“Very early on in my life I realized I was very musical. The other thing is that, throughout my life, I’ve always been very handy at fixing things. When I was about to graduate, my mom said, “You know, there’s a career called audio engineering, where you can blend those two.”

     ...It was 2021, and hosting a TV show [HBO Latino's A Tiny Audience] centered on Latinx performers was just the latest twist in Maria Elisa Ayerbe’s extraordinary career in music production and engineering—an occupation where only 2.6 percent of working professionals are women. The Grammy Award nominee, Latin Grammy winner, and multi–Latin Grammy nominee is also a university professor. She has her own independent record label. And in 2019 she was honored by the Latin Recording Academy with the Leading Ladies of Entertainment award for “outstanding performance as a professional and socially conscious woman within the arts and entertainment fields, inspiring the next generation of female leaders.”

     How did Maria Elisa become a leader in a field that barely existed in her home country [of Colombia] when she was a teen? How did she even find the doors she is now opening for other women?

In the above book excerpt, we introduce Latin Grammy-winning audio engineer, mixer, and producer, Maria Elisa Ayerbe. 

(How did she beat the odds? Read her story in MUSIC MAVENS.)