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The Village Thrives is a real-talk parenting podcast hosted by fellow parents and professional on-air personalities Donna Ruko, Kristina Guerrero, and Bradley Hasemeyer. With decades of combined experience in storytelling — and in the trenches of parenthood — we bring honest conversations, diverse perspectives, and plenty of laughs to the mic. Together, we explore what it truly means to build — and rebuild — our village in today’s world, and why none of us are meant to do this alone. Because when we lean on each other, we don’t just survive — we thrive.
Join our village @TheVillageThrives
Donna Ruko @DonnaRuko
Bradley Hasemeyer @BHaz
Kristina Guerrero @KristinaGuerrero
Intro song - Temptation by Doug Locke
Outro song - Precious by Doug Locke
Available on Spotify and iTunes
You're listening to the village thrives, a podcast about parenting and community. If you like this episode, be sure to hit like and subscribe. Go on, man. You know you want to.
Speaker 2:Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the village thrives where we are meeting the host today. Who are these people that you are listening to? Right? Where did they come from?
Speaker 2:Today, we're gonna be talking to our fearless leader, Donna Ruko. She is the brainchild behind the village thrives podcast. Donna, tell us all about you in less than twelve minutes, and go.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Okay.
Speaker 2:No pressure.
Speaker 1:Thank you
Speaker 2:for the Donna, we're
Speaker 1:so Christina.
Speaker 2:I'm just I'm just so grateful because Donna came to me a couple of months ago and was like, I have this great idea, and she has just been spearheading this since day one. And so we're super grateful that you're, like, the leader at the helm. So, but who are you? Who is Donna Ruko with the beautiful Well,
Speaker 1:if the accent doesn't give it away, I was born and raised in The UK. I was born in East London, Plasto to be precise. And then I grew up in Essex. I grew up in the suburbs and went to an all girls school. Had a Unicatholic Like Catholic school?
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't Catholic, was a Church of So England we have a slight difference there. We've got Church of England and Catholic, similar but not similar. Spoke to my husband about it, husband's Irish. Just quickly, I remember when my husband and I got married, the judge who married was a really good friend of Dermot's, he's Irish, but like generation, like second generation or third generation. So he wasn't born and raised there, but he's more Irish, I would say than Dermot.
Speaker 1:And so he's marrying us and we was getting our license before we were getting married abroad. So we had to get our license here in America. And he's like, I've never done this before, this kind of wedding or this kind of marriage. And we're like, Oh, what? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:A brown person or a black person and a white person? That what you're saying?
Speaker 2:Intra racial?
Speaker 1:Intra racial marriage? And he was like, No, a Catholic and a Protestant. I was like, oh my God. But anyway, yeah, grew up in Essex and I felt like I was a bit of an odd little ugly duckling. I was in a majority white neighborhood and all the, you know, all the little pretty girls and they're like blonde hair and the blue eyes and all the boys would be into those girls.
Speaker 1:I say this just purely because when I get to about 15, 16, there was like the tides change. I then also went on to win a modeling competition and the magazine was called Pride Magazine. Back in the day it was like a magazine for women of color. So I won that, I ended up being on the front page. We did an eight page spread in New York.
Speaker 1:That was amazing.
Speaker 3:Got to Google
Speaker 1:this. We've got
Speaker 3:to find this.
Speaker 2:This is So
Speaker 1:suddenly I still felt the same. I still felt like the odd one out, but I had a different level of attention. Suddenly I'm now in the modeling world and I'm doing all these shoots and it's all kind of around the same time. I ended up going with a friend to an open mic night and I'll try, this is a long story, this might be a whole episode, but how I got into a girl band.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:So basically a friend of mine was doing open mic, a woman approaches me and is like, Can you sing? And I'm like, No, no, no, no, no. Even though growing up, I had watched a really well known show in The UK called Top of the Pops. And I always, I did dream of being on Top of the Pops. I'm like, Oh, that'd be amazing.
Speaker 1:This is a live show all about the top 40, So it showed video and live performances. Anyway, so I just thought, oh, no, but my friend, because she went on putting a girl group together, thought my friend, she's about to get up and sing. You should go and speak to her. Again, cut a long story short, she speaks to her. My friend has to go and have an audition with her that week.
