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We Are All Queens

by Alexa Villano
March 8, 2022

Carla Lizardo, Pia Wurtzbach, and Bianca Guidotti-Santos empower women and today’s youth on finding their inner voice and strength

It has always been said that there are three things that unite Filipinos – Basketball, Boxing, and Beauty Pageants. Beauty Pageants have become a national sport for many and int these competitions, women not only compete but also gain friends. This was the case of 2014 Binibining Pilipinas batchmates Carla Lizardo, Bianca Guidotti-Santos, and Pia Wurtzbach.

We all knew what happened later on. Pia became the country’s third Miss Universe winner in 2015 after three tries while Bianca competed in Miss International 2014. Carla previously competed in another pageant in 2010 and became a sportscaster. Now years after their pageant careers, the three got together this time for a passion project – The Queens.

Before the Queens, the trio started with the Queentuhan podcast which led to the Between Us Queens podcast. Now they’ve expanded their project with The Queens which has launched two workbooks, community forums, and their respective podcasts.

As the country celebrates Women’s Month, Modern Parenting reached out to Carla Lizardo via email about the Queens project, its upcoming YouTube channel, and lessons moms and titas can relate from their group.

The Queens on going beyond podcasts

According to Carla, the idea for the workbooks came when the three of them though of involving the members of the community.

“We were brainstorming about ideas on how we can further involve our community and grow our digital safe space, and Pia came up with the idea of coming out with a workbook so there would be supplementary material for our content,” Carla shared. This was inspired by a book she used to have years back called Deal With It by Gurl.com, which was her go-to for any women-related advice growing up. She even found copies to send to me and Mar (Bianca) so we could fully understand the idea!”

“Our dream is to really be the go-to online resource for women of all ages who may need advice, guidance, and empowerment so this idea was really exciting for us. We decided to personally write each workbook, tackling different topics that we also discuss in our podcast and communities. They can be downloaded monthly on our site, and can be printed out, filled out digitally or can serve as a guide for journaling. Of course, we offer the workbooks for free because every woman should have access to self-help resources.”

The community’s involvement

Carla said that it helps that members of the Queens community are very helpful and vocal with activities they do together even online.

“The community members in our Facebook group have always been very expressive, especially with giving advice to their fellow queens. We turned on the anonymous feature a month ago so that people can feel safer sharing their stories, and that’s led to a lot more submissions,” she said. “We also recently had a Penpal project, pairing up two people so that they can get to know each other better – we plan on doing more activities like this so that people feel comfortable and so they can make new friends as well.”

Carla said they knew their shows were getting a lot of recognition as the community continue to grow. As of March, the community is now at 8,000 plus members. They have also been receiving a lot of love and feedback.

“We love getting those messages, and we do try to reply and give personal advice as well. And despite being a women centered pod, we also have guys who reach out to say that they listen because they also learn from the conversations and also learn about how women see specific situations. Seeing the community grow and getting feedback inspires us to continue growing The Queens,” she said.

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Coming soon: The Queens YouTube Channel

As the Queens evolve, more projects are in store. After launching the website queens.ph, Carla said that they are set to launch their YouTube channel.

“Happy to announce that next month, we will be launching The Queens YouTube channel! While the podcast is really focused on discussing specific topics and having different guests on the show to give advice and share stories, the vlog will really show our dynamic as friends since we’re shooting everything together – and you can expect a combination of friendship challenges, fun conversations, advice giving, trying out new things together, and a lot more!” she said.

A Tiktok account is also in the work which Carla said will focus on ” women-centered but with a mix of some of our silly dancing/singing moments.”

Moms and titas can learn too!

Although the chunk of their audience is at the 20 to 40 bracket, Carla said moms and titas will definitely learn a lot from the Queens.

“Most definitely! I mean, we are tita age ourselves,” Carla joked. “Our community age range is actually from early 20’s to 40’s – we tackle everything under the sun, from body image, motherhood, career, relationships, family, and friendships so there’s something for everyone.”

“For the moms and titas, we invite you to grab a glass of wine during your me-time and check out the pod, workbook, and eventual vlog!”