I’m a Colombian quadruplet who was raised in Miami and have lived in several cities, including New York, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Milan, and Mexico City, as a travel correspondent.

I currently consult on business development and vendor outreach for a commercial kitchen equipment and remodeling firm, and I write first person articles for magazines and newspapers on the side.

I've been published in 100+ outlets, including Business Insider, Metro, WIRED, The New York Times, HuffPost, Vice, Fast Company, PopSugar, Observer, Chicago Tribune, Reader’s Digest UK, Penguin Random House UK, Men’s Journal, Google Arts & Culture. My work has been featured on TV, nominated for awards, taught at universities, and translated into five languages.

If you want to get to know my mind and heart more, you’re in for a treat if you keep scrolling...

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I was a luxury proposal planner. I felt more like the secret service than cupid

‘You don’t think a scavenger hunt is romantic?’ asked my client Michael*. He’d just suggested sending his girlfriend on a wild goose chase across Manhattan, retrieving clues from his exes in the order he’d dated them – I was horrified.

But as a proposal planner, my role was to focus on logistics rather than acting as a gatekeeper of perceived ‘romance’.

Luckily, most men (and a few women) who came to my company for help weren’t married to their own ideas and I was usually able to provide them

The Sex Appeal of Dating a Plant Dad

Last summer, when my brother dropped off two giant plants for me to babysit while he moved to the middle of the jungle in Colombia for two months, I warned him it wouldn't be my fault if they died. I didn't care for children or animals: the closest I'd ever come to having a pet as an adult was my collection of leather bags. But as the days passed, I was caught off guard by the feelings I developed for those plants.
My god, how wrong I'd been to dismiss plants as an unnecessary responsibility tha...

I never expected my one-night stand to pursue me after our casual fling

On our first date, John* hit every possible green flag like my attraction was a video game he’d already mastered.
For starters, he picked me up before dinner, was easy to talk to or sit in silence with, and focused on every word that came out of my mouth in a way that made me want to kiss him.
The thing is, I’d already done the latter with him – and then some. Five months earlier, to be exact.
Our paths had first crossed as two anonymous torsos among many on Grindr in December 2024.
On a fatef...

Business Insider

I threw a dinner party to avoid spending money on holiday gifts for friends. Now, it's my annual tradition.

In 2018, I considered my army of close friends a blessing — until December rolled around. Suddenly, these friendships came with an overhead I couldn't afford, just for the sake of tradition.

Dozens of women who considered me their gay best friend sounded great until it was time to exchange presents with all of them during the holidays. I was too cheap to buy all my friends expensive Christmas gifts but too classy to give them something, well, cheap. I had also grown tired of spending $50 on som...

Nearing 30 And Single, I Decided To Date 4 Men From My Past. Here's How It Went.

I’ve lived in New York for nearly 10 years, meaning many random men have my phone number. But I prided myself on having met a lot of eligible bachelors; I started to wonder if I had met them at the wrong time, after four years of being off-market.

I'm a quadruplet - my brothers and I couldn't be more different

‘Bro, you’re just using being a quadruplet to get your five minutes of fame,’ Pablo complained.
‘And three days of luxury in a chateau!’ I added quickly.
It was May 2024 and I’d been trying to convince my three brothers that appearing on the Vanderpump Rules spin-off, Vanderpump Villa, was indeed a good thing.
I argued we’d be ‘guests of honour’, mere spectators to any drama in the show – unlike the hotel staff who were on the payroll for the plot – and that it was an obvious opportunity.
‘I sug...

Vice (translated into 5 languages)

What It’s Like To Be a Quadruplet

Our lives began in the Colombian capital of Bogotá simultaneously, my heart beating to the same rhythm as three others. The media celebrated the birth of my brothers and me in 1994 as if it were a miracle. It's weird to receive praise for just being born, but newspapers and magazines printed the news as such: "The first quadruplets safely delivered in 30 years."

Tamron Hall (ABC Network)

Jamie Valentino joins a panel on the"Tamron Hall" show to candidly discuss dating struggles

The author reflects on his controversial HuffPost article about rekindling with exes.

The New York Times

Tiny Love Stories: 'He insisted on keeping things casual'

The clock strikes 6 a.m., and I’ve watched Paul sleep for nearly an hour. It’s the only time he seems helpless, incapable of hurting me. Before I parachuted into his Los Angeles world from Minneapolis for the weekend, he insisted on keeping things casual to make long-distance work. But that condition didn’t stop me from imagining our future together, once we could commit to FaceTiming more than three times a day. I start kissing his body, but he complains it’s too early. He turns over, and I cud...

Love at first lust: A young writer explores a lasting love denied… or is that deferred?

Jared’s profile read 34 years old, six foot one, and muscular. As he opened the door, I saw an honest person. I didn’t fall in love with him immediately, but every visual detail indicated that I could. He looked beautiful in the most masculine ways: broad shoulders, full hair, a confident presence, immaculate posture and a seductive half-smile. At 19, I didn’t understand love—I usually hid from it—but I could still pick it out of a lineup. “He’s the one,” I thought immediately.

Elite Daily (Pride month cover story)

Once I Came Out, Dating Suddenly Became So Hot... And Complicated

I wasn’t opposed to casual sex, but I wanted romance, too. I craved everything: the white picket fence with a sex swing inside the house. Or, at the very least, sex and a date. I didn’t necessarily care about the order.

Business Insider

I flew next to a family, and they taught me to appreciate what parents do for their kids.

A downside to traveling alone is being squeezed between random people during transit, but I was thankful that had never happened with kids. I'm not the first childless person to believe there should be a separation between happy individuals and burdened families.

