Community Highlights: Meet Jennifer Carrillo of Road to Baby

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Carrillo.

Jennifer, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Road to Baby really began from a combination of my own life experiences, my love for helping people, and a desire to do things differently in an industry that is incredibly personal.

I was raised by a single mother and grew up understanding very early the importance of family, resilience, and creating opportunities for yourself. I’m also a first-generation Latina, and entrepreneurship wasn’t necessarily a path that was laid out for me. A lot of what I’ve built, I learned by doing, by being willing to learn, and by figuring things out along the way.

I was introduced to fertility and assisted reproduction through IVF and surrogacy more than 14 years ago, and I quickly fell in love with the work. There is something incredibly meaningful about being part of the process of helping someone become a parent. Having a family is a dream so many people envision for themselves, and I came to see surrogacy as another beautiful path to building one.

At the same time, I saw an opportunity for women to be part of something incredibly meaningful while being compensated fairly for the commitment they are making. Surrogacy is a unique experience that, when approached ethically and with the right education, protections, and support, can be a beautiful and mutually fulfilling journey for everyone involved.

Over seven years ago, I met my business partner and founded Road to Baby. What started as a vision has grown into an agency coordinating more than 100 journeys a year and working with families from around the world.

Getting here has required a lot of hard work, long days, lessons, and constant evolution. Building a business while protecting the heart behind it has probably been one of my greatest challenges and, at the same time, one of my greatest accomplishments.

As we continue to grow, my focus is on continuing to improve how we support, advocate for, and educate the people who trust us with their journeys. I believe intended parents and surrogates deserve to feel equally supported, respected, and protected throughout this process.

When I look back, I’m incredibly grateful that something I started from a genuine desire to help people has grown into a company that gets to play a part in creating families every single day. That will always be the most meaningful measure of success to me.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Building a business is hard. There are moments of doubt in yourself, in the decisions you make, and in whether the vision you have will actually become what you believe it can be. The road has certainly not been easy, but my vision for Road to Baby has always been so clear that giving up has never felt like an option.

What I didn’t fully anticipate when starting the agency was the emotional weight that comes with this work. We work in an industry built around so much hope, but one where we can never promise the outcome everyone wants.

Not every surrogacy journey ends with intended parents taking home a baby. Some families come to us after already experiencing years of infertility, loss, failed IVF cycles, or other circumstances that have made building their family incredibly difficult. They invest financially, but more importantly, they invest an enormous amount of hope and emotion into the process. When something doesn’t work, you feel that heartbreak with them.

Surrogates experience that emotion too. A woman can follow every instruction, take every medication, attend every appointment, and do absolutely everything right, and an embryo still may not implant. For someone who has had healthy, uncomplicated pregnancies with her own children, that can be especially difficult to understand. Sometimes they internalize that outcome or feel responsible for something that was completely outside of their control.

Those have probably been some of the hardest moments for me, learning how to support people through disappointment and loss.

It has also shaped how I think about growing Road to Baby. One of my biggest priorities has been surrounding myself with the right people. You can teach someone the process, but it is much harder to teach someone to genuinely care. I want people on our team who understand that this isn’t simply a job or a case file. Every name on our caseload represents someone trusting us with one of the most important chapters of their life.

As we’ve grown, one of my greatest responsibilities has been making sure we never lose that perspective. We are not selling a product or guaranteeing an outcome. We are helping real people navigate an incredibly personal journey, with all of the hope, uncertainty, joy, and sometimes heartbreak that comes with it.

That responsibility is one of the hardest parts of what I do, but it is also what makes the work so meaningful.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Road to Baby?
Road to Baby is a full-service surrogacy agency helping people build families through assisted reproduction. We work with intended parents from all over the world and support them through every stage of the process, from finding the right surrogate, through pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum.

What I believe sets us apart is that we have always tried to approach surrogacy from both sides of the journey. There are two very different experiences happening at the same time: an intended parent who may have waited years for the opportunity to have a child, and a surrogate who is making an extraordinary commitment with her body, her time, and her family. Neither experience should matter more than the other. Our responsibility is to advocate for both.

We place a huge emphasis on education, transparency, autonomy, and informed decision-making. I believe surrogates should understand exactly what they are agreeing to, feel empowered to establish their own boundaries, be fairly compensated, and have someone advocating for them throughout the entire process. Intended parents deserve that same level of transparency and support. They should understand where their money is going, what to expect, what the risks are, and feel like they have a team genuinely invested in helping them become parents.

I think one of the things Road to Baby has become known for is making an incredibly complicated process feel personal. Surrogacy involves fertility clinics, attorneys, insurance, escrow, medications, travel, contracts, pregnancy, and countless moving pieces. Our job is to coordinate all of those pieces while making sure the human beings at the center of the journey never feel lost in the process.

Brand-wise, I’m most proud of the community we’ve built and the trust behind our name. Some of our surrogates return for second and third journeys with us. Others refer their friends and family. Intended parents refer other families. Those relationships mean more to me than any marketing campaign ever could because they tell me that people felt cared for enough to trust us again or recommend us to someone they love.

I’m also proud that we are helping change the way people talk about surrogacy. There can still be a lot of misunderstanding around it. When done ethically, with proper screening, informed consent, fair compensation, and respect for a woman’s autonomy, I believe surrogacy can be an incredibly positive experience. It allows someone to help create a family while also creating meaningful opportunities for her own.

Today, Road to Baby coordinates more than 100 journeys a year, but I never want our success to be measured solely by how many journeys we manage. I want it measured by how people felt while they were with us whether they felt informed, protected, advocated for, celebrated, and genuinely cared about.

Ultimately, we’re in the business of helping people build families, and there are very few things more personal or meaningful than that.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
My biggest advice is to only start something you’re genuinely passionate about. When you truly believe in what you’re building, the vision becomes clearer, and that passion is what keeps you going through the difficult seasons, self-doubt, and decisions that will inevitably test you.

Something that has been incredibly valuable to me personally is learning how to do every position within my company. It gave me the confidence to build Road to Baby from the ground up, but it also gives me the confidence today to know that I can step in anywhere when needed because I understand the work firsthand.

Know your “why,” stay willing to learn, and never assume you have it all figured out. I’m seven years in and still learning every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://roadtobaby.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roadtobabyllc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/roadtobabyllc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/roadtobabyllc
• Other: https://share.google/1BwNmGmtE5vwjEBtF