Aida Rivas

I really feel it goes back to my five core values: spirituality, community, family, ethics, and empathy. Those are what keep me grounded when things get messy. When things start happening at companies and there's scapegoating and people are just trying to survive and not their best side comes out, that's what grounds me. It helps me stay clear in my thought. Not that I don't go through all the emotional things - I'm not above all that, I go through it all. But I try to filter more quickly through it, and I don't allow it to take me down a very deep well anymore because I've been there and I know what it can do to me. So I feel like it keeps me more stable, more steady, and as a result I can show up better for others and also show up better for myself. I'm no longer just there to do so much that it drains me - I'm also aware of what I need to fuel myself and how I need to manage my career, not just depend on someone else. It's given me almost like an out-of-body experience, this higher-level view of things. It keeps me in a very observant way about me and what's going on inside me. And that helps me show up differently and gives me ideas, so I can more calmly think about what else we need to do for the team, what else we need to do here. When things get tough between teams and relationships, I know how to calm it down, I know how to bring the goodness in people and show appreciation of what they can contribute. I think all of that stems from those values.

Someone told me way back, 'Aida, learn to keep your head above water.' At first I wasn't sure what they meant, but then I realized what that meant for me was that I could get so focused on work, and that's okay to be focused on work, but then I would miss things. When I kept my head up, I started questioning and noticing things - oh, okay, that priority changed, or the tone and the way they presented this is different, or now we're not talking about that where we were about a month ago. I started actually noticing things, and that helped me realize when they're not investing more in something anymore or when something is changing. That would help me assess what steps I need to take. I can't just sit here waiting for someone to open a space for me - what do I need to create for myself? I need to own my own career. I can't just wait for someone to decide how they're gonna manage this. And that has helped me navigate and stay, overall, most of the time, employed, because I was able to do things that otherwise I would have missed. We could just drown in work and not really see the signs on the wall. That advice helped me be curious, ask questions when you start seeing little things that start changing, and understand the whys.

It's definitely about really building relationships and nurturing them - not the networking as we say today, which sometimes just doesn't resonate well with me. It's about really taking time, because today you can't dismiss anybody. You can't say because they don't have the position right now, I'm just not going to be interested in talking to them. You just never know. I have gotten the biggest or the most valuable insights about something from people who don't have the title, or people who may know someone that ends up being valuable to me later. The biggest thing I would tell someone is really nurture and take time to thank people when they share an insight with you. Follow up with them, check in with them, how they're doing. Do those micro-connections, because number one, I do feel that they're fulfilling to ourselves, but also you never know how that thank you, that 'hello, I was thinking about you' may really touch someone. And at the end, when you start nurturing that way, the well doesn't dry up. When you go for networking where it's just for the job, people are gonna get tired after a while of 'yeah, keep me in mind for the next job.' That doesn't work that way. When you do this kind of micro-networking connections, you're going deeper, especially with where life is right now. It's always been important, but especially right now when it seems like we're dispensable, this stuff really brings us sanity. It builds trust, and again, it's part of that community. They don't have to live in your neighborhood to feel connected. That's my biggest thing - do this, and it pays so much more forward.

The biggest challenge for me is I've never really worked in marketing, and so I've always felt like things were in the name of the company. Now I have to learn to put my face out there, and that has been a very scary part. And then also what I say - this is my brand. What I'm saying is my brand. When I talk about companies that have beautiful cultures that I admire, well, I may have been an employee, but now as a CEO and founder, I need to sustain a certain culture - the culture that I would want to work at in all my relationships. So I feel like it's that consistency of really living that, and now I have that freedom. The scary part is the marketing part that I'm not used to. But at the same time, with this thing of 'I've never done this before, but I've done something similar,' I'm building from that. I'm expanding my identity. Yes, who said that you can't market? You've stepped into other places before that nothing prepared you for, and so this is just expanding my identity, learning another skill. But yeah, every time I put something out there on LinkedIn, it's like, this is my face now, and I've never been someone who puts things on LinkedIn often, and now it's like, okay, it's part of the job.

Spirituality, family, community, ethics, and empathy - these are my five core values, and for me there's no separation between work and personal life with these. They all blend together for me. I've been very intentional about these values because I don't just put them on a sticky note or whatever. I actually ask myself questions every time I'm going to make a decision or a connection - why am I doing this? Am I doing that out of a selfish thing? Not that that's wrong all the time, but I'm actually always questioning it. Am I being ethical to the max that I can on this? Am I kind of shattering that with something else? And if so, I need to ask myself why. What's really going on here? Is it insecurities? With community, it's the same thing - am I creating spaces for people? When we had our big acquisition at our last company, it was so chaotic and everybody was in survival mode. I thought, okay, I've been through a lot of transitions. What can I do here? I don't have the answers, but I can create spaces for people to voice their fears. Sometimes that's all people need - they don't need someone to give them the answer, sometimes just to be heard, to vent. There's that empathy, there's that ethics in how am I showing up in this moment in time, and what is really driving me is more spiritually focused, not just about the immediate thing of what I may want.