Speaker 1:My friend says, Will you come with me? Because I knew how to drive around London, she was 17, I knew how to drive around London confidently. She's like, Will you drive up with me? I'm like, Of course. I get there, she has her audition and then she says, She'd like you to sing as well.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, Okay, got nothing to lose. I go in there, I don't even know the song. Plays something and says sing along with it, which I do. And then if I say the rest is history, the rest is history. Because then my friend calls me up a few weeks, like maybe a week later and says, I'm not supposed to tell you, but I think you're in the group.
Speaker 1:And then I ended up being in the group. And the group changed the line.
Speaker 2:That's the craziest story ever. That's a Disney movie waiting to happen.
Speaker 3:A 100%.
Speaker 1:So that's how I got in the girl group. Which is called Entyce. Entyce. An n. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And n dash t y c e. Because it would be too uncool in the nineties to spell it e n t I c e. Who would do that?
Speaker 3:No. No. No. But you had Nsync. There was already some familiarity.
Speaker 3:Npepper. Npepper.
Speaker 1:That's right. We toured with Nsync, actually. Toured We with NSYNC. We NSYNC. Toured with Backstreet Boys.
Speaker 1:We did like
Speaker 2:Did you ever learn how to sing? Or was that just not? Okay. I did.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I had to learn how to dance because the girls who ended up in the group with had all gone to dance school, so they were fantastic. So I would go to Pineapple Studios in Covent Garden and go and try and catch up. I was like, at least I was coordinated. So that was, it was very intensive. Was like, I'm not gonna show myself up.
Speaker 2:Donna, can you look back on that time and just be like, that was bananas?
Speaker 1:Yeah, was crazy. It seemed like another lifetime. So we ended up getting a record deal and we toured, we did pretty well in Japan, Europe, and then we actually released one single in The US and then we got dropped by the record company. So it all kind of went and we didn't have a manager and so we managed it ourselves for a few years and yeah, we ended up, God, we got dropped to 1999 up until about 2004. We continued ourselves recording, having an investor help fund it, yeah, we actually did some really great songs, but yeah, we didn't end up releasing any of them.
Speaker 1:So maybe in time we will. People keep asking, you can have a reunion, you can
Speaker 3:do a reunion. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I don't know. I don't know if that will happen. Where are the other girls? In London. I see them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. They're all in London. They've all got families now. I think at some point we're going to do an episode with the girls as well.
Speaker 2:Is one of them called Victoria Beckham? That
Speaker 3:sounds familiar.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine? I'm like, yeah, is actually. I know, Ariel, Michelle and Chantel, I'll give them a shout out now. The time of our lives, like nothing else, there's nothing else that compares. And so after the girl group, I moved to America in 2005 and wanted to pursue acting and I wasn't even hosting at that time, was acting.
Speaker 1:So I was good doing acting classes, all the things you do when you're in LA. And I had an agent, I was also modeling. So I was doing commercials and print work. And my agent one day was like, oh, you ever done hosting? We call it presenting in The UK.
Speaker 1:Right, Here they say hosting. And I said, Well, actually when I was in the girl band, I'd done a few, you know, guest spots. You know, I'd done MTV, a two hour live show on MTV a couple of times. We'd done, a bunch of different things. So I was like, Well, I've had experience, yes.
Speaker 1:She said, Well, okay, I'd like you to go and meet the executive producer of Current TV. And I was like, Okay, sure. So I'd go and meet Rowley, Rooley, Rooley Valverde, his name is, lovely guy, and we hit it off and I ended up working for Current TV. That was my first hosting gig here. That was Al Gore's network.
Speaker 1:Do you remember Oh, that sure. Back in the It's Al
Speaker 3:Gore's network. So
Speaker 1:I did that, still focusing on acting, and I just kept them booking, hosting work. I did something with Howie Mandel called Take It All. It was a game show and I was the prize announcer. So he'd go, Donna, what have they won? And I'd go, Well, Howie, they have won.
