Gwen Stefani Ayala
Founder, FWIB and AVAS
She built the room she once needed.
Gwen started working at seventeen. She was a breadwinner before she was a founder, taking early jobs, including at McDonald's, to help carry her family. She knows what it is to be tired in a way that does not show, and to keep going anyway.
She learned how to build from nothing. She also learned that the loneliest part of the climb is doing it with no one who understands. So she stopped competing, and she started gathering women instead.
Today she is the founder of Filipina Women in Business and Ayala Virtual Assistance Services, both built from the ground up. She created FWIB for one reason she still feels in her chest. She did not want another woman to have to figure it out alone.
Her mission is personal. To prove that a woman can build a real business without giving up her community, her heart, or her purpose, and to build the safe, welcoming home she wishes she had had at the very beginning.