EMILY Barahona

With over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience, Emily Barahona is a visionary leader and entrepreneur dedicated to liberating individuals and organizations to live authentically and purposefully. As the Founder and CEO of the FreeMe Brands, she leads a constellation of ventures—including FreeMe Network, a network of freelancers, and two branding agencies, Believe Identity Group and The Culture Agency. She dedicates her career to transforming lives and organizations by empowering executives and changemakers to align their personal and professional lives with their core purpose so they can make a greater impact.  FreeMe Brands does this for their clients through strategic branding, internal culture development, scalability consulting, leadership training, and executive & changemaker impact coaching.

 

Emily's professional journey began after graduating from Cornell University’s Hospitality Business program in 2002 with a degree in Design and Development and a minor in Marketing. Her diverse career spans interior design, event design, branding, and graphic design, which has equipped her with a multifaceted skill set that she applies to her current roles in her specialty niche supporting multi-unit clients on both the Franchisee side and the Franchisor side, and changemaker personal and organizational brands.

 

In 2014, Emily and her family relocated to Quito, Ecuador, where she spearheaded a non-religious ministry focused on empowering women. This led to moving to the beach to build a self actualization, meditation retreat center to support people on their journeys towards reaching their full potential. Her experience deepened her commitment to social impact and personal development, influencing her later ventures. By 2018, Emily had established a network of freelancers across South America, leading to the founding of FreeMe Network in 2019. Through the branding agency, Believe Identity Group, the FreeMe Network supports changemaker individuals and changemaker organizations to expand the impact of their missions.

 

At The Culture Agency, Emily leverages her expertise to support franchisee groups and entrepreneurs launching new franchiseable concepts in the restaurant, hospitality and wellness industries. Her work on the Franchisee side focuses on supporting the workforce by creating strong human-centered internal cultures that help restaurant group franchisees scale their businesses. And her work on the Franchisor side focuses on establishing turnkey prototype manuals that successfully position the new concept at launch and then guide the process of successfully duplicating as the concept scales.

 

A bilingual, homeschooling, surfing, single mother of four raising her kids at the Jersey Shore, Emily embraces remote work as a way to balance her professional and personal life, and strives to make this flexibility available to her team. Her passion for guiding others to discover and live their purpose is rooted in her belief that everyone should reach their full potential and share their unique "song" with the world. 

 

Emily's branding philosophy, inspired by Simon Sinek's "Start With Why," underscores her commitment to leading with purpose. Her guiding quote from Henry David Thoreau reflects her dedication to ensuring that no one she works with "goes to the grave with the song still in them."

 

For Emily, success is not just about business achievements but about empowering individuals and organizations to thrive in their sweet spot by aligning their Why in life with their Why at work, so that work doesn’t feel like work and instead becomes an extension of their life’s purpose and an expression of their unique identities.

 

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