Speaker 1:And then I'd have to read all this stuff off. Oh my goodness! Because it was a game show, you had to read it off of this iPad because of all the legal terms. You couldn't mess up with any of the spiel. You know,
Speaker 3:you just
Speaker 1:And you know me, when I go off, I go off. Someone that's just won a cruise for five days is now traveling around the world and there'll be Oh my God. So anyway, hosting, yeah, then a few other things in between all that and then the list. And that brought me to Phoenix, Arizona, where I met you two lovely people. And that was a really fun experience, a daily show, five days a week, syndicated across the country.
Speaker 1:And we did all really fun things about lists, funny enough. The three things to help you clean your shoes and it would be on, it wouldn't be like shoe Polish. It would be like, Oh, did you know you can break open an orange, peel the skin off and rub the skin on your shoes? Unusual. We'd have to find the wildest things that we could come up with, and that was a really fun show.
Speaker 1:We worked with a great group of people and yeah, that was a highlight as well. One other highlight that was in between all of this, I completely forgot the Ford Focus Rally. The Ford Focus Rally actually was one of those first shows that used social media as a way to communicate with an audience as you're watching it as live. And it was very new because of all the technology and everything. So we had our Ford Focuses.
Speaker 1:This was back in 2011 and it was between Profiles TV and Ford. It was a bit like a huge commercial for the Ford Focus, but we were six teams. I was team yellow and I brought in my friend Bryn, Bryn Drescher. So we were team yellow and then there was team red, team gray and we wore the colors that matched the car and it was a rally car. We drove from Miami all the way across to, where did we end up?
Speaker 1:Santa Cruz, I think it was. But it was like the amazing race driving cross Oh, It was amazing. And I did some crazy stunts. Like I've stood on the wings of a plane. It's called wing walking, where you stand on the roof of a plane and it's flying.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. That's a whole No.
Speaker 1:That's a other episode talking about that because I know it's long time here. I
Speaker 2:feel like you yeah. I feel like you've lived a whole other life. And then on top of it, you managed to have a child in I haven't even spoken about my family yet. I was well, I would you you said then there was this one thing that I did. I was like, oh, she's gonna talk about Easton, the Ford Focus.
Speaker 2:I was like, okay. Then but, you know, that's what's great about Donna is that she just she just leaves you she just, you know, leaves you guessing.
Speaker 3:Never know where she's going.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Left, right, up, down. Okay. Family time. Let's talk about family.
Speaker 1:My most prized possessions in the world. My husband, Dermot Easton, who is eight years old. I also have three stepchildren. And I don't like saying stepchildren, but that's what they are. You know, they're from Dermot's first marriage.
Speaker 1:So that we've got Doran Marco and Gigi Giovanna. And they're all such a blessing. Doran lives in Paris. He is a film editor and he is 24, about to be 25. And then we have Marco who's 23.
Speaker 1:He lives in Kansas City, Missouri. And I love the way I pause, like waiting for you to go, what's he doing there? Cause most people go, what's he doing there? And you didn't. So I'll carry on.
Speaker 3:It's America.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know what are doing there. Now I'm in, now, but now I'm I car
Speaker 1:don't know why, but most of the time people go, really? How do you, because they grew up in New York. The big kids grew up So, in New and he's ended up in Kansas, Missouri. Anyway, and then we have Gigi who's at a college in Chicago, she's at DePort and she's doing film studies. So we've got lots of creatives in the family and Gigi is like my savior with all testosterone around the house and all the boys.
Speaker 1:I'm like, my savior, female energy when it's the holidays and stuff.
Speaker 2:Then really having Easton, even having Easton, who's your youngest, that's really kind of what set the course for this podcast. What was going through? What was what was life like when you had Easton?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. I had Easton in Phoenix, Arizona, and two weeks after he was born, I went up to New York and I was on maternity leave, and I was planning on coming back to the list. And as time went on, I think as moms can, a lot of moms feel and say, the thought of going back to work at that time, I just didn't feel ready. So I ended up staying, came back and forth, but eventually moving up to New York and we lived on Long Island. Beautiful place, very green, very lush, it's the suburbs, beautiful part of the country.
