Profile

I have two jobs.  Catalista is a company and a mobile platform that connects people in a meaningful way with their community. We want to help close the service gap. We want to help people connect. The product we have out now on Android and the iPhone allows you to find volunteer opportunities straight from your phone. Based on your location, you can find out what’s going on in your neighborhood. You can look for things, schedule things, keep track of your good deed and invite your friends on Facebook.I’m responsible for the entire company. 

I keep the train running. I make sure the application is working every day and help our engineer fix things if they are broken. I try to get customers. I identify people who may be interested in buying the service.  I identify folks who might want to write about it or talk about it. I spend a lot of my time meeting a lot of different people who want to help. I also ask people for money who are inspired by what we are trying to do.  

I’m also a consultant in the non-profit and philanthropic community. I help people figure out what to do with their resources. For people who have charitable money to give away, I help them figure out how to do that. For non-profits, I help them determine how to spend their money strategically. Part of my time is spent planning for foundations and non-profits about what they are going to do in the future, what they are really good at, identifying how they can improve, and identifying opportunities. I help them make decisions about how to support really good work by nonprofits and charities.

I have an office. I’ve been really lucky. I use space from one of my clients. They have been very generous and I have office space. I go to work most days at an office, but sometimes I work from home, too.

I work with really interesting people. I work with the President of the foundation and the CFO. I’m having meetings every day with different folks like technical engineers to young people who run large non-profits who are interested in how to use the mobile phone. I work with younger entrepreneurs with great ideas because that’s who we like to support with philanthropy. We give them their first chunk of money. I do a lot of coaching on the phone.

For both jobs, being able to do things without someone telling you to do them is an enormous requirement when you are doing a job by yourself or you are starting something.

The ability to scan information quickly, come to a conclusion and going for it is important.

The ability to change the course when something is not working is important. You have to flexible. You can’t have your ego tied up in things. It’s always important to take a moment and ask yourself, “Why am I feeling weird? Is it because I’m proud?” It usually is pride and you just have to get over it and move on.

I work a lot because a lot of my job is networking. If I’m not in the office, I go out and meet with lots of people. If you count networking, which is part of my job, I usually work from 9 to 9—about 12 hours.  I like to talk to people.

Currently, I don’t travel much. In my previous consulting job I traveled a lot. I traveled too much which is in part why I started my own thing.

I love the flexibility. I have written on my wall, “I want to build something that matters.” I like doing it. I’ve learned that I’m an experience gatherer. I love that I’m part of a system that is trying to make the world a better place.

I don’t like working by myself.

Sometimes you get that pit in your stomach because you think, “Oh my God, I don’t have a business model.”

People and the view.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve met some pretty incredible people. I think surrounding yourself with interesting people with interesting backgrounds and great stories in really inspiring.  I like living here in San Francisco. The views are beautiful.

For work, it’s so intertwined. My two biggest influences are two of my friends. One of them is Alicia Morga who is also profiled on lookilulu.  The power of seeing women come into their own and work really hard both on their businesses and on their personal selves is really inspiring.  It’s hard not to be influenced by that. If you are around good people you pick up good habits.

Don’t be afraid to fail. A great baseball player misses 7 out of 10 swings.
It’s always a learning experience. If you succeed, great. If you fail, you learn.

Also when I was going through a hard time when I was quitting jobs because I couldn’t find what I wanted to do, my father told me, “Your job should do one of two things. First, it should either pay for what you want to do with your life or be what you want to do with your life. But if you are kind of in the half-way, it’s not going to work for you.”

Nobody remembers what you wore yesterday.

Do what you want to do.
Don’t be afraid of changing your mind.
Everything works out in the end.
It can only get better.
Be nice to each other. Nice girls win.

Politics.  I’m also on the board of an organization called Youth Speaks that is a Spoken Word organization. It’s an after school program where young people learn how to express themselves through the use of spoken word. It sponsors a poetry slam where about 30 teams come together. HBO did a 7 part documentary about us last year.

Cooking. Flower arranging. Politics.

No, because everything happens for a reason.

I was born and raised in Mexico. 

I came to the United States for college. I went to Pomona College in California, a small liberal arts college. I studied International Relations. 

After college, I went to Washington and got involved in the International scene. I worked in the Organization of American States, which is like the UN but for the Americas that spans from Canada all the way to Argentina and Patagonia. I worked in the Human Rights Department. I also worked in a unit called the Promotion of Democracy. I was very interested in ways to get people engaged in their community and voting. That was a huge interest of mine. I also worked for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. I worked in Haiti for a couple of months working on how to build a country where people have the right to vote and express their opinions. 

I went to graduate school at the Columbia School of International Affairs. I saw the problems that were happening and thought that the private sector has to play a big role democracy and economic prosperity. If it’s just the UN or the non-profit sector, it’s never going to happen. You have to have the private sector involved. 

After graduate school, I became a Presidential Management Fellow. You can apply for the fellowship program after graduate school. There are 100 positions throughout the Government with Cabinet members. The job is really to be on the fast track and be either a policy analyst or a senior aide. I went to Washington DC. I had been doing work around child labor. My plan was to do the fellowship for two years and go and work for Nike. I wanted to figure out how to have Nike treat children fairly when they are making something like soccer balls. But, when I started working in DC, I hated it. It was terrible. I got there and realized that it wasn’t for me. It was a really hard time for me. It was the first time I had to quit a job when I decided that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. 

I went through three different jobs after graduate school because I just couldn’t find what I wanted to do. I worked in the private sector for the Advisory Board which I think is now called the Corporate Strategy Board. It was really intellectually stimulating for me and I loved being in the private sector. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t figure out what the point was because I was just helping companies to just make more money. So I went back to New York. 

I didn’t know what philanthropy was until I ran across a company that was a consulting firm. It was a private company that was working in the public sphere. They said they were looking for consultants to work with foundations, non-profits and companies. I was put on the philanthropy and corporate team. Ever since then I’ve been working in that field. 

I moved to San Francisco, California a few days before September 11, 2001 to start the west coast office of this consulting company. Needless to say it didn’t go too well. 

So I started my own little company. A foundation called Tides liked my work and hired me. About two years later I was asked to join a company called the New Progressive Coalition that was really engaged in figuring out how to encourage philanthrophy or progressive political giving among people who weren’t millionaires. That’s what I did for a couple years. 

I left that company and I’ve been doing this since then.

I didn't realize that I was an entrepreneur until about four years ago. I grew up in a house where I didn't know if was an option. They were doctors and journalists. I took a very different path. We were the first kids to be in the States. I didn't know you could work in a bank. I didn't know you could ask people for money. I knew you could work for yourself but I didn't know you could build a company.

I think the thread is that I want to make a difference and I want to do it my way.

One of the biggest challenges was my mom was diagnosed with Schizophrenia only last year but she has had it her whole life. It was tough growing up in a house and not knowing that something was off and not understanding how that affected my own ability to have relationships with people whether romantic relationships, personal relationships or work relationships. Because there is such a strong mental illness component in my family sometimes I've had to get on medicine for depression. That has been a big challenge because most people don't talk about it. Girls get it a lot and nobody talks about it. It's a lot of moping around and wearing black when you could be a lot happier.