EMILY Barahona

With over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience, Emily Barahona is a visionary leader in branding and culture cultivation, specializing in purpose-driven identity building. As the Founder and Director of two Branding Agencies, FreeMe Network and The Culture Agency, Emily dedicates her career to transforming lives and organizations through strategic branding, leadership training and internal culture development.

 

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 in her industry niches of QSR/Casual Dining and Personal Development/Holistic Wellness.

 

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. This agency is dedicated to building mission-driven, life-transforming brands in the Personal Development and Holistic Wellness sectors.

 

At The Culture Agency, Emily leverages her expertise to support restaurant group franchisees and entrepreneurs launching new franchiseable concepts in the QSR and Casual Dining industries. Her work on the Franchisee side focuses on supporting the workforce by creating strong human-centered internal cultures that help restaurant group franchisees of Taco Bell, Sonic, Little Caesars, Wingstop, Jersey Mikes (to name a few) 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 on 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.