All the financial tools that we use right now were built by men
You are also passionate about having more women in leading roles of fintech. What do you think needs to happen for this to be achieved?
were building great things, and that became really inspiring for me. It was hard for me to figure out how to transition from my position as a journalist to becoming a businesswoman. It was not an easy path for me from a theoretical point of view – I didn’t know how to approach that transition. I left my job as a journalist and went to work for a publishing house that wanted to create a digital spin-off; I was in charge of building that spin-off. It was a great step towards what I wanted to do, and once I was there, I started to play with different tools and methodologies of the startup world. Once I got to understand all of these methodologies, I found them really interesting. I thought perhaps there were more tools that I didn’t know about but that could help me when I was trying to build something from scratch. I went to my university, which was ORT Uruguay. I just wanted to see what its offer was, in terms of postgraduate studies. I found out that ORT offered a master’s programme for managing tech companies and I really loved that. Later, that became an MBA with a specialisation in tech, and in global businesses, and that was the MBA that I took. It was super useful in terms of the tools it gave me, as well as the ability to deep dive into the different areas of the business that I was trying to build. There was always great feedback from professors and other students in the MBA. Whatever assignment I had to do,
I always related it back to Prometeo, and that turned out to be really helpful. Studying the MBA was a great step in my professional development. What advice would you give someone thinking about completing their MBA? I always give this advice, especially to women, but I think that it applies to anyone. We are pretty much used to investing in things such as cars or houses or properties or savings, but I’ve always tried to invest in myself. For example, I paid for my own English lessons, I paid for my own university degree and then the MBA. I think, for me, that has been always a great investment. I can take all the responsibility for it, making it and then how it performs. It’s something that I always recommend: don’t hesitate to invest in yourself because I think that you are your best tool. What was your most important learning from doing your MBA? From a professional perspective, it turned out to be how tech-enabled businesses have a different set of rules to other kinds of businesses. One of the teachers gave me the following advice in a seminar: ‘You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you’re able to negotiate’. For me, it was really impactful because sometimes you get frustrated by what you’re receiving, but it’s just that you are not being able to negotiate something better.
I am really passionate about this and think that something that is striking about Latin America is that it’s one of the places that more women are jumping into the space and creating solutions; perhaps three times as many as in regions such as Europe or the US. I’m strongly committed to encouraging more women to come into the fintech space. I think that all the financial tools we use right now were built by men. There’s an enormous opportunity for women to understand what products and services haven’t been built yet and can attend the particular needs of other women, I think that there’s an enormous opportunity for diverse teams to approach the financial sector and fill the gaps where there still aren’t any solutions. I am really curious about what the financial future will look like once we have in place tools that have been developed from a more open and diverse perspective. Why did you choose to complete an MBA programme? I majored in journalism, and although I loved it, I wanted to be on the other side – I wanted to be building something and not just witnessing it. I loved hearing the fantastic stories of amazing entrepreneurs or businesspeople who
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Ambition | BE IN BRILLIANT COMPANY
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