Andreza Pauleti

I think what has differentiated me is the way that I face challenges. You can give the same challenge to two people, and one will face it as a challenge while another will face it as a problem. That's the way I think I differentiate in the way that I work. I face challenges as an opportunity to explore something new. I know that change sometimes promotes difficult times, but what sets me apart is that when you tell me about a challenge, you will see in my face that I will get excited. I don't see obstacles as problems to suffer through, but rather as opportunities to grow and help others grow alongside me.

First, I need to help her discover what she loves to do, because it's very difficult to study something that you don't have passion for. My advice is: do what you love, but with some purpose. When you have a purpose, you boost the way that you do things. You do it with passion, and money is a consequence because you'll be awarded by the work that you do. For me, when I found the purpose in my life, it is where I started to shine, to be honest. So if I need to give just two pieces of advice, it would be: do what you love, with a purpose. It needs to have some purpose, because when you have that, everything else falls into place.

In the medical device field, the challenge is always how do you offer cutting-edge technology for an affordable price. Price is always a challenge. I also work in a specialty that has much more men than women, which is another challenge. There are movements in the gastroenterology specialty society to have more women applying for the specialty than men, but currently you see in the Congress that you have like 80% male and 20% female in the field. Even in the company I work for, which is a Chinese company that's been in the market for 25 years, they don't have the structured women's programs that I experienced at Cardinal Health, where they had a very structured approach to women's topics inside the company with groups of discussions and societies. Sometimes I feel like these concepts are new to them, and I try to communicate and make them understand what I'm trying to convey, but I know it's new to them. I consider this also a challenge in my field.

Fairness is the most important value to me. Every time that I see a situation where someone is not being fair with another person, it's something that is out of my control. I cannot stay without talking about it if I see some situation that is not fair. It's difficult because sometimes I see things that really affect me. For example, I had a situation a month ago when we closed the year and we have four people in sales. One person was first in sales, and the manager said congratulations, you hit the budget. But the second person in sales, who the manager showed some preference to, he spent like 10 minutes highlighting how proud they should be of second place, talking much more about second place than first place. I don't think that this is fair, and that hit me a lot. It's something that affects me and is difficult for me to manage when I see unfairness.