Some moments stop you in your tracks. Standing in the middle of Times Square — the crossroads of the world — and seeing your own name lit up above the crowd is one of them.

This month, I was honored to be featured on a billboard in the heart of New York City as a keynote speaker at the Wil Betty Business Summit. The billboard sat steps from the iconic landmarks that define the district, including the Margaritaville Resort Times Square, where the energy of the city meets the kind of bold ambition the summit was built to celebrate.

For a bilingual personal injury attorney who built her firm one client and one community at a time across New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, it was a surreal and deeply humbling reminder of how far purpose can carry you when it is paired with a plan.

01A Stage Built for Women Who Build

The Wil Betty Business Summit gathers founders, attorneys, and entrepreneurs who are not waiting for permission to build something that lasts. Being selected as a featured speaker — and then seeing that feature carried onto a Times Square billboard — was a tremendous honor and a milestone I do not take lightly.

It is one thing to talk about visibility. It is another to stand under the lights of the most famous intersection on earth and represent every Spanish-speaking family who has ever wondered whether the legal system was built with them in mind. That is who I carry with me onto every stage.

02The Keynote: “Believe & Build”

My keynote, “Believe & Build: How Faith Without Infrastructure Is Just a Wish,” speaks to something I have lived. Belief is the starting line, not the finish. Vision without systems, hiring, processes, and disciplined execution stays a daydream. The firms and the lives that actually change are the ones where conviction is wired into real infrastructure.

That message is the throughline of everything I do — from the courtroom to the Believe & Bloom podcast, where I talk candidly about faith, entrepreneurship, and the work of building a firm that reflects your values. It is also the philosophy I learned alongside mentors who shaped my thinking on negotiation, mindset, and leadership.

03A Voice for the Injured — and for Building With Purpose

I founded Rose Harper Law as a boutique, bilingual personal injury firm because the people most often overlooked by the legal system deserve premium representation, not an afterthought. I earned my Spanish degree summa cum laude before my law degree from Seton Hall, and that bilingual foundation is not a marketing line — it is how I connect with clients in the language they think and worry in.

As a proud member of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice and Women Owned Law, I am committed to advancing both access to justice and the next generation of women building firms of their own. Speaking from a Times Square stage is part of that mission: showing what is possible when a Latina attorney bets on herself and builds the infrastructure to back it up.

To every founder watching from the back of the room or the other side of a screen: believe it, then build it. The lights are real, but they are the byproduct — not the point.