Jun 2, 2021
Lina Rugova is not the typical immigrant – she did not want to leave Kazakhstan to come to America because her mother immigrated here! On June 2, 2021 at 6pm, listen to how a fifteen-year-old Lina arrived in the USA speaking British English and going directly to the Bronx with a Spanish-speaking stepdad in a Puerto Rican-dominant neighborhood! Of course, hilarity…and life…ensued.
She got married young, had a child early, put college on hold - and it brought out the resiliency in a young Lina. She got energized by figuring out the priorities in her life. She got bored quickly, switched jobs frequently, and landed in medical billing. Her first business was as a medical billing contractor. Then she moved on to medical billing and management for clients from the previous company.
Owning a business afforded Lina to accomplish the American Dream of purchasing a home and sending her daughter to private school. However, she closed that successful business because she got burned out from doing it all. She stayed in the medical field by opening a medical collection agency with her husband and learned how to hire people to help her. As Lina said, “that business destroyed my soul,” and she left.
Lina feels her immigrant hustle mentality helped her to move seamlessly from one business to the other without thinking about the possibility of failure. With the support of her refugee in-law family, Lina chartered new territory by opening up a jewelry designing business. She moved from Bronx, New York to San Antonio, Texas, to explore a new market and culture during the pandemic. She is now funding and launching a nonprofit business incubator in San Antonio to support underdeveloped and underserved communities of minorities, immigrants, and ex-felons.
Her brother followed suit with the entrepreneurial gene in Russia and started his own business.