Her Story
About Elle
Elle Esparza serves as a Sales Executive with Minutemen HR, having joined the team in the last week of April. She brings approximately 10 years of experience in the civilian sector, with a career path that includes key roles in community engagement, marketing, and communications. At a nonprofit organization that is the largest hunger relief group in Northern Illinois, she assumed development responsibilities during a period of team changes and later became the first Hispanic female to lead the development department, aided by connections facilitated by the former First Lady of Aurora. She then served as Director of Community Engagement for Apache Service and Supply in downtown Chicago, working with five-time Golden Glove champion George Pacheco, overseeing award-related efforts, ghostwriting for executives, and securing features in Latino and Hispanic publications. Subsequently, at Computer Aided Engineering in Batavia, Illinois, she developed and rebranded websites that supported revenue growth and a patent, while also creating video content and pioneering AI avatars for the Mold Flow Experts YouTube channel at the firm's sister company. Esparza attributes her success to internal self-fulfillment rather than external recognition and maintains a daily mind movie practice focused on health and lifestyle goals. She advises women in sales to embrace technology fully while recognizing the enduring value of human relationships in building connections.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Elle
01What do you attribute your success to?
As I've experienced different phases of life, I view success more as something internal rather than material. I wouldn't associate success with paper or certificates or things that are attainable for recognition, but rather for self-fulfillment. Currently, I have been practicing a mind movie, a form of manifestation like an animated vision board that I created in Canva with music, which I watch every morning and every night. It includes lifestyle elements like gym, health, food, appearance, and clothing. Success for me now means being happy and healthy and trying to help those around me do that as well.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
In sales in particular, having a face to put to the work or the contract is really what is going to be helpful in the future. As women, I think we shouldn't be threatened by tech or the advances, but we should embody them, and really embrace them full force, and learn all that we can, and continue learning, because it's advancing at a faster pace than us as humans can keep up with. But it's still has so many challenges and flaws to it.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
In this industry, I believe there will always be a need for humans in order to build relationships. I feel technology will only become more vulnerable, and us as humans, being the operators of this technology, will make those vulnerabilities more susceptible for attacks against us. This is something that I see across all industries. In sales in particular, having a face to put to the work or the contract is really what is going to be helpful in the future.
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