The podcast Guiding Growth: Conversations with Community Leaders from the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, event and meeting venue Modern Moments and the Gilbert Independent/yourvalley.net explores the human journey of leaders. There are stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks, and lessons learned. This partial transcript of the most recent podcast with Sharon Kotsonas  has been edited for brevity and clarity         

Sharon Kotsonas is active in her town of Gilbert, where she is considered a social entrepreneur and a community leader. In 2019 Kotsonas launched her nonprofit, Weekly Collective Volunteers Inc., which provides various support services to people facing economic adversity, physical and mental health challenges, or other obstacles. Her initiative aims to make people seen, heard, and supported. 

Kotsonas is referred to as a love evangelist and a servant leader, amongst her faith-based community and her close friends. She cares for the well-being of others and supports programs that promote emotional, spiritual, and social wellness. Sharon is engaged in the Town of Gilbert Behavioral Health Coalition, as well as For Our Town of Gilbert, to mention a few of the organizations in which she invests her time and resources. Her dedication to helping others find healing and hope has led her to facilitate support groups for Hurting Moms and Grieving Moms. 

In 2015 Kotsonas lost her 23-year-old son, Nicholas, to a drug overdose. Her faith, family and friends have been the main support through her healing journey. Most recently, Kotsonas accepted an invitation from the National Latinas Professional Association to join their Mental Health Awareness Week National Steering Committee. Kotsonas looks to collaborate with them to raise awareness, advocate for change, and champion mental health awareness among Latinas. 

Okay, so let's start at the beginning because that's where I like to start. Talk to us about Puerto Rico and all the areas that you grew up in. 

I grew up in a small town on the west coast, and it's opposite of the tourist area. Beautiful people, beautiful just everything. Trees, flowers, plants, you name it. And of course, the beach, which is my favorite part of Puerto Rico. Second to the people, people there are always happy. They're always hopeful and optimistic and that's one thing that I admire. It doesn't matter if they had a hurricane or if they had a tropical storm. The sun always comes up or comes out. It was very lovely growing there. The food, the people, the music, everything. 

How long did you stay in Puerto Rico?  

I was 19 when I moved. And then from there I moved to the States, and I got married very young. I had children very young, and life wasn't all that kind to me at that time.  

What was going on?  

A little bit of everything. Cultural, language, everything. Religion, everything. And living in Mississippi was the opposite of living in Puerto Rico. Beautiful place. Beautiful people. But just different and just learning how to be a mom and learning how to juggle school and raising a family and learning to find my place in this new world.  

Why Mississippi? How did you get there?  

My first husband was from Mississippi, and we met in Puerto Rico, married, went to Mississippi, and I was there for 12 years and learned to love everything about it. Southern food is delicious and just that spirit of community is very beautiful there.  

So there's a lot going on. There's a total cultural shift. There's just a growth within your own, becoming a mother, learning a language, going to school. But you keep pushing through. Where does that drive come from?  

I feel like sometimes life moves you. Like if you're swimming and have that undercurrent and pushes you or drags you. There's a movement that happens, and I think things that happen to us happen for a reason, and they kind of lead you to a place or to a feeling or to a conviction. And then once you realize that and you accept it, then you know that it just fits right. Well, that's where I think leadership comes in because I think leaders sort of have a natural tendency to be able to tap into that and listen to it and measure the data, but also move with instinct.  

I'm curious back into the Mississippi days. You're there, your family's gone because they're back in Puerto Rico. Who's helping you through this transition? Is your husband at that time's family or is there somebody there? 

My first husband suffered from drug abuse, and he tried very hard. He was just a wonderful man. And even before he passed away, I remember visiting with him. He became very ill. And I remember visiting with him, thinking for himself, knowing that he was in hospice, knowing that he was very ill. He was an artist, he was a musician, he was a great family man in spite of everything that he went through. And he was so connected to nature and such a beautiful story.  

