Celebrating Three Local Women on International Women’s Day
- Abigail Muniz-Garcia
- 4 hours ago
- 8 min read
(This article was written by Abigail Muniz Garcia with contributing writer Isabella Casas and was featured in the March 2026 issue of Explore Harlingen Magazine.)
For 115 years, International Women's Day has highlighted gender equality with the focus on women’s advancement. Despite this, there are still gaps. For instance, women and men’s pay isn’t equal as reported in a 2025 study with women earning about 85 cents to every dollar a man makes. Regardless, women continue to forge their way in the world and press forward, following their dreams and pursuing leadership roles, entrepreneurship, and creative pathways in their careers. The three following local women exemplify strong ambitions, opening doors not only for themselves, but for future generations of powerful women.
Christy Mendez – Entrepreneur and Owner of Drink Up/The Pink Bubble
Christy Mendez is no stranger to hard work. She owns her own bar Drink Up, in conjunction with The Pink Bubble. She has owned and operated different businesses in the past and is a seasoned entrepreneur.
“It’s not easy, but it is empowering,” she said.
Mendez has faced many challenges on her entrepreneurship journey. But through it all, she remembers the first woman who made her believe she could be an entrepreneur and achieve the outcome that she has reached: her mother.
“My mom would be the inspiration… No matter what we needed, you know? She made it happen. Where there’s a will, there’s a way is basically where I got the inspiration from,” she said. “She would be, still, the strongest woman I know and that inspired me to do this.”
‘It’ll be alright’ – lyrics referencing an Alan Jackson song – pay homage to her mother because it was one of her favorite songs. Those words can be found in the center of her bar and serve as a daily reminder for Mendez.
“Being a woman business owner, it means being willing to bet on yourself, even when things feel uncertain,” she said.
She wears multiple hats as an entrepreneur: operations, marketing, customer experiences, finances, content creator, and the list goes on.
“It’s empowering knowing you can juggle all those things. I take pride in building something from the ground up, creating spaces where… you know, I want people to feel safe and happy,” Mendez said.
Her hard work is not going unnoticed. Drink Up has racked up multiple awards in its two years in operation including the Valley Morning Star’s 2024 Reader’s Choice Award for Best Happy Hour, the Best Small Business Award with the Greater Chamber of Harlingen for 2024, and Best Happy Hour and Best Bartender in 2025.
The Pink Bubble, an adjoining, pink-themed venue and bar that opened six months ago, is a proud creation for Mendez. It is a space that can be used for events such as bridal showers, birthday parties, mommy and me events, sip n’ color socials, and more. It’s a place where “glam meets celebration.”
“The Pink Bubble is a glam, high energy, ultra-pink event bar space… It’s like you’re stepping into 50 shades of Barbie pink,” Mendez said. “The Pink Bubble is to encourage women and girls to celebrate themselves,” Mendez said. “They’re doing memory making. It shouldn’t be postponed. Just do it. Don’t wait for that special occasion. Celebrate now.”
Mendez also draws inspiration from her daughter Shelby who turned 21 right around the time that she opened. She created Drink Up with her and other women and people in general in mind as a way for those younger and older alike to feel safe, secure, and enjoy themselves on their night out. She also wants everyone to feel welcome and keep coming back to her establishment.
“I wanted to create something where they just don’t come, drink, and leave. It’s somewhere they can hang out and connect,” she said. “I feel women have enough cliques in school or in life that Drink Up doesn't feel clique-y or intimidating. It just feels like you’re walking into a friend group… men and women, like they’re walking into a friend group.”
Some valuable advice that Mendez shares for women business owners or young women that may be considering becoming entrepreneurs is to have confidence.
“You face challenges as a woman entrepreneur, so you just have to learn to trust your decisions and stand firm by them,” she said. “When you’re building something new especially, everyone has opinions, but not everyone has your vision. Nobody saw my vision; nobody sees your vision. I had to grow into being confident saying, this is the direction I’m going.”
Laisa Macias – Fashion Designer and Owner of LALA
From runways in New York to fashion shows in Austin, Texas, Laisa Macias is no stranger to the fashion world. Her journey began when she was just six years old when her grandmother, a seamstress, taught her to sew.
When her grandmother passed away in 2007, Macias was devastated. Her grandmother had been a second mom to her.
“My last connection to her was what she taught me,” she said.
Professionally, Macias was an accountant and had done retail work as well. After taking sewing classes to get acquainted with the sewing machine and getting back to her creative mind set, Macias mentions that a light bulb turned on.
“What have you been doing with your life?” she asked herself. “This is your calling; this is your gift.”
Sewing competitions, selling her repurposed, upcycled pieces at pop-up events on Congress, and a two-year internship with a local handbag designer from Austin followed. It opened up her world into the fashion industry.