Then one day I sat next to a sick person. She wouldn't stop wheezing and coughing, and I cursed the day she was born because she hadn't canceled her flight. It was post-COVID, so airlines were no longer required to feign concern for th...

Business Insider

My childhood friend invited me to their destination wedding. I turned it down because I wasn't given a plus-one.

When I was invited to a friend's three-day wedding celebration in Colombia, I was ready to book my flights. We'd met in high school more than a decade ago, and though we weren't as close as we once were because of time and distance, I felt like I wouldn't miss it for the world. As I looked into the logistics, I was more hesitant, but still on board. It would cost me more than $2,000 for flights from the Midwest to Colombia and back, plus hotel accommodations. I changed my mind, however, once...

Business Insider

I stayed at an Airbnb with a pet pig and realized I liked dogs better

After a month of living alone in Medellin, Colombia, I decided I wanted to try to make local friends and booked my second month there with a roommate.
I had been third-wheeling my best friend and her boyfriend, also expats, and I realized I needed pals who weren't madly in love. I was beginning to feel like a golden retriever, always waiting for them to play.

The Everlasting Appeal of The Real Housewives

I used to be cynical about watching The Real Housewives until I unexpectedly found myself inside New York’s Sonja Morgan’s hotel room for her Halloween party at the Kimpton in 2018. Her hairstylist invited me, as Morgan embraced a more-the-merrier mentality for gays.

I was shirtless, and Morgan quipped about my nipples, managing to partake in several conversations simultaneously. Production made every extraneous person sign a release waiver before a crew member yelled, “Action!” Countess Luan d

Jamie Valentino’s Favorite Luxury Gifts for Your Lover

We don’t blame you for not knowing what to buy the special guy(s) in your life. We get it! Men are harder to shop for than women because it’s tougher to impress them with shiny things. Most prefer function rather than overpriced razzle dazzle. Well, we’re here to say there’s no reason you can’t have quality design and craftsmanship with utility. East End Taste summoned former luxury proposal planner and men’s lifestyle expert Jamie Valentino to curate the best gifts from 300 submissions across p...

The Churches of Artificial Intelligence

Although artificial intelligence may seem on its way to omnipotence today, it was in 2015 that former Google executive Anthony Levandowski became the first to promote AI as God and file the paperwork to register the church. He founded Way of the Future as a nonprofit religious corporation in California, with the mission to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence, and through understanding and worship of the Godhead, contribute to the betterment of socie...

In Praise of AI-Generated Pickup Lines

We're at the height of a global technological revolution, and yet this is the modern state of dating: You swipe left, swipe left again, and again, and again—in fact, you mind-numbingly swipe left so many times that when the app finally lands on a person you deem worthy of swiping right, you accidentally swipe left on them, too. You continue swiping.

My thumbs are bloody with disappointment that dating apps, once the face of innovation, have become relics of the status quo. But I've seen the lig

My Partner and I Were In A Throuple With Alcohol

I cut my first date with Brandon short, rushing off to an editor’s birthday dinner and a New York Fashion Week after-party. So imagine my shock when I woke up in his bed, with no memory of how I’d gotten there. Feeling disoriented, I hastily made my exit.

Eaten Magazine (print)

The Evolution and Democratization of Food Criticism

No matter where you look online, opinions about food, the places serving it, and eating it are unavoidable. Yet, the line between expertise and criticism has become increasingly blurred, if not erased.

‘You could feel the energy like an earthquake’: Argentina’s World Cup win offers welcome optimism for visitors

During the World Cup, you could hear the screams of Argentines from every block in Buenos Aires on match days. You didn’t need to watch Argentina play to keep track of the score.

I am not a sports person – what felt to me like mob mentality, rooting for your colour, has never appealed. But my Porteño (Buenos Aires local) friends threatened to exile me if I didn’t participate in what I hadn’t grasped was history in the making.

The first time Argentina were declared World Champions was in 1978 o

Business Insider

I avoided all-inclusive resorts for years until I unknowingly stayed in one. I hate that I loved it.

For years, I viewed the term "all-inclusive" as a travel red flag, signifying an overpriced experience that would be sacrificing quality for gluttony.

When I'd think of all-inclusive resorts, I'd picture a generic space filled with plentiful (but just OK) amenities for the masses and travelers binge-eating at bland buffets or slamming back enough cocktails to get their money's worth.

To be fair, these were my assumptions mostly built on stereotypes. I'd never been to an all-inclusive because I...

Business Insider

As a gay man, I partied with only queer women for the first time. It changed the way I act in gay spaces.

I watched Monica affix black tape "X's" to her nipples and don a translucent crop top that showcased her arm tattoos of a tiger and a snake. I realized that my appreciation for her body art — rather than her breasts — was yet another confirmation of my homosexuality.

"Will there be cute guys tonight?" I asked hopefully.

Monica, applying pink eyeshadow, responded matter-of-factly. "It is a lesbian party.'"

Midwest Design (inaugural print issue)

What Does a $100,000 Kitchen Look Like?

No two humble (or not-so-humble) abodes are created equal. For homeowners tackling the most luxurious remodeling project of all—the kitchen—luxury encapsulates a daily feeling shaped by your tastes, wants, and needs, along with that certain je ne sais quoi that distinguishes a space executed with the finest materials and impeccable craftsmanship. Of course, this brings us to money—the only vehicle that can deliver the ubiquitous promise of your dream kitchen. We asked local experts where a $100,000 budget stands in today’s market and what clients can expect for a kitchen remodel that’s one zero shy of a million.

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