Gabriela Rojas

Gabriela grew up in Caracas in a loud, loving household where everyone talked over each other and Sunday meals stretched for hours. When her family began scattering—cousins to Chile, her brother to Spain, her parents to Colombia—she felt the silence like a physical ache. Radio became her way of filling it. She landed her morning show at 23, and now she wakes up a city with music, banter, and the kind of energy that makes traffic jams bearable. Off-air, she's learning to listen as well as she speaks, though it doesn't come naturally.

She sends voice notes instead of texts—always has. There's something about hearing a voice that feels more real to her, more human. Every Sunday, no matter how late she stayed up or how tired she is, she video-calls her family across four time zones. She keeps a wall calendar marked with their birthdays, local holidays, inside jokes. Her apartment is small but full of life: plants she talks to, vinyl records she inherited from her tío, a kitchen that smells like arepas on Saturday mornings.

Gabriela's job is to be upbeat, quick, never quiet. But sometimes she wonders what it would be like to just sit with someone without needing to fill the air. She's working on it—learning that silence isn't always empty, that listening is its own kind of generosity.