Today we’d like to introduce you to Mariana Ortiz de Zarate.
Hi Mariana, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had a very happy childhood that I shared with my parents and my younger brother “G”. My youth was full of fun, sports, friends and also reading, painting, drawing and studying. How critical were those early years for my development. I enjoy being around people as much as I enjoy quiet time for reading or art. I get energized by meaningful conversations and I get inspired by books and articles. Music, videos and movies are for me forms of entertainment and also sources of inspiration. I love art in all its forms.
At the age of 17, my family’s finances took a downturn and my private school tuition, high school graduation trip and livelihood were at risk. No one could guarantee anything at that point, and the prospects of improving were gloom. I decided to do something about it and got my first job. I was lucky I got a great summer job that paid for a lot of things and gave me back hope for the future.
After graduating from high school, I struggled to pick a profession and after a year of searching, pondering and talking to a lot of people, I decided to study law. The next four years were law, dancing and working as a bilingual assistant for different employers. Until one day, I got to work for a great boss that happened to be an HR executive. Pat taught me about HR and its mission and let me get my hands around fun things like recruiting, selection, employee engagement, internal communication, etc. After a few months, I decided to change my studies and dropped out of law school for HR. I always tell Pat she is my HR godmother.
The next coming years were exciting, challenging, exhausting. I got married, had two daughters, and attended school at night. After three years, I got back to work getting my first HR job, an internship. I remember I almost lost the chance: I was too old for an internship and had two babies. I am grateful I was able to convince my future boss to take a chance on me.
After that internship, my career took off, growing, learning, changing jobs for more growth and better pay. Ten years later, I had gained experience working with North and Latin America, traveling to different countries and I wanted to expand my scope of work and accountability. I requested my previous three employers to sponsor my relocation outside Buenos Aires, but none of those requests panned out. Finally, we decided as a family to venture on our own, applying for a US investor’s visa. Emigrating to the US is a challenging life chapter for me and my family. If you want to get out of your comfort zone, this is a way of doing it!
Living and working in the US has been all we hoped for. After struggling to land my first role for a year and a half, I restarted my career building on my experience in Latin America, my grit and resilience and human approach to problem-solving. Eaton, Rockwell Automation and Trane Technologies were the three great companies I worked for since I arrived in the US. I was promoted up to Vice president and even led a global team for two years while I lived in Milwaukee, WI.
Reflecting back, I am certain that I could not have done it alone. I have developed as a leader, businesswoman, and people advocate thanks to my family support, my colleagues’ shared wisdom, and my bosses’ and team members’ feedback and coaching. Doing this for others has also been my happy place. This magical space where someone can speak freely and safely, think out loud, and ponder possibilities, is how I describe it. In January 2020, I decided I wanted to take my coaching skills to the next level, so I started my leadership coaching training at Georgetown University. Soon after, the pandemic hit and we went into lockdown. Those months of coaching training sparked the desire to do this permanently.
Eclat Global was born in September of that year with the vision of bringing the best people, organization, and coaching practices for Small and Mid-Cap Businesses in the US.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The toughest obstacles I’ve had in my life were financial. I come from very humble beginnings. When my husband and I married, we were very young and we were just getting started. We had no family money, no inheritance. We have worked and saved to the best of our ability with the tools and resources a country like Argentina can provide. We invested most of our money into education for each member of the family. We knew that the only way was to get smarter, gather the knowledge, and use our own resources to create the life we wanted.
Our secret weapon was our supporting structure. We had plenty of helping hands and hearts including my great grandmother, grandmothers, babysitters, uncles, and friends. We were able to build a happy family and two promising careers.
We migrated to the US in 2009 and had to face not only the US financial crisis but adaptation to a new country. It was the biggest challenge my family had to go through. The crisis had us spend all of our savings within the first 36 months to cover for my lack of employment and my husband’s business decline. We stayed the course and kept pushing for what we needed. After attending 27 live networking events, applying to 62 jobs, and doing 44 interviews in 36 months, I accepted the one offer that came through.
That was my stepping stone. Seven years later, I landed my first Global Director role and felt my dream of a truly international career come true. It gave me a lot of confidence to continue growing my career and improving my value-add as a people expert.
Throughout my career, I sometimes felt I could do more and that my talent was being wasted. However, many times I felt I did not know what I was doing! Until, one day, I knew, and the cycle would start all over again. Obstacles are part of life, they make you struggle, suffer even. They drive you to reflect and make decisions. The key for me has been to get clear about what was important to me and my family in each of those moments. Understanding my values, my ethics, who I am and how I want to live my life takes precedence over my ego.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Eclat Global?
Eclat Global offers best-in-class consulting services to help businesses transform their organizations, increase performance and ensure sustainable growth. We support Small and Midsize Businesses in America that need experts in people and organizations in critical moments of change. Our transformation practice partners with CEOs and their leadership teams to drive exponential growth, lead business turnarounds, or mergers and acquisitions. Our secret weapons are our Fractional Chief People Officers, Organizational Consultants, and diagnostic tools, like our own Eclat Organizational Performance Assessment™.
Our Organizational Performance practice starts with an assessment and continues with co-creating solutions with our clients around their purpose and strategic direction; their human capital management policies and programs; their execution methodology and capability and, the assessment of their current infrastructure, including the need for digital transformation.
We use a systems approach to our work at organizations, where executives and their immediate leadership teams are key. Eclat has a CEO Success practice, created to support the development of the CEO as a leader. We have a network of hundreds of certified executive coaches worldwide to partner with CEOs around the world.
For teams, we have proven team building and team coaching techniques that would take collaboration and trust to unseen levels. We love to see people grow, collaborate in harmony, and solve problems together for the betterment of the organization.
At Eclat, we are inspired by those courageous leaders who want to change the world and need trusted partners like ourselves to do so. We value life, inclusion, friendship, and fear-free environments where people can innovate and take risks. We can offer a team of experienced global people experts to help you master the human experience in your organization.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Mentors are experienced and trusted advisers. There are a lot of possible mentors out there, however, the key is to get someone you admire inspired to give you their time and knowledge. If you trust this person in the subject matter you need mentorship in, there you go! You found a possible mentor!
My mentors have been my bosses, my colleagues, my direct team, and even my vendors
The challenge now is to get on that persons’ agenda. Once you get the time to sit with them, make their time worth it. Prepare the conversation. Be clear about what you want the outcome to be, what you are looking to learn, and ask thoughtful questions. Ask about things you could only get from the conversation with them, not something you could look up on the internet.
I do not think you need to offer anything in return, rather than active listening, reflection, and gratitude for the exchange. Mentors do this for people they like and think are capable of understanding them.
They are energized by people who would listen and use their advice to advance in their lives and careers. Do keep your mentors updated on your progress. That is the best retribution you can offer to them.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.eclatgbl.com
