LatinX MBAs = Excellence
Our community sizzles! Last November, I attended the incredibly well-organized, inaugural LatinX MBA alumni leadership summit hosted at Amazon Studios in Los Angeles and sponsored by TPG, Fidelity Investments, Google, Capital Group, Morrison Foerster Foundation, and ServiceNow.
The objective was to facilitate quality interactions and deeper connections among LatinX community members around the topic of technology and innovation. What impressed me most was how everyone brought with them a commitment to community and family, as well as high standards of excellence to their professional pursuits. We bring our whole selves to careers of impact and it is logical that it includes the heart and soul of what drives us as people, our loved ones and the greater community.
Starting off the summit was a panel on the LatinX founder journey. This is one of my favorite topics in my own startup incubation programming. Each one of us faces struggles, inflection points, and re-evaluation of lessons learned in the context of who we are and would like to be.
Super organizer, Nancy Torres, Partner at Ulu Ventures, led this first panel featuring Tanya Menendez, Co-Founder & CEO of Snowball Wealth, Felix Ruano, Co-Founder & President of Subject, and Isaac Saldana, CEO of Memo. All faced family responsibilities weighing in on their decisions to leave high paying roles at established organizations to start something new and meaningful to them which has a positive impact on our community while delivering alpha to investors.
Carmen Palafox, Founding Partner of 2045 Ventures, led a discussion on market assessment in the due diligence of investing in new ventures. David Pérez-Hernández, Principal at Roble Ventures, moderated a discussion on career trajectories across tech featuring Magali Ramirez, Finance Manager at Zoominfo, Alejandro Aguirre, Software Engineer at WorkWhile, and David J. Marrero, MBA, Corporate Strategist at Splunk. This was followed by a valuable session on values and vision led by Danae Sterental, Founder of HereWe & Culture Partner at Concrete Rose Capital.
Danae’s session, similar to programming she develops and teaches at Stanford’s GSB, focused on having us visualize where we saw ourselves as people and professionals in seven years and the choices and values influencing that path. Danae also addressed assessment techniques of company culture. In my experience as advisor and investor, culture can make or break an organization regardless of the efficacy of the solution and pools of funding.
The following panel featured an interesting conversation on the next wave in AI led by Andrew Mairena, Group Product Manager at Moveworks and Arun Agarwal, Serial Founder and Partner at the growth stage and private equity firm TPG.
Concluding the terrific sessions during our cocktail reception at UCLA, Nancy Torres chatted with Fidel Vargas, Serial Founder and President & CEO of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.
Fidel’s story really resonated with me. He started school in the US with minimal English fluency, excelled in a large family, attended Harvard as an undergraduate and for business school, and found himself at a crossroads where he put everything on the line to pursue a new dream. It is common for people to talk about how everything aligned and reflect on the successes with a few bumps along the way. In contrast, Fidel talked about his low point of returning home after many successes to live at his crowded parents’ house with three kids in tow at financial bottom. He pressed forward, worked extremely hard despite challenging circumstances, and continuously gave back to the people and community to enable their dreams.
We all face some pretty tough times at some point. It is a test of our character and an indication of our values to press forward while enabling our community members along the way. We do this while still being there for the family that loves us so much. In Danae’s seven year visualization exercise, everyone thought of family and community first.
Our humanity is what drives our excellence in all areas.
Adelante!