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Cynthia Hellen Aguilar

@cynthiahellen

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Global AI Strategist.
@statedept Speaker. @cunyedu Lecturer.
Forbes Voices • 100K+ Leaders Trained
Founder @joinqinti @rylencompany @weareolipaca

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New season. by @cynthiahellen

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19 days ago

“Reinvention becomes possible when you stop protecting old identities and start building toward the future you know needs to exist.”

That’s what I told Her Agenda when they asked me about resilience.

I am building @joinQINTI from scratch in a space that wasn’t designed for people like me. But I am not building it alone.

The people around me teach me what reinvention actually looks like. Full feature in my bio. 🖤

@heragenda | @dreamersdoers by @cynthiahellen

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5 months ago

Life moves pretty fast.

This year I’ve landed in countries I’d never been to, stood in rooms I never imagined, and met people who reminded me why I started.

Eswatini was one of those places.

Next stop — Zambia. 🌍 by @cynthiahellen

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5 months ago

My last night in Eswatini looked like this.

No agenda. No program. No panel.

Just dinner with a woman I met on stage.

@neliswa_daily celebrity chef, culinary disruptor, founder walked onto that stage and owned every inch of it. She wasn’t performing confidence. She just had it. The kind that comes from building something real in your own community on your own terms.

We didn’t talk about food that night. We talked about building. About what it costs. About why we keep going anyway.

I told her about @joinqinti. We laughed. We compared notes on what it means to be a woman doing work that doesn’t have a clear category yet.

It felt like every important conversation I’ve ever had.

This is what I mean when I say the work gives back more than it asks.

You go to serve. You stay for the people.

To every woman building something real in a place the world hasn’t fully discovered yet, I see you. I’m rooting for you.

🇸🇿 Eswatini by @cynthiahellen

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6 months ago

I walk into rooms like this one and I think about my parents.

They didn’t become entrepreneurs because it was their dream. They became entrepreneurs because they had to. Poverty in Peru doesn’t leave you many options. You build or you don’t survive.

What they built, from nothing, in a country that wasn’t always kind to people who looked like them, gave me everything.

It gave me the instinct to show up. The grit to stay. The belief that service to others is the highest form of work there is.

Fifteen years later I’m standing in a room in Mbabane, Eswatini with the Taiwan Ambassador and a senior official from the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology.

And the foreign service officers around me, the ones who planned every detail of this program, who traded stability and proximity to family for a life in service to people they will never personally meet, remind me of my parents.

Different country. Different uniform. Same grit. Same sacrifice. Same belief that you show up for people even when it costs you something.

I don’t always know how to explain what I do.

But I know why I do it.

And rooms like this one remind me every time.

🇸🇿 Eswatini | GCTF Digital Entrepreneurship Conference

@statedept @joinqinti by @cynthiahellen

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6 months ago

The host asked me one question that morning.

“What do you say to someone who is afraid AI will replace them?”

I’ve been asked this on every continent I’ve worked on.
Most people will tell you, learn the tools. Adapt. Upskill.

I say something different. I say: the people who built these tools were not thinking about you when they built them. That’s not an insult. That’s just the truth.

And that truth is actually the most important reason you cannot afford to stay on the outside of this conversation.

Because AI will be shaped by whoever shows up to shape it. The question was never whether AI would change your world. The question is whether your voice will be in the room when it does.

🇸🇿 Eswatini | EBIS Radio — Liphimbo Lesive Eswatini

More from the field this week so follow along.

@statedept @joinqinti by @cynthiahellen

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6 months ago

Nobody asks what happens to the people who get left out of the future. Not really.

We talk about AI like it’s weather. Like it’s something that arrives and you either prepare or you don’t. But weather doesn’t choose who it floods. AI does.

I’ve spent a decade in rooms across four continents with founders who have nothing but an idea and a phone, with governments writing policy for technology they were never invited to help shape. And the thing that strikes me every time is this, the people closest to the problems AI could actually solve are the furthest from the rooms where AI gets built.

That’s not an accident. It’s a design flaw. And design flaws can be fixed.

This week I was in Mbabane, Eswatini for the GCTF Digital Entrepreneurship Conference on AI and data analytics. The founders there aren’t asking how to become the next Silicon Valley. They’re asking something harder, who decides what problems are worth solving and whose problems never make that list?

Geoffrey Hinton stood on the Nobel Prize stage and said it plainly, AI will be wonderful for all humanity. But only if the benefits are shared equally.

That “if” is why @joinQINTI exists.

Not to make AI more powerful. But to make sure it actually works for the people in Mbabane, in Lusaka, or in Lima, Peru on their terms, with their judgment at the center.

Most AI flows from the center outward. QINTI builds from the edges inward. Because the edges are not the margins. The edges are where most of humanity lives.

It wasn’t designed for them. Yet. That’s what we’re here to change.

