Paloma Medina

Founder & Creative Director • 11:11

Paloma Medina is a performance coach, trainer, and owner of 11:11 Supply, a store that specializes in beautiful work tools designed to help people feel more productive, happy, and balanced in their everyday life. Specializing in brain-friendly methods to reach people’s goals and make our lives and teams better, Paloma’s workshop topics range from equity and inclusion, to the science of goals and stress. She has worked with tech companies such as Etsy, Digital Ocean, and Squarespace, as well as with nonprofit organizations, homeless healthcare clinics, individual leaders, and CEOs.

Photo courtesy of Paloma Medina

Photo of 11:11 Studio’s “Mystery Box”, packed with research-backed products for helping with stress reduction, mood regulation, mindfulness, and overall health.

Photo by Alba Quinones Betancourt

“Un-assimilating” in America

“I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and moved with part of my family to Anaheim, California when I was eight years old. I grew up spending time in both countries — summers in Mexico, and the school year in the United States. By the time I was in fifth grade, English had become my most comfortable language, and I felt a social pressure to de-emphasize my ‘Mexican-ness’ and be as ‘American’ as possible. By the time I was in college, I had created so much psychological distance between myself and Mexico, that I could barely communicate in Spanish. It took a lot of effort to recognize the levels of negative impact that that cultural assimilation had, and the subsequent ‘un-assimilation’ work has informed a lot of my business decisions.”

An Invisible Career Path

“My design path feels a bit like an invisible career path. My mother was an artist and an art teacher in Mexico, so creativity always felt like a skill I could tap into. By high school, I identified as an aspiring artist and focused on making visual art into my late 20s. Back then, I never heard anyone talk about being ‘a creative.’ You were an artist, or a very official graphic or industrial designer, and those were your options. I thought being a graphic designer meant you were at the beck and call of corporate firms. Autonomy has always been my biggest motivator, and so I thought I’d make an awful designer, because I would refuse to take direction from strangers. Thus, instead of considering a formal design or creative career, I chose the other love I had, community development, and moved on to a career running nonprofit programs.”

My Own Boss

“When I was in grad school for an MPA degree, I found myself super bored with the curriculum… I began finding entrepreneurship and design thinking events, neither of which I’d considered or knew much about before moving to New York. I met so many people who transcended ‘career paths’ and just did what needed to get done to build their dream projects. This new social environment is specifically what made it feel normal to later open up my own brick and mortar retail businesses; a store and company that merged psychology, design, and office supplies. This exposure was a critical paradigm shift that allowed me to trust myself — that I could do all of the interior design, branding, and other design work for a company by myself — even though I didn’t go to school for it and even though I’d never had a ‘creative’ title. I felt an intuition for the work, I felt passionate about that side of the business, and because I was my own boss, I didn’t have to convince anyone to give me a chance — I could just do it.”