Meet Leonela Gonzalez

Greetings from the entire House of Top Models team! I am happy to have the opportunity for all ‘House of Lafrance’ readers to know a little more about me, my academy, and the model agency. 

My name is Leonela Gonzalez, Venezuelan Model & Actress, currently residing in Miami’s sunny city. I have been living in the United States for 8 years. I have always dreamed of having my own business from a very young age. That dream was nothing more than the possibility, and having my own modeling school and teaching young people with the same goals and illusions as me to achieve great things in any modeling area, have been my focus ever since. I am not a tall model like most runway models. However, despite not having the stature to reach tremendous European catwalks, I have had significant achievements in my career as a model. What I have learned over the years is what I now share with my students daily at House of Top Models. 

House of Top Models was born in Venezuela solely as an online agency by the great Venezuelan photographer Antonio Iannello, with whom I am associated today. He continued to lead the part of the agency in Madrid – Spain, and I made my dream come true in 2019 by turning House of Top Models into an Academy to train comprehensive & professional models in Miami. 2019 was a year of many challenges for my partner and me here in Miami (my husband, Segundo Gil). Starting a business is not an easy task, especially when it comes to a new name and not a franchise. There were so many doubts, will it work? Are we going to have students? How long will it take for people to recognize our work? And many other questions came to my mind when starting this adventure, but I remained positive and faithfully believe in God. 

I managed to have all the rooms in an expansive and very well distributed location, just as I dreamed it. 

It has a main room with the Catwalk, etiquette & protocol room, makeup room, and photography studio. Everything came out as planned. Over a few months, we gradually started to have male and female models interested in our program. Designers began to reach out for our models, and producers wanted to put shows together with us. We accumulated many invitations to participate in different events and began to grow. We then produced our own events and had international guests present in the training of our students. Everything went well in 2019, our first year, and we closed that year with incredible energy. 

2020 was also started incredibly; at the beginning of February, we held a show in a shopping center in the south of Miami that gave us much impetus, and many folks began contacted us. We had about six shows planned in the year, including Miami Fashion Week, Swim Week, both in Miami and in other states. 

We were beginning to grow a following outside of Miami, but unfortunately, at the beginning of March 2020, COVID-19 hit and paralyzed everything. 

Our students didn’t want to show up to practice due to uncertainties surrounding the pandemic. Cases were growing (and are still growing) in South Florida. I felt my heart breaking into a thousand pieces and saw my dream slip away. Not having our students weeks after weeks, and seeing that the whole situation wouldn’t get better in a month or two, we had to close the academy. It was an unfortunate situation. We had to remove everything from the establishment and moved them to a warehouse. You can imagine how painful that was! My only source of income was taken away from me! Everything that I had been putting my sweat, efforts, and dedication into… 

Thankfully it didn’t stay like this for long. My faith in God prevailed, and I knew that it could not remain that way forever.

My team spent a whole year working hard to have a name, positioned ourselves in the modeling industry, have enough students who will trust and wait for this entire situation to improve to continue training with us; it had to get better. We did not let a month go by without looking for a solution. At the beginning of July, we began to find spaces that were available to start over. 

Long story short, that is how I got the place where we are located today. 

House of Top Models reopened its doors in August 2020 to start its courses again for children, teens, and adults. It has definitely been a rebirth. Words cannot explain what it was like for me to spend these five months closed without knowing if we would reopen or not. It has been a 

blessing from God to have this second chance, now close to the DORAL area, a super commercial location that has worked incredibly for us since our reopening date. 

In our new site, we have a main room for the catwalk classes, with a perfect stage for the students to feel like they’re doing a “Runway Show” each style, makeup room, etiquette & protocol room, a small & practical photo studio. Our mission is to form integral models in our academy. Being critical is nothing more than having a balanced personality, with a good development of all its aspects; that is, the intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual, and the social matters, among others. In other words, to train our students in such a way that they can develop themselves in any environment. 

Our program includes Catwalk, etiquette & protocol, diction & oratory, image & style, makeup, photo pose, trends, creativity craft, and presentation for the little ones. We admit male and female students Our program includes Catwalk, etiquette & protocol, diction & oratory, image & style, makeup, photo pose, trends, creativity craft, and presentation for the little ones. We admit male and female students 

ages 5 and over. We are happy to have resumed our activities with all our students from different groups. Our task is to connect our models to the industry, secure auditions, and paid works as an agency. (Ad Campaigns, Fashion Shows, Event Magazines, T.V Commercials, Magazines, Print Ads, and much more) We recently resumed our agency activities through our web portal www.houseoftopmodels. com to create online profiles of each of our talents to introduce them to different clients, castings, and opportunities in the industry. We are active in Miami, FL – the United States, and Madrid – Spain. We are grateful for every person who has opened the doors for our academy and agency to achieve a significant modeling industry position.