10/02/2026
Since The Swan: Behind the Mirror came out, I've had several people reach out and ask me some version of the same question:
"Was Nely Galán really like that? Was she horrible to work for?"
And I've been thinking a lot about how to answer that, because I think this is one of those situations where we have to leave room for people's individual experiences.
I cannot speak for the women of The Swan.
I wasn't there.
I didn't undergo what they underwent. I wasn't recovering from plastic surgery, navigating medical decisions, isolation, cameras and an enormous physical and emotional transformation.
Their experience belongs to them, and my experience with Nely doesn't give me the right to tell them what theirs was.
But I can tell you what mine was.
Nely was my boss, my mentor, and in a lot of ways, she became like an older sister to me.
And there is probably some context to why I connected with her the way I did.
For much of my life, my heart had yearned for that strong maternal guidance I didn't always feel like I had. I found myself naturally drawn to women who were strong. Women who weren't afraid to speak up. Women who could stand on their own two feet, tell you the truth, and expect you to get back up when life knocked you down.
That was Nely.
Was she a tough cookie? 😂 Absolutely.
She was very much, "Okay, cry for five minutes. Now wipe your face because we still have things to do."
And maybe that wouldn't have been what everyone needed.
But it was something I needed.
Underneath that toughness, I experienced someone who genuinely wanted me to succeed.
She gave me opportunities.
She taught me.
She pushed me.
She made me believe I was capable of becoming more than what I could see for myself at the time.
And the crazy part is that our relationship started because I made a good cake.
Nely was in Tucson for an event, I made a cake for it, and somehow that one cake opened a door into opportunities that most people would never have given me.
She didn't have to do that.
She saw something in me and gave me a chance.
And I learned a tremendous amount from being around her.
When I look at my life now—as an entrepreneur, someone who has built businesses and now has my own real-estate portfolio—I can trace pieces of that mentality back to what I learned from Nely.
I remember learning about her real-estate investments and thinking:
I want to do that someday.
And eventually, I did.
She had this way of making big things feel possible.
Why couldn't you build the business?
Why couldn't you own the property?
Why couldn't you create something bigger?
Why couldn't it be you?
That had a profound impact on me.
I've also learned over the years that we only know people through the experiences we've personally had with them.
Two people can know the very same person in completely different circumstances and walk away with completely different experiences.
I don't get to tell someone else what happened in a room I wasn't in.
And someone else doesn't get to rewrite what happened in the rooms where I was.
I can only tell you who Nely was to me.
Years later, I would have my own experience with reality television on Food Network's Cake Wars.
And yes, I read that entire contract. 😂
There were surprises. There were things that didn't unfold exactly the way I expected. There were moments when the reality of making television felt different from what I thought I was walking into.
But I was making cake.
That distinction matters tremendously to me.
I would never compare the pressures of competing on a cake show to women undergoing major surgeries, recovery and life-altering physical changes while participating in a reality television production.
I simply don't have that experience.
What I do have is my experience with Nely.
And when people ask me whether watching this documentary suddenly changes the way I remember her, it doesn't.
The woman I knew was tough, ambitious, generous, insightful, loving in her own very Nely way, and incredibly encouraging of my potential.
She was an older-sister figure when I needed one.
She gave me opportunities that changed the trajectory of my life.
She taught me to think bigger.
She made me feel like I could do things I hadn't even considered possible yet.
And more than two decades later, I can still see pieces of what she taught me in the woman I've become.
Nely was a positive force in my life.
That's the experience I can speak to.
And telling that story doesn't require me to erase anyone else's.