Speaker 1:However, as someone who didn't grow up there and we're not in a main city, there wasn't much support when it came to mom and baby groups where you could maybe go and find a bit of a community of people. I had friends who lived in the city, even Bradley was living in New York at that time, I'd met up with him a few times, but it was still a trek. It was still like a good hour And and a half into the so I was just a bit of a loss. And I remember just thinking, I'm so lucky because I have a really supportive husband. He's fantastic.
Speaker 1:But once we had family come visit, especially the first month or two, once I was up there, I just felt like, well, they've gone now what? The big kids at that point were teenagers, so they're like, oh, we've got a new brother, okay, but he wasn't at that age, obviously he's a newborn, so there's not much they can do with him. And they were obviously at school and they'd be at their moms half the time back with us for the other half of the week. Sorry, we ended up doing one week on, one week off, that's what it was. And so, one minute the house would be full of activity and then they'd go and then parents who were visiting would go and I'd be sitting there like, I just felt very isolated, I felt very And again, I thought about Dermot and I'm like, wow, I'm very lucky, very fortunate, I've got a husband who's very hands on and he's there for me for whatever I need emotionally, physically, like he's there holding me and just making sure that I'm okay.
Speaker 1:And I just started thinking, well, what about people that don't have someone like him or a support system at all? And then that's where the village thrives came into my mind. I was like, how can I help people? Like, how can I I know what I need to help? Like, I need connection.
Speaker 1:I need connection. I need a community. And I had to go out and build that myself. And the funny thing is that when I realized that, it was only as I'm now eight years on and having this conversation with you guys and starting The Village Thrive, I've realized not only was I really focused on building a village when I had a family, extending my family, but really I've built a village every time I've moved because I've moved from The UK to America California. I was there for eight and a half years, moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and I was there for three and a half years.
Speaker 1:Moved up to New York for five years, back to California for two years and back to Phoenix, which is where I am now over the past year. And some places I've like, when I moved to Phoenix, I had a built in community because I moved there for work and we were really fortunate. Everyone that we worked with was great. When I went to California, You kind of moved in to
Speaker 2:the same place in life, right? It's kind of the same place in life
Speaker 1:Right, right, and when I moved to California, I building my, I knew one or two people and I had family there as well, but I'm building, which I wouldn't have thought of calling it a village at that time in my life because I was in my twenties, but it was, I'm building a network of friends, I'm building my tribe, you know? And so I've realised actually, it takes a village to raise a child, but it actually takes a village to be a happy person, human. I think we all need connection and we need to feel part of something, a belonging, so to speak. Yeah, I guess without going on-
Speaker 2:super grateful that you, no, go ahead, sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, that's it. And that's how it came to be. It's like, is there something I can do? Can I give back to the community and fill a void that I feel like I had? So it's almost a, it's satisfying my needs of connecting with people and I've got the most amazing people right here.
Speaker 1:I was just so happy that you guys wanted to be involved in this. You know, even that in itself, and this is another episode, but just to find the people that you want to do something like this with, when you have a really good connection, good chemistry, and just also know how to laugh and have fun because parenting is hard, but we wanna laugh at these mistakes. We wanna know, find liberty in these moments. Right. Right.
Speaker 1:So, yeah. Yeah. That's I think that's pretty much
Speaker 2:it's yeah. You you kinda painted this picture for me when we were first talking about it, you were talking about living on Long Island with a brand new baby and walking Easton in the stroller and then just having the ear pods and just, like, being able to connect with the village in the podcast. You're like, that's who I wanted. Like, who did I need at that time? And that's what I wanna create for other people.
Speaker 1:So Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're super excited and grateful that you followed through on that. But now it's time for rapid fire. Okay. Are you ready? Oh gosh.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay. Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Speaker 1:Night owl.
Speaker 2:Oh, go to comfort food.
Speaker 1:Jacket potato, baked beans and cheese.
Speaker 3:I think I said scone. We had a whole meal. Whole meal listed out.
Speaker 2:Parenting superpower you wish you had.
