Her Story
About Dominga
I came from Nicaragua where I had a background in education and was the director of group sales and events. When I moved to the U.S. in October 2023, I initially thought I'd return to teaching, but curriculum differences in Texas led me to explore tech sales instead. My husband and friends in tech encouraged me, and though I had no prior inclination for it, I decided to try because I saw it as a space to learn and work with people from diverse backgrounds. I started as an SDR at the beginning of 2024 and worked my way up to senior SDR, team lead, and now SDR manager within just over two years. I currently manage around 8 SDRs across 3 different products at a company in Austin. The most challenging part of my role is understanding that even though I can have a plan for the whole SDR organization, I need individual plans for each person, taking into consideration their skills and weaknesses. This approach comes from my background in education, where I learned that not everyone learns the same way. To me, culture is huge, and I try to make the work environment as fun as possible with music, power hours, and activities, because I believe the work relationship is like any other relationship - if I keep the job relationship between my SDRs and my company great, they're going to try to do their best as well.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Dominga
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is to understand that feedback is an opportunity for you to grow and be better in whatever task or whatever role you're doing. People need to understand feedback - it's not something that you should take like someone's trying to hurt you or that you think you're doing something wrong. No, it's actually something that is going to allow you to grow. This was advice that was given to me at a young age, when I used to get feedback and I felt like, oh no, I'm so... no, no, no. But when I changed that mindset, absolutely everything changed. It improved every relationship in my life - if I'm with a trainer at the gym, with my husband, with my friends, with my family - it works in every aspect of your life. Every time someone provides feedback, take it under consideration.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I know there's a big thing regarding the imposter syndrome. Very few times I've felt like that has been a part of me, but every time that started entering my mind - you know, like, oh, maybe you're not gonna be as great as this person, or maybe you're not gonna be able to... - any time that something like that happened, I created a plan. I instantly shut down those thoughts by creating a plan of what is it that I need to do, what are the steps that I need to take in order to get to that goal, and to get to that thing that, for some reason, for a moment, I thought I'm not going to be able to make it. If you just leave it in your mind, if you just leave that thought in your mind and you don't create a path towards getting to that goal, it's not gonna happen. So just create step one, step two, step three, step four, and eventually you're gonna get to step five, which is your goal, and suddenly you were able to do it. It might be step 6, step 7, so at least you have to add something extra, but eventually you're gonna get there.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
To me, one of the biggest values is to be respectful and treat others the way you would like to be treated. There's no way you're going to grow and maintain relationships if you don't understand that the way you treat others is eventually going to have an impact in the communication and the relationship you have with the people around you. So you need to be very aware. At the same time, we all have personal lives, and at some point, one of the people that you work with might not be performing at the level they should be, or something's happening. Try to dig a little deeper into what's happening with this person, and you're going to find out that probably there's something in the background that maybe you can provide some support for. I understand this as well because there's been personal stuff that happened to me, and one of the greatest things that I've had from leaders and mentors is that they allowed me to take a break, or take a breath, or whatever, in order to handle that, and then go back to it. But if those people wouldn't have had that level of empathy, I don't think things would have worked the way it did.
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