My story is a story about love for the fundamentals. The disciplines that are essential, the very bricks of humanity.
As a kid, it was artistic gymnastics, a sport that enables you to later in life do so many other sports, because it trains your body as a whole—strength, control, stamina.
As a teenager, it was language, or more specifically the languages of art, business, and science: my mother tongue, Spanish, to explore the art in literature; English, the language of business; and mathematics, the language of science.
As an 18-year-old young adult, it was extremely hard for me to choose a degree. It felt too early to choose a career. None of the traditional professions were appealing for me. I wasn’t interested in becoming a doctor, or an accountant, or a lawyer. I was curious about so many things.
There was very little that I could say at that time about my future career, glimpses if only: I wanted freedom. Freedom to choose my own working hours, to change and evolve, to travel the world. I did not see myself as a freelancer working on my own. I wanted to be part of something, to learn from others, to collaborate. I didn’t know about any job or company or profession that would enable me to achieve these goals.
So, I stuck to my passions and set out to study what I thought would be the toughest challenge: a degree in mathematics at UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires). Maths, the queen of sciences (maybe philosophy takes the kingship?) and the structure of thought. I did not want a career in the academia, the typical path for so many of my classmates, but I did it anyway and learnt about axiom systems, the structure of proof, the types of infinites, and the challenges to measure, calculate, and define probability or arrive at truths.
At the same time, I continued to pursue my interest in art, travel, and languages on my own, with the objective to achieve English bilingual proficiency and travel the world while I did it.
I find resonance with something that Steve Jobs famously said on his commencement speech at Stanford University: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
I trusted my choices. I trusted that I was setting myself out to solve the hardest challenge I could solve. And that maybe, one day, others would see it too.
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Recognition came in the form of a phone call in the middle of a midterm exam 13 years ago. I stepped out of the classroom of our six-hour-long midterms to hear the voice of a recruiter on the other end of the line: — We want to interview you. — I can’t, I’m on a midterm. — Then when? — Friday is fine.
And that’s when Avature found me. I didn’t know a thing about software companies then. But as the interviews went by, I found that the dots were connecting. A collaborative environment. Lots of growth opportunities, with leadership being an option down the road. Flexibility and travelling built into the culture. Working in English every day. It existed, it was there, and it had found me.
As you might know already at this point, I have always been the person to ask myself a lot of questions. And to challenge everything, including my own decisions. Paths carved by tradition, roads you are supposed to take have never been for me.
So after all this time, why stay? Why 12 years? Well, while there had been good days and bad days, that’s just being human. For me, staying for 12 years means I re-made the choice to belong to this company time and time and time and again. Not only because I found everything the 18-year-old me wanted, but also because as I grew professionally and learned more about how business works that I decided I was in the best place to build the career I wanted.
My first two roles at Avature were challenging and I learnt a lot from them. Being a consultant is a demanding job, with long hours and tough lessons. I learnt from my colleagues, my brilliant boss, Florencia Maurizi, and the most amazing customers. But I had not set out to learn one profession. After 4 years, I needed a change. A drastic one.
While reading and studying about startups, the San Francisco way, how they are built, and the challenges they face, it became evident to me that I needed to start creating a much broader skill set. And that’s how I chose my second job: recruiting. Because Software companies are all about growth, and growth can only exist with the right people.
Finding the right people for Avature and giving them a job they would thrive in made one of the most enjoyable years of my career. It was the positive emotions that come up when working with candidates and selling something you believe in: the company they would work and grow at. A place that had given me every opportunity and trusted me to change and evolve.
Another four years went by, and I also achieved the kind of strategic leadership I was after. But I didn’t feel like I belonged in HR. I started to itch again. I felt like this was a step for me and not a destination.
That’s when our COO Cristian Dujmović and CEO Dimitri Boylan made me an offer I couldn’t even have dreamed of: they gave me the chance to take the leadership of the product area in the company. I was so excited I said yes before my boss had finished the sentence. I had an instinct that I was going to love my new job.
I moved to lead our Product Management, UX Design, Technical Writing, and Translations teams without any experience in any of them. It did feel like scrambling together a plane while you jump of a cliff, just like the start-up culture preaches. But somehow it felt right. I fought my impostor syndrome, I learnt as fast as I could, and as always, I was surrounded by amazing people that supported me through this journey.
A few months into the job, it hit me: this was it. This was the right job for me. Designing a product is a bit of a science and an art too. It’s business but it’s also technology. And communication is a huge part of it as well. This was it: maths for the science of it; English, the language of business; but also, an art form and a creative space. It had everything. The dots had connected.
I’m so very proud to be a leader in this company, and so grateful to the people that have accompanied me on this 12-year ride at Avature. To the leaders, the colleges, and the ones that embraced my leadership: thank you!
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What will the next 12 years bring?