This is when Macias quit her job and went on to be a full-time designer. In 2011, she launched her brand, LALA, during SXSW at a coffee shop. In 2014, she was able to show at the Small Boutique Fashion Week in New York.
Soon after, she found herself back in Harlingen. In 2020, during the pandemic lockdown, she realized there was a need for masks. She decided to make some.
“I made over 10,000 masks by myself. Half of them, I donated. I gave them to local doctors… anybody who needed them,” she said.
At this time, she made a connection with someone local that plugged her back into the fashion industry, making and supplying leggings for Peloton, the exercise equipment company. She worked with them until 2023.
She then went full time for herself, exclusively designing and doing custom orders at first, then opening her business up for alteration services.
“It has been a big, long, long journey but it’s been a good one,” she said.
She prides herself in designing and making pieces for “not the ideal body type.”
“That’s one of my biggest inspirations is like, being able to make clothes that people feel comfortable in, regardless of your size. I think custom clothing is so key. That matters when you’re wearing clothes, I feel like part of feeling empowered or part of being inspired is how you look and how you feel in what you’re wearing. Even if it’s just an alteration to something you bought. An alteration can make a world of difference in how the clothes look on.”
Her design style can be described as mixed. She likes clothes that are comfortable but cute: floral, bright colors, with a hippie bohemian/street-style feel. There’s also a nod to her Mexican culture in her designs.
“I danced folklorico for like 40 years, a lot of the flower and the colors… when I do fashion shows, you can very much see the Mexican culture,” she said.
A lifetime of creating and pushing forward even when there were obstacles in the way have molded Laisa Macias as a designer and entrepreneur. Advice she has for up-and-coming designers and artists - don’t take short cuts on your journey.
“You have a gift and you know what you want to do ultimately with that gift but getting from A to Z, there’s a lot of letters in between, don’t try to skip the letters. If you wanna get to Z, you may have to take some steps you don’t wanna take and don’t think it’s below you because it’s never below you. It’s always a learning process,” she said.
Imelda Treviño, Principal of UTRGV Harlingen Collegiate High School
When asked who was the first woman that made her believe she could do what she currently does as an educator and leader, Imelda Treviño answers without hesitation: “It was my mom.”
“My mom had polio when she was two, so she’s always had a disability. Yet she was someone who never accepted a handout or charity,” Treviño said. “She had such inner strength. She taught me that strength doesn’t have to be loud.”
Treviño began her journey in education 31 years ago. Inspired by her own love of literature and every single one of her high school English teachers (whom she can still name along with what specific level of English they taught), Treviño decided to go to college and become an English teacher herself.
Armed with her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from St. Mary’s University, she started her career as a middle school reading teacher in San Antonio.
“That was an adventure. I liked it,” she said. “What I loved best about being in the classroom was making connections with kids, especially the more difficult kids. The ones that act out but it’s really because they need somebody to care about them and love on them regardless of how they’re acting.”
After a couple of years in San Antonio, she and her growing family decided to relocate back to their hometown. She started working at Harlingen High School (HHS) in 1997 as an English and reading improvement teacher. That was followed by her shift, becoming a counselor for nine years after acquiring her master’s degree in counseling. She never thought she would leave counseling.
“I loved it,” she said.
Fate had other plans for her. She completed an educational leadership program thinking it was a way to get better at what she was already doing. After that, she became associate principal at HHS for eight years followed by being hired as a principal at Dr. Cano Freshman Academy. This school year, she became the principal at UTRGV Harlingen Collegiate High School.
“This was never my career path when I was thinking about what I wanted to do,” she said. “I wanted to be a teacher of English at the high school level and retire from that.”
Her trajectory in education has led her into roles that serve and inspire each and every student she serves.
“As a principal you impact everyone, that is your life’s goal,” Treviño said. To impact the adults you work with and in turn impact every single life of the kids.”
Treviño shares that there are statistically more male principals in our country than females.
“It’s usually a position held by men,” she said. “I think that it’s a good model (being a female principal) for the girls, especially for the girls.”
It makes her proud to see female students at her campus also embrace and participate in activities usually dominated by males. She says it’s important to model for young girls that it’s possible to move up and lead.
“All these young ladies are in robotics… not just in the robotics team but leading it and the engineering program – in non-female traditional roles and that they are stepping into that and that they are winning… They’re amazing,” Treviño said. “I love that as a female, any girl can come back and think, ‘I can do that, too’ because they’ve seen it done.”
She has advice for girls who want to be leaders in education or even in their communities: “Just leap; do it.”
“Even, and maybe especially when you’re scared, just leap. And every day, somebody told me this a long time ago, every day do something that makes you scared,” she said. “Just step out of your comfort zone. Even when you fail, you learn from that and you just get back up and go.”
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