Meet Elena Rojas | Actor & Creator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elena Rojas and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elena, maybe we can start at the very start – the idea – how did you come up with the idea for your business?
During the pandemic, I had a lot of free time because I lost a lot of jobs. A dear friend Raquel Gendry invited us, my friend Mick Garcia and I to do a dramatized reading live online for kids and families . That experience inspired me so much that we did live readings for more than two months, and it made me so happy that I decided to continue creating stories for children with a personal project that I had started since 2019 with my family. I changed the name of the project and focused only on kids’ stories, Story Time with Tia.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Creating content for children makes me happy, putting my skills in something that makes children happy inspires me. With Story Time with Tia I have the opportunity to use all my experience as an actress, a filmmaker and my creative abilities in crafts. I have the opportunity to be active and create bilingual content for children from home. Although I am not an illustrator, I really enjoy drawing simple things inspired by my childhood and I want to inspire children to draw and develop their creativity. I am in charge of all the production from start to finish, and I have had the opportunity to read classic stories in Spanish with my dear friend Mick Garcia who has been a fundamental part along with my dear husband (Writer and Creative) Cris-Ian Garcia, in this creative journey. I put all my focus on Story Time with Tia, when I was part of Art of Freelance, an online course where you develop your own project, it was 10-weeks where I did all the rebranding of my Show for children, and created the website www.storytimewithtia.org where you can find everything related to this fun and inspiring project and support it to continue growing. I keep working on it to create more content, grow its popularity, and in the future have it become a source of income.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Definitely our way of enjoying each moment has changed, before walking around Echo park lake or sitting there and enjoying a quiet afternoon was one of the best options in our neighborhood. Now everything is different, any plan must be carefully planned to do everything possible to be safe. I am one of the people who uses mascara and follows the recommendations for these times as best as possible. So one of the recommendations would be to order Thai food at Night Market Song, pack your chess and enjoy an afternoon outside in some green area where there are not many people, so I would avoid the main parks at the moment.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
All that I am is mainly thanks to my dear Grandmother Miriam Alvarez, who was my mother and father. She guided me along the path of art and always supported my artistic initiatives even though we did not have the financial resources. I had some people on my way that I love and I remember very much like Ruben Calle, a musician and his sister, Liliana Calle, a psychologist. Ruben supported my growth and artistic training, managing scholarships and other forms of access to training and artistic education in Colombia, for all of that I’ll always be grateful. Dora Cardona is another sweet soul who is being part of my growing as a person. She helped me in difficult times in my life and taught me to keep strong during one of the hardest times in my life. She was there supporting me and guiding me. Although I grew up without a mother and father, I had angels on my way who supported and guided me, among them; Enith Betancur, Lucelly Cano, Paco Ramirez, Piedad Tabares …

Website: www.storytimewithtia.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elenarojasfilm/ https://www.instagram.com/storytimewithtia/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenarojasfilm/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/elenarojasfilm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elenarojasfilm/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/StoryTimewithTia http://mwis.io/em1NAyvrUZ

Image Credits
Photos by Cris-Ian Garcia & Elena Rojas G.