But unfortunately he had to fight a battle that he couldn't. His family never had those problems. They were very religious, and they were the opposite of him in terms of having very successful lives, having very healthy lives. And they were so supportive, and they helped me so much. My ex-mother-in-law just passed away last year. And that was very sad because she was a second mom to me. Imagine coming into her family at 19, and she helped me raise my children. She taught me how to cook and did things that I had never done before. And she really taught me more than just cooking and raising a family. She taught me how to act in faith and how to be proud of the work that I do, whether it was something very mundane or something very special. She showed me how important it is to show pride in your work.  

Transitioning now, somehow, you're getting to Arizona. Talk about that.  

So the company that I was working for had a person that was a sales rep here in Arizona. He was retiring and they asked me if I wanted to move to Arizona. And I thought, well, I need a new start. And being divorced with three children, what better place than Arizona to start over? Little that I knew how hot it is here.  

I remember when I came here, my first summer, I cried, I cried. I thought, what have I done? This is terrible. I don't want to live here. It's too hot. And I was doing sales in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, El Paso, and I was always driving and flying and going places and it was hot everywhere I went. I can’t get away from the heat, and I was just very miserable.  

My kids were encouraging me to create a profile online and meet people, go out and just have fun and meet other people. And so my kids created a MySpace profile. Now I'm really dating myself. So that's how I met my husband, and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me.  

So we're in Arizona now. What's next? What happens?  

So right now I just want to serve at a different level. I want to do something that I've never done before. I think what I want to do is I want to help people that are like me. People with brown skin, people with a journey that brought them here. People with the desire to learn a language and a culture and the food and everything to be as happy as I am. I feel there's something that tells me that if much has been given to me, much is expected of me. If I can influence people to do and have what has made me so happy, why not?  

How did you get to Gilbert and why Gilbert?  

So I was up in Glendale, and I did not like it. I'm sorry. I just felt like it was too crowded. It was different. I just felt like I just didn't fit in. Or maybe it's just mental. I'm pretty sure it's mental. I think it's just the trauma of my children having all the difficulties that they had. And that's when everything started going downhill for my two sons, and they started following the footsteps of their dad, and it was sad. It was very sad. I was embarrassed. I didn't know how to help them, and I just didn't understand the magnitude of the problem until it was just so big, and I felt hopeless. And maybe that's why I don't like Glendale, though, because that's where my kids begin to lose their battle.  

So when my husband and I were dating, he was living in Central Phoenix, but he was working in Chandler. And so we started looking, and we found Gilbert to be the place. I just fell in love with Gilbert from the beginning.  

You've been part of different organizations within the community as well. Talk about some of those that you've been part of that have inspired you. 

My church, it's the first one there. For a while I even thought about pursuing becoming a pastor because I feel that I have connection with people at a deeper level, but the politics of the church are so different nowadays that just I thought to myself, well, maybe I missed something here. Maybe I am still able to connect and help people, but not from the pulpit. I think the pulpit is necessary, but I think what is even more important is to get up and go and continue that work the other six days of the week. And I'd rather do that work. I'd rather just give up the one day on the pulpit and just work all the other six days outside.  

I just realized that the whole world is so much bigger than what we think we know and what we have at hand and that humanity fits in a different mold than religion. And I think once we begin to see that we are all part of that mold and that mold doesn't segregate by religion or ethnic group, we begin to respect, understand and see each other from a different light. And I want to encourage people to realize that if we really make a choice to understand each other and not have to always be right and prove a point or convince somebody, I think people are going to accept differences. And that can be said about anything, not just religion. It could be said about politics, it could be said about sexual orientation. It could be said about all sorts of things because ultimately we all want the same thing, and we can help each other achieve it.   

Speak a little bit about your role in For Our Town of Gilbert and how do you move that forward?  

My role there is part of the board of directors and what we're trying to do is we're trying to kind of bridge the gap, making sure that we engage people in social and volunteer events to help alleviate some of the burdens that our neighbors are facing. And within that I am helping with the multifaith movement, and I love it. It's a perfect place for me to be.  

I'm sure you work with leaders in so many different capacities through many different roles. What are some of the leadership trends that you admire in others?  

I admire people that speak truth, and I admire people that walk around in our shoes. It's the only way that you can understand the need and it's the only way that you can really commit from the heart.