Alejandra Vergara, FTMBA 22 - Finding Her Path By Following Intuition

OneHaas

Alejandra is an Associate at Bee Partners. Her infinite curiosity and strategic thinking brought her to Asset Management. Her quest for large-scale impact and a greater connection with the people she supports attracted her to Venture Capital.

Alejandra was born and raised in Chile. Her family spent some time here in the US before going back, where she reconnected with her roots.

In this episode, Alejandra shares her origin story, her career path from finance to venture capital, and why she pursued an MBA even with an already successful career.

We also hear about Alejandra's passion as an endurance athlete and how the things she has learned through her training experiences align with what she does in her current role at Bee Partners.

Episode Quotes:

On getting an MBA

It was something that I had always been thinking in the back end. And when I started having these questions of what's next and I just really hated visualizing and seeing what was coming next. It was all great, but I didn't want to have that level of certainty and have everything so figured out, being 20-something. And so, that's when I realized I want to change and I want something drastically different, not just a pivot or a tack that's similar to what I'm already doing.

On taking her MBA during the pandemic

I saw coming to business school during the pandemic as a good opportunity in the sense that a lot of things were going to change. And being a student, I felt, was the best way to experience that change and really learn about things that were going to be dramatically different, if we were able to get out of it or when we got out of it. And so, I saw it as a great opportunity to be a student rather than to be working and trying to do everything business as usual when the world was not business as usual.

Parallels between her experiences as an endurance athlete and her current role

The first thing is it's a marathon, not a sprint. And that means that you probably want things to happen now, but it's really important to just focus on what you have in front of you, have a vision of what you want the future to look like, what you want success to look like, but really hold it there, because you can't do both at the beginning. You have to focus on the present moment. And as you make progress, you start incorporating that future vision into whatever it is you're doing. But in the beginning, it's just about where am I. And what does the next short iteration cycle look like?

Alejandra's word of wisdom to the Haas community

I feel like every important decision that I've had to make, although I've done a lot of rational thinking, in the end, it comes down to intuition. And I think that's my inspiration here.

When you have to decide between different paths, rationality doesn't really help. Being rational helps you look at pros and cons, but you can very quickly and easily trick yourself into thinking this option is right, and then two seconds later saying, "No, no, no, but this one is better because of another reason."

And so, when you're thinking about these broader scale paths or large decisions, it's really about your gut, honestly. And then rationalization is great for execution. It's great for, “I decided my path. And now, let me break this down, figure out where I want to go from here.” But listen to what you feel. I think connecting with your inner self and having that awareness — internal and external awareness — can go a really, really long way.

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