🇸🇿 Eswatini | GCTF | AI & Data Analytics panel discussion

@statedept

#QINTI #Eswatini #GCTF #AIStrategy #ResponsibleAI taken in The Royal Swazi Villas by @cynthiahellen

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6 months ago

This week I’m in Eswatini 🇸🇿 working with entrepreneurs and ecosystem leaders around digital entrepreneurship and innovation.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to lead a workshop with founders and creators at the American Corner in Mbabane, alongside entrepreneur @dawnwdickson, who facilitated the first day of the program.

During the session we explored the @rylencompany Growth Framework, a simple model used in founder workshops to help entrepreneurs clarify the core systems behind business growth:

Audience → Offer → Distribution → Revenue

Frameworks don’t build companies but they help founders make better decisions.

The conversations in the room were honest and practical.

How do I reach the right customers?
How do I grow beyond my network?
How do I turn an idea into real revenue?

These are the same questions entrepreneurs ask everywhere.

Talent is universal. What founders need are stronger systems, mentorship, and ecosystems that support growth.

Grateful to the U.S. Embassy in Eswatini and the American Corner Mbabane team for creating space for these conversations.

And the work continues.

Photo credit: @mack_shabangu

#Entrepreneurship #StartupEcosystems #Innovation #Eswatini by @cynthiahellen

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7 months ago

Nearly two decades ago, I began working with entrepreneurs in classrooms and community spaces around the world.

This photo was taken during one of those early workshops.

A room full of people asking the same question founders everywhere ask:

How do we turn ideas into something real?

Over the years the locations have changed, different countries, different communities, different conversations.

But the spirit is always the same: people trying to build opportunity where it didn’t exist before.

On International Women’s Day, I’m thinking about the women I’ve met along the way, the founders, students, and innovators who are creating possibility in their own communities.

This work has taken me across continents, but the lesson has always been simple:

When people are given the chance to build, they build far more than businesses. They build futures.

Grateful to still be learning from them.

🌍✨

#InternationalWomensDay #WomenWhoBuild #GlobalEntrepreneurship by @cynthiahellen

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7 months ago

Three doors opened, the U.S. Embassy, Eight2Five Innovation Hub, and the Harare Institute of Technology.

But behind those doors were not just institutions. They were people, students, founders, policymakers, each carrying visions bigger than themselves. What struck me wasn’t the formality of the spaces, but the hunger in the conversations: to connect across borders, to build industries where there were once only ideas, and to create dignity through opportunity.

It reminded me that systems don’t grow in isolation. They expand when people gather with courage and imagination.

🌍✨ #Zimbabwe #InnovationInAction #ImpactInAction #GlobalSpeaker taken in Harare, Zimbabwe by @cynthiahellen

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a year ago

Today marked the beginning of a journey that is less about travel and more about transformation.

Hours after landing, I joined a room filled with thinkers and builders. What struck me most wasn’t just the brilliance of their ideas but the energy that pulsed between them. A hunger to create, to solve, to build something that matters. That kind of energy doesn’t just change economies. It changes communities. It changes the story of what’s possible.

✨ Day 1 is done, but the work is only beginning.

#Zimbabwe #AfricaInnovation #SystemsAndStrategies #ImpactInAction taken in Eight2Five Innovation Hub by @cynthiahellen

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a year ago

Some of us don’t learn business in school.
We learn it standing behind the counter, watching our parents build with grit and grace.

I came to the U.S. when I was four.
My parents worked multiple jobs, saved everything, and poured it into a dream, my mom’s first beauty salon.

They named it @tnibeautysalon, in Spanish, a bold move at a time when few businesses embraced their culture out loud.

I was just a kid, but I remember the register, the clients, the way my parents managed every detail.
I didn’t just grow up around business.
I was raised inside it.

And that’s where it started:
The systems mindset.
The design thinking.
The obsession with how things work and how they could work better for people.

It shaped me into a founder.
Into someone who would go on to create ventures like @rylenlab and @weareolipaca, develop the QINTI™ Framework, teach over 100,000 students, and speak around the world through @StateDept.

Decades later, my family opened @glicymedic, a medical clinic in Peru, named after my mother, my sister and I.

And while GLICY isn’t where my journey began, it reminds me of where it was always leading:
To design with purpose.
To build with dignity.
To leave a blueprint behind for others especially the next little girl helping her parents behind the counter.

Legacy doesn’t start with success.
It starts with sacrifice.
And it becomes unstoppable when it’s rooted in love.

(Poster credit: @dreamersdoers @thenewschool)

#LegacyInAction #FirstGenFounder #LatinaLeadership #DesignForDignity #FounderJourney #ForbesWomen #AwardWinningFounder #StateDeptSpeaker
#RealStoriesMatter #RootedInLove #QINTIFramework #TeachTheNextGeneration #SocialInnovation #GlobalVoices #WomenToWatch by @cynthiahellen

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a year ago