Roots

As you know, there are relatively few Latina CEOs and even fewer Latina heads of organizations that helped to incubate tech companies. You're a unicorn in that sense. There is a power in diversity. Can you talk about what that power is?

Yeah. I think that bringing that perspective that is not typical, it's so critical. And when you think about different people, and coming from different backgrounds, bringing different worldviews, I think it's so critical in helping advance any project, any startup, any culture. And so for me specifically, I grew up in Ecuador. I brought in my love and my passion for the environment. I also grew up in a low income, single mother household. So I come from the perspective of understanding the reality of economic struggle. I also come from growing up in a very diverse environment, where I was in a public high school in Chicago. And so I think that my perspective and the struggles that I've had to face and the perseverance that I've had to undertake to advance in life have enabled me to be a lot more understanding of the sensitivities that around people, that's around the world, and also being able to create a world that I want to live in, and to give other people those opportunities that I didn't have growing up, and to enable folks to have a seat at the table, to have mentorship, to have funding. And so in a way, I built SOA as the platform that I wish I had growing up, that would have helped me get so much further in life at an early age, that didn't exist for me.

Do you ever feel like your race or your ethnicity is a factor in any of the things you do, or you try to just not focus too much on that? Because I've heard arguments on both sides, you know, some don't want that to be a focus in their careers, others really want to put it more front and center to say, hey, look, there are things that I have encountered as a person of color, and these are the things that I can help bring to the workplace and really infuse into the culture of a workplace.

would say that my perspective on that is all around just bringing inclusivity to top of the line and having those conversations. So I do think that the fact that I came from a different country influences my mentality of having a more international worldview. And so I do bring that to the table when it's about bringing other people into the conversation. But I don't think that it has influenced me in paving the path that has paved, right, because I do also consider myself more American, given that I grew up in the US and I came to the US at the age of seven. So I'm able to look at both worlds equally so, seeing the country where I was born and also the country where I grew up.