Speaker 1:The power to heal.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. That's so good. A book or show you always recommend?
Speaker 1:The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
Speaker 2:One word your kid would use to describe you.
Speaker 1:Kind.
Speaker 2:Favorite way to unwind?
Speaker 1:A cup of tea and some trashy reality show. I say trashy like, What have I been watching? Like a Sealing Sunset.
Speaker 2:Sunset. Across the country, Amazing Race type of a show? Amazing.
Speaker 1:That needs to make a comeback. No, guilty pleasure is like a reality show like the Selling Sunset or Love is Blind. I'm even into the Love is Blind UK now. They've got all over the bloody world.
Speaker 2:Hidden Talent, although I feel like we know all of them now. She can sing, she can dance, she can drive a Ford Focus.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Oh gosh. Oh, I would say maybe somewhat an unusual, if I say attention to detail, tuning into certain things that I think not everybody tunes into maybe. Like I feel like I see things in
Speaker 2:them. Intuitive?
Speaker 1:Maybe a bit intuitive, but also visually. I'll see things that a lot of people don't see. I don't know what that means. I don't know if that's a suit, I don't know, hidden talent. This must be quick rapid fire.
Speaker 1:Dermot was right. If
Speaker 2:I'm going to go you can live anywhere for a year, where would it be?
Speaker 1:Indonesia, and I'd like to Island hop.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes. Something you believed as a kid that you no longer believe?
Speaker 1:Oh, I believe that adults that once you got to adulthood, you knew everything. But now I know you don't.
Speaker 2:Don't.
Speaker 1:Well, don't see everything. You're still learning.
Speaker 2:What is one thing that will always make you laugh?
Speaker 1:Oh God, there's quite a few. I laugh very easily. One thing I really enjoy doing is watching a really good standup comedy show.
Speaker 2:Okay. Love it with standup. Anyone in particular.
Speaker 1:Just recently watched the Kevin Hart one. That was really funny.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he's hysterical. Yay. Well, that's Donna for you, everybody. She is, as I said, our fearless leader, and she is char as charming and as wonderful as you can imagine. Also, the fact that you said that you felt kind of like an ugly duckling.
Speaker 2:I don't know if those were your exact words. I did say that. This is the most beautiful woman. She doesn't have a flaw on her face. Her everything about her is just absolute perfection, which is crazy to think that you thought yourself anything other than that.
Speaker 2:But Donna, where can we find more about you?
Speaker 1:Oh, well, I obviously need to get a bit more active on social media because I literally just give
Speaker 2:them your home address. I'll see me
Speaker 1:in real life. You can follow me on Instagram. I better I better open up my page then because it's it's it's a private page. I will The social
Speaker 3:media guy over here is just going,
Speaker 1:what is happening?
Speaker 2:Just give him your WhatsApp number if you wanna connect with Donna. Just give her a call.
Speaker 3:Wanna donate? Here's my Venmo.
Speaker 1:Me on on Instagram at Donna Ruko
Speaker 2:or The Village Thrives. I mean, really, that's where I
Speaker 1:don't know that's I'll be that. I'll be running thevillagethrives page.
Speaker 2:In my Myspace. Oh my gosh. She'll put you in her top five.
Speaker 1:Do you like I think I'm sure, no, I don't even have a TikTok. I don't have, I have a Facebook. Oh, it's a Facebook page.
Speaker 2:Well, shit's because you're all about that. You're all about connection, like actual interpersonal connection.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Miss Donna, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I would you know what? I will open up my Instagram account and make it public.
Speaker 2:Could you do that for us, please?
Speaker 1:I will. And I look forward to connecting with our listeners. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow us at the village thrives.
Speaker 1:And remember, parenting isn't meant to be done alone. When the village comes together and supports one another, we thrive. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 3:Paving the way for me to excel. And there you are back in the kitchen making my favorites. Doesn't get better than this. Oh, everything is precious when I'm in your presence. You make my world go round and round.
Speaker 3:Oh, every single second with you's another present. You lift me up when I'm feeling down. Life is so precious when you're around. Everything's precious when you're around.