how passion projects can bring purpose and a new direction.
I met up with Travieso in her natural habitat with her daughters: Alex and Addison.
“They were absolutely my inspiration," she said.
She works, parents, and creates from home with the help of her husband Robert. The team effort is what she says made the last few years a success as a full time consultant in the employee benefits industry and in her after hours passion project!
“I had never thought I would write a book," she said. "It was not a part of my plan, but when the pandemic happened and you know we were spending so much time with our kids, doing things we weren’t used to doing and having new conversations, and one of the biggest challenges that I was talking to with my mom, and my friends, and my family members was ‘How do you tell kids that we live in a different world than we did yesterday? How do we keep each other safe’?
Travieso put pen to paper and self-published "Billie and the Brilliant Bubble", a children's book that explained social distancing in a fun way.
The book soared to Amazon’s #1 Hot New Release list and landed her on Good Morning America and Live with Kelly and Ryan.
A few months later, Billie went on another adventure in her second book: “Billie Goes Back to School!”
“I had no idea when I wrote the book if anybody would buy the book or if anybody would like reading the book. There was a point I thought my parents might be the only ones who want the book in their house," she said laughing. “It was a risk, but it was also a fun challenge that was driving energy. It was worth the risk for me.”
“I think that was a stepping stone for me to just realize that we can do hard things frankly and they don’t have to be in the lane we’ve always been," Travieso said.
The books helped her turn a page on her career pushing for more passion in her every day work. She is now the Consultant Relations Executive at Carrot Fertility, the leading global fertility healthcare company.
She says the books were never a part of her plan, but now…
“Billie is going to have another adventure… at some point!” Travieso confirmed.
She said maybe one day, she will write a novel.