JAQUELINE MENDONÇA

First God, and second, I think hard work. I've been always very brave. I crossed countries with two babies - when I came to the U.S., I came without speaking any English, so I studied all of my English here in the last 6 years. When I came here, I came with a baby who was [AGE] and a little one who was [AGE], and I was working long hours per day while my husband was helping me. It was a very difficult moment, but it was not enough to make me not reach my dreams. That was my dream, and I worked very hard. I think that's something I would like to share - that everything's possible with hard work and goals.

I think it is study and prepare yourself - that was meaningful for me. When I changed my country, I had an MBA from a good academic school in my country, but when I moved here, I started to learn English from scratch and learning Spanish as well. Once my English was kind of enough, I immigrated to the MBA and pursued an MBA here, and I'm studying to pursue other things in the U.S. I think when you change countries, and even though the person is in their own country, study as much as we can. That was the advice I received - studying about the country or what is valuable for them is something that will be meaningful when you start to work and grow in the company.

I'd say prepare yourself as much as you can in terms of study and understand the business you are in. What are the challenges? Who are the biggest players, biggest competitors in this field? And be ahead of the game every time. It's not just about what we're going to do. If you're doing just inventory, that's not just looking at inventory. Have an overall eye for the business - not just the small picture, but the biggest picture of the business, so things are going to be smooth and you have more opportunity to grow.

I'm working in a company that has a large set of data, a lot of information, and I think being organized enough to deal with that much information is challenging. In this current world we are in, there's so much information and so many things, so much data, but transforming it into meaningful information is something hard. We're being overloaded with a lot of crazy things, a lot of news, and a lot of data, but being determined and understanding how you place this data, understanding how we make this meaningful - I think that's the biggest challenge for me personally.

I think the first one is hard work. I don't believe in anything coming for granted, and I don't take anything for granted. I think most things - there is no way to achieve something without hard work. I'd say another thing is determination. That's one of the things I believe the most. We determine, and I think that's it.