I'm Ana María Márquez — a civil engineer from Barranquilla, Colombia, who fell in love with the art of making things by hand. Ochabe was not built in a boardroom. It was born from memory: the smell of iraca palm in my grandmother's hands, the patience of my great-grandmother weaving before sunrise, the quiet pride of women who created beauty from what the earth gave them.

I brought that legacy to Chicago and built a brand around it — not to preserve the past, but to carry it forward. Every piece we make is a collaboration between that ancestral knowledge and the talented women artisans across Colombia who keep it alive today.

This is not just my story. It is theirs too.