Build Your Own Boat

What does it actually look like to walk away from a celebrated career — with nothing in your pocket — and build something new? Liddy Romero did exactly that.

For sixteen years, Liddy ran Work-Life Partnership, a nationally recognized Colorado nonprofit social enterprise she founded that helped over 200,000 frontline workers navigate real crises — housing instability, domestic violence, childcare emergencies — in partnership with companies like Starbucks and The Gap. She raised millions of dollars, won national awards, and helped take the program from a single-county Colorado initiative to a model replicated across the country.

Then, in 2024, she walked away. No severance. No profit sharing. Zero.

What came next is a story about transferable skills, strategic risk, cultural pride, and what happens when a CEO-level brain gets pointed at a four-generation family recipe that had never left South Texas.

Today Liddy runs Romero Cookies — a handmade, elevated Mexican heritage cookie business built around the pan de polvo (Mexican wedding cookie) her family made in their Rio Grande Valley bakery for forty years. In her first full year of business, she hit $250,000 in sales.

What You'll Learn in This Episode