Her Story
About Gabrielle
My entire career has been focused on social impact, though it has taken different forms over the years. I started in healthcare, helping people in their daily lives, and then became interested in education, specifically helping disabled people learn better at school. As I gained skills and competence and earned my master's degrees, I became a school director where I could work from a more systemic point of view, at least at a local level. Now I'm focusing my efforts on ESG (environmental, social, and governmental) investing, which might seem very different from healthcare, but it's really about looking at the outcome of organizational impact and how this impact influences people's lives, which is what really matters to me. I recently became a mom and am currently completing an MBA focusing on sustainable development while conducting research on ESG investing. I've published a paper within a conference and am pushing this research further to really contribute to the field. My goal is to scale my impact - before I was focusing on local scale, and now through my research I'm looking at global scale.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Gabrielle
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received came from my mentor, Fred Purcell from the University of Washington, who worked at the beginning of Microsoft when they developed the first computers. After I did one presentation in marketing, he told me, 'Hey, Gabriel, just trust yourself, and life will follow.' I think this advice was the most meaningful advice because since then, I just started to trust that yes, I could have a positive impact, and not only on the local scale or on one life. Since that particular time, I started to look and scale my actions, and that's why I started doing an MBA and really trusting that I could scale my impact.
02What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I would say honesty, but in a way, to be aligned with myself. Many times we are being asked in organizations to perform duties that sometimes will be different from what we would have done ethically. I think honesty is the most important because it really allows us to be aligned with who we are and what we want to achieve. My yoga practice is helping a lot because when I pause and take time to think about who I am, and what I want to achieve, and what I want to transmit to the future generation, including my daughter, it's what really makes me feel good.
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