Category Archives: Class of 2024

What is invisible but essential about YOU? or ESADE? or Barcelona?

My extensive backpacking experience in over 30 countries can be a good topic to share. Growing up, I had never had the opportunity to travel abroad as my parents were not financially well-off. However, as a university student, I embarked on my first overseas journey, travelling around South India for two months by local bus, with the money I had saved from working part-time at a bar. This experience led me to explore even more countries. I am a holder of a Laotian elephant rider’s license, have jumped into an icy lake in Moscow, swam with wild whale sharks in the Pacific Ocean, taken a shower naked with well water in the depths of the jungle with locals, and did a lot more. These experiences were particularly special to me as I could speak no other language than Japanese for the entire time. Interacting and communicating with locals beyond the language barrier, despite the challenge, was fun like nothing else, and greatly enriched my humanity. Embracing and appreciating other cultures also helped me to better appreciate and understand my own culture as a Japanese.

When I became a mother, I thought my days of adventure were behind me, but I still regretted not being able to engage in deep conversations with people from around the world. So, I made up my mind to study English seriously during maternity leave. I learned vocabulary from NETFLIX during breastfeeding time and practised speaking to my baby, who was patient with mistakes and the same stories. As a result, we both were able to speak English together. This ultimately led me to pursue an MBA, in one of the most globally diverse settings in the world. For me, an MBA program represents the realization of a dream, despite my lack of overseas experience and language skills, but have always yearned to explore the world. And I am excited to see what other dreams and aspirations will come to fruition from here.

Wishing you all a successful and fruitful MBA journey!

What is invisible but essential about YOU? or ESADE? or Barcelona?

I was born into a Colombian family of humble origins that built a business from scratch. Creative entrepreneurs who, without many tools, managed to excel, honestly and responsibly, by contributing to the economic and social development of their family and their community.

Growing up surrounded by successful entrepreneurs has been very inspiring but also a great challenge for me. Since I started my professional journey, I have been confronting unconscious biases and working to silence an inner voice that unjustifiably insinuated that I wasn’t capable enough to face leadership roles as my parents have done.

This personal journey began by identifying that this self-perception problem was not only mine, but that it occurs in many women, who face unconscious biases, learned stereotypes, and social barriers, which make us less prone to exercising leadership. Concepts such as the glass ceiling and the impostor syndrome are present in our professional trajectories and lead to the indicators we know today.

Naming it was a great start, but what made the difference was looking around and being inspired by other women’s stories. I am not talking just about great business women or public figures, but also about the ones whose successes might not look that big, but were really impactful within their communities.

My grandmother is the one who has inspired me the most. A woman who came into this world more than a century ago, who never went to school and learned to read and write by looking through the window of the little school in the town where she was born. At the age of eight years old, she was orphaned by her parents and then by her grandparents and finally abandoned by her brother. She was a single mother with four children. She did all kinds of jobs to support her family and educated her children with values. She always reinforced the importance of education, but the only one who was able to go to university was the youngest, my father.

Today, two generations later, I am studying an MBA at one of the best business schools and I know that I owe a great part of the privilege of being here to the efforts of my grandmother. Her will, her ambition and her desire to grow, led her to building a family that supported me to become who I am today.

Thank you for being my inspiration abuelita Margarita!

What is invisible but essential about YOU? or ESADE? or Barcelona?

“One invisible but essential fact about me is that I have deep passion for mountain sports, particularly mountaineering. Not only do I derive a great deal of happiness and achievement from this sport, but I have found it to be extremely humbling and an excellent form of character building.

What started as out as a small hike up a hill in Malaysia developed into a full-blown desire to climb mountains that were bigger, higher and more challenging. At fourteen years old, I became the youngest Singaporean (a much younger Singaporean would take this title years later!) to summit Mount Kilimanjaro and in 2018, I would go on to summit Mount Elbrus in Russia. After the MBA, I aim to complete the seven summit challenge which entails climbing the highest mountain on each continent (I have five left).

I’d like to share three lessons that I have kept from my climbing endeavors over the last fifteen years.

1) You win some, you lose some. Despite the best preparation, equipment, and planning, there will always be factors outside of your control in the mountains. The weather might decide to turn bad, forcing you to abandon a summit attempt weeks in the making. The same goes for the rest of life, you are going to lose some battles; what matters is that you shrug it off quickly, avoid the blame game, and move on to the next battle.

2) This too shall pass. Every emotion – the highest of highs and lowest of lows – passes in time. Succeeding in a climb that took months of preparation feels great for a few days before the euphoria passes, and similarly, the disappointment of failing to summit a mountain passes quickly. Remember that all moments in life, both happy and sad, will eventually pass. Stay humble in your victories and stay positive in your defeats.

