Behind the Story of a Women Leader
story by: Elsa cavazos
Graciela Ivonne Monteagudo speaks with wisdom and knowledge, as she looks back on her past. Every move she decided to make has led her to where she is today, which has allowed her to spread awareness on executive culture, specifically for women. Now, she teaches others how to be as successful as her.
Graciela was born and raised in Mexico City. Monteaguado considers herself an engineer but at the same time she doesn't. “I never worked as an engineer but I always thought as an engineer. My thinking is like that, its analytical and I love numbers,” she said.
She recalls having a happy, middle class childhood. There were two books that marked her while growing up and inspired her as well.
“This book called the Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir really opened my eyes to a lot of things I didnt realize in terms of history of women and I read it when I was 16 and I think I never looked at the world the same way,” she said.
“Also, Atlas shrugged from Ayn Rand, I had no idea of how significant it was in the U.S. my father gave it to me and I love the fact the main character is a woman and it is another book that really influenced me growing up,” Monteaguado said.
Because of her engineering background, she said she never thought she would turn out to be a marketer. Today, Graciela credits her fascination about psychology and really understanding how people think and how to influence them. "Marketing is in a way a psychology of the masses,” Monteaguado said.
Her first job in marketing trained her to be a mini general manager, she said. Her superiors expected her to know everything, to lead the strategy and know her numbers. At the same time, she remembers the crowd being quite young for what was the norm back then.
Her success continued to grow with time and led her to bigger roles. Graciela grew to become a general manager.
“I was responsible to be the head of the business and set the tone in the culture. I started working on understanding how I could impact the culture of my business and everyone that reported into me,” Monteaguado said.
As a country manager, she had a group of people with different functions, men and women which she considered to be very balanced.
“I started doing my first steps in terms of trying to drive my organization. I learned a lot of diversity and inclusion and best practices,” she said.
Graciela joined the Asociacion Mexicana De Mujeres Ejecutivas, where she met other women managers and directors. By meeting these other women, she saw how different their experiences were from hers.
Years went by and she was able to attend the International Women’s Forum fellows program in which she was the first Latin American woman to do so.
“I began to realize the barriers women face are very much the same everywhere in the world. What varies is the degree of intensity, there are places where the glass ceiling starts at school,” she said.
It was then when Graciela learned about the difficulties in different places in the world and started a legacy project.
“I summarized all the learnings and did a one hour conference I gave to lots of women.,” she said. She also began presenting in companies both in the U.S. and internationally.
Graciela likes to ask women, “While the world changes what can you do for yourself ?" She stresses on teaching women how to present themselves as executives and have authority. Something even the most skillful woman can lack off.
“Understanding leadership style, women in business are walking a very fine line. If you are too soft it's bad and if you are too aggressive it's bad too,” she said.
After working for Sam's Club Mexico and Walmart, Mead Johnson offered her the opportunity to run their North America business in Chicago. She decided to take it and made the permanent decision to stay in the U.S.
“I didn't know how they would react to having me there. I had curiosity about how they would receive me,” Monteaguado said.
Graciela knew that a core target audience were Hispanics like her and wanted to understand more about it
This led her to become CEO of Lala U.S. She began to realize the target audience was people like her and wanted to understand more about. She identified the power of mul- ticulturalism.
“Businesses do not understand how big and important the hispanic market is,” she said.
Though she is a busy woman, it has not been too hard to balance it all out.
“I always had a balanced life, I work to live and always wanted to be successful. I don’t like to take life for granted,” she said.
“When it comes to being a woman, "you need to find someone who is supportive and treats you as an equal partner in the whole sense of the word,” Monteaguado said.