Originally published on SD Voyager on December 16, 2024
Today we’d like to introduce you to Ella Napata
Hi Ella, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’m Ella Napata (Matra Emp), a trans artist, organizer, and creative from San Diego Tijuana. I grew up right by the border in Imperial Beach when my family and I moved to the U.S. That’s where I can trace some of my earliest creative memories. I’ve always had a knack for drawing, and drew whenever I could, on my notebooks, my school books, my binders. My school binder would have a dedicated space just for my drawings of Pokemon or whatever show I was watching.
But, as my high school AP English teacher once said, as we watched the Dead Poets Society, “High school is the place where poets die.” And rightly so, my dreams of being an artist died as I entered college at San Diego State University (SDSU) and decided to pick the “realistic” path of a business degree, hoping one day to get a corporate job, earn a big paycheck, pay taxes, and live that oh-so-wonderful American Dream.
I did it, I graduated from SDSU with an International Business degree and had a fancy internship at an international marketing agency lined up after graduation. However, reality had other plans and the corporate life just wasn’t for me.
At the ripe age of 22, I decided to pursue a freelance career as a digital marketer and worked remotely for the first time. I started working with small businesses in the data space, as well as contractors and law firms. It was a slow start I was picking up photography gigs on the side as well and crossing my fingers hoping for the best. The next thing I knew COVID hit, and me and everyone I knew was unemployed, I graduated in 2019, and when this all happened in 2020, I was working remotely in the Philippines and was unable to find work for months.
When I was finally allowed to come back to U.S. soil, I decided to look for a conventional job, and that’s where I stumbled upon a job ad from Startup San Diego, as a Marketing and Design Specialist. I think this was the breakthrough moment for me, I was creating designs and digital campaigns will a small team and I got super involved in the startup/tech community. I met founders and entrepreneurs pursuing their projects and dreams and was inspired by being around people who wanted to change the world.
After almost five years at Startup San Diego, I’ve been able to help produce four San Diego Startup Weeks, and 30+ 1st Mondays events, support them with digital, print, and out-of-home campaigns, and grow the ecosystem in the San Diego-Baja region. It’s been incredible to see the ecosystem grow, each year we impact over 3,000+ founders, entrepreneurs, professionals, and students to up-skill, educate, and inspire them to launch and scale their startups in San Diego. I’ve seen tech companies like Drata when they first started, grow into a unicorn company, and I’m glad Startup San Diego could be part of their journey.
Most recently I got to work on the World Design Capital San Diego Tijuana 2024 as the Digital Manager and support with digital campaigns throughout San Diego Tijuana. In partnership with Tijuana Design Week, worked hand-in-hand with designers and innovators in Tijuana to produce the World Design Festival 2024 which activated more than 7,000 local and international attendees throughout the region for a full week of design talks, workshops, art shows, tours, and experiences. This put San Diego Tijuana at the forefront of design, and it opened up doors of communication with changemakers I’ve never had before.
Now I’m proud to say that I’m a founder myself, I recently co-founded a binational design and marketing house with my co-founder Emir Taheri called hopsctch. At hopsctch we look at design from a community-driven lens, conscious of the impact and passionate to leave a lasting legacy. We honestly want to partner with non-profits, startups, founders, and budding entrepreneurs who want to make a positive impact in the communities they serve. “Poco a poco,” or “little by little,” we want to support the innovation community here in San Diego Tijuana as creative partners.
The other part of me that makes me who I am is art. I’m a mixed-media artist. I love to create, from printmaking to leatherwork, ceramics, pencil to paper, painting, photography, and graphic design. Most recently, I’ve been focusing my artistic efforts on a collective project, Ministerio Transexual.
Ministerio Transexual is a digital project that has its main platform on Instagram. We reaffirm our resistance and reach out to a wider audience through commercial activism by disseminating posters and selling our merchandising of t-shirts and fanzines. Always with the aim to store the desires, analyze demands and criticisms of what is happening in our society regarding transsexual, transgender, and non-binary people. Ministerio Transexual uses the language of capitalism from which we cannot escape through art and design pieces. We aim to make patriarchal society and its codes visible, to question repression, transphobic, and hetero/homonormative classism.
The collective project was started in Lima, Peru, but now has an international focus. Recently Ministerio Transexual made its debut in Tijuana and San Diego during San Diego Design Week 2024. We held a poster exhibit and open mic night that featured artists from both sides of the border at t Centro Cultural de la Raza (SD), Border X Brewing (SD), and Ediciones Caradura Cafeteøría (TJ). During the open mics, everyone was welcome to share their poetry, music, and talents, and it circled the theme of “belonging” and “nobody is sick here/nadie esta enferma aquí” in response to the transphobic laws that passed in Peru. We also had a “space for conversation,” where people could come to discuss the art, build community, and share their thoughts and desires.
For 2025, we plan to host more music and artistic events with the themes of radical inclusion and continue the conservation with transgender, transsexual, and gender-diverse people. Keep a look out on our Instagrams for upcoming events in San Diego Tijuana and beyond:
Art: instagram.com/ministeriotransexual
Community: instagram.com/ministeriotransexual.brand
What I can say in my 28 years of life is that my heart is with the people here in San Diego Tijuana. I love the community I work in, and the progress we’re making, and it’s super cheesy but I’m grateful to grow old with the San Diego Tijuana creative/tech community.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about hopsctch?
hopsctch (Hop-scotch) is a binational (San Diego Tijuana) boutique design and marketing house that specializes in creating innovative designs and crafting powerful stories for startups, mission-aligned organizations, and businesses. We look at design from a community-driven lens, conscious of the impact and passionate to leave a lasting legacy.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love how the San Diego startup community is so open and welcoming. People are willing to support you or give you advice, even connecting you to new people who could help you with your project. The San Diego Tijuana region is also very talented. With my newest design and marketing house, Hopsctch, a part of my team is based in Tijuana and supports the business in graphic design and photography/video projects. It’s world-class talent that I think a lot of San Diegans need to explore.
Not really a dislike, but maybe a reality in San Diego is that it’s seriously hard to get your project out there, or at least find a place that will host it. If you’re not connected to institutions like a university, school, or program, it’s hard to find a space. I think San Diego needs more community walls where regular folks who work a 9-5 but have a creative avenue can showcase their work and meet other creatives. In Tijuana it was the opposite, so many people were open and willing to have your work on their walls, no strings attached, if they were down with your art/idea folks there were willing to help and encourage you to be an artist.