3) Mind over matter. While everyone has a physical limit, our brains are programmed to protect us and often cause us to think that we are at our limits when in fact, we can push much further. Summit days on mountains are often extremely long and it is common for climbers to reach a point where one’s mind becomes the biggest enemy; an inner voice telling you to give up and turn around every minute. The same goes for other aspects of life – take that step and push yourself one step further whenever your mind tells you to give up.”

What is invisible but essential about YOU? or ESADE? or Barcelona?

My life has been filled with many ups and downs that have shaped me into who I am today. Two in particular stand out in recent memory that have changed how I see the world.

I studied abroad in Turkey back in 2015 and lived there for two years. I fell in love with the people and their culture. I volunteered in the local church and taught English to pay the bills. On July 15th, only 1 km from where I was living, the Turkish military marched while fighting against thousands of Turkish citizens in an attempted coup. Government buildings were bombed from the air, there were mandatory curfews, the airport was shut down, tanks were in the streets, and F16 jets flew so close the walls of my small apartment shook throughout the night. I laid under the blankets fearfully following the news. I was scared for everyone in the streets, I was scared for all the beautiful friends I had made, and I was genuinely scared for my own life.

March 13th, 2018, I rolled into the operating room of UCSF for surgery. Paul is my cousin, and we grew up in the Philippines together. We were the same age, lived in the same neighborhood and were classmates in the same school. We were very close. When I found out that both his kidneys were failing I was heartbroken. I knew I had to do whatever I could to help. I decided to move back home to California from Turkey, so that I could start the process of donating my kidney to Paul. After months of testing, lab works, and counseling, we were ready. I knew the risks. I knew I was healthy. I knew that the probability of success was in our favor. Even though the love I felt for my cousin, and my faith in God gave me security, I was still scared.

The coup was short lived, and I went on with my everyday life after a couple of days. My cousin, Paul, now has a healthy kidney and no longer has to be attached to a machine a couple times a week. 5 years later, I am healthy and well. I moved back home to the Bay Area to donate my kidney, yet to my surprise I met the love of my life, we got married, started a family, and now have moved half-way across the world to Barcelona, so I can pursue my MBA. What is invisible but essential about me is that these two experiences, sowed with uncertainty and fear, opened into moments of beauty, love, and hope. That a poor, rural girl from the Philippines, raised by a single mom in the rough streets of Richmond, can pursue higher education in Syracuse, live her life to the fullest in Turkey, and now embrace an incredible adventure in Barcelona with her husband and son. Moments like these helped me to be content and satisfied about the life I have and further affirmed and increased my faith in God. The challenges of my life have been showered with blessings and I believe that a life well-lived is a life in service of others, where that service might be invisible but it is truly essential.

What is invisible but essential about YOU? or ESADE? or Barcelona?

To answer this question, I would like to start with my early childhood growing up in Norway. 

I grew up with my mother and her female partner in a suburban area in Oslo. This was in the early ’90s and growing up with “two mothers” was quite unusual, I would even say radical. As an adult, I look back on my upbringing and feel a strong sense of privilege having been raised by two strong women. 

I also travelled a lot as a young child. I visited China, Fiji and Australia twice before I was 12 years old and somehow, we never ended up staying in the tourist areas. My mother was always keen on showing me what she thought was the local way of life. So, in Fiji, we visited a local village and met the village chief, and in Beijing, we would get lost in the side streets and visit local artists whom we communicated with using a simple dictionary and hand signals. 

My untraditional upbringing and early childhood travels have made me very open and curious about new cultures. I, therefore, decided to take a leap of faith and move to Harbin in Northern China to study Mandarin once I finished my undergraduate studies in Finance.

I remember Harbin as a melting pot of different cultures. In my language school, half of the class came from Russia and the other half were Korean. I remember being so amazed by Korean mannerisms and especially the tradition of bowing to people older than yourself. It was also my first time interacting with Russians. I remember my Russian classmates as friendly and fun to hang out with. The school also had plenty of exchange students from Africa and I developed close friendships with people from Benin and Zambia. 

Fast forward ten years and I am currently living in Barcelona pursuing an MBA. If you see me in the hallways, you will probably never be able to detect from my appearance any of the diversity I carry with me from my lived experiences. I think this goes for a lot of the people we meet in life. It’s generally quite hard to tell what kind of invisible diversity people carry with them. I, therefore, believe that the best approach is to meet people with genuine openness and curiosity. Be kind to the people around you and dare to include new people in your circles of friends, regardless of where they come from or what they have done in life. 

Best of luck to all of you on your MBA and future endeavours in life!