Leila Gregorio Mateus

I attribute my success to my mom. She's the main example of how humans are such adaptable beings. No matter what happens, she will always overcome and show how things are actually going to work out. She might be sad for a little bit, but on the next day, she will swallow the tears and keep going, keep going forward. I've seen that in her since I was so young, so I feel like she's the main reason why I have accomplished so much in my life. I really look at her like my role model. She's a doctor back home, and I know the situation back home is very complicated with high rates of so many illnesses, so her job is very, very hard and demanding. She's 59 right now, a few years from retirement, but she's still working hard, she still listens to her patients, she's always willing to help. She's just a wonderful woman. Every time there is something in my life that makes me feel like I should give up, I just talk to her, just listen to her, and I'm ready to move forward. I'm ready to keep going.

One thing that my previous boss used to say is that knowing how things work is not enough. You have to know how to provide the data, provide the value, provide answers in a fast way, because no one is waiting. No one is going to literally, voluntarily just wait. You have to be quick. You have to know what is necessary and deliver it in a really fast manner, because it kind of goes back to the quote, time is money. You really have to know what you're doing, yes, but you have to provide it and show that you know in a fast manner. I take this advice to this day, because in my industry, things are super fast. The prices of commodities can change so fast, so you really have to be able to time manage and literally provide the different figures that the customers and the stakeholders need quickly, so they can make decisions.

I would tell women not to be afraid to try to get into the industry, because I feel like nowadays, you can see that it's still a little bit of men dominance, but there is still a possibility for women to make it. The industry is still very men-heavy. I work on the trading floor, and if you get inside of the trading floor, you will see lots of men. The traders are all men. It can be a very hectic environment, but I feel like if a woman has a passion for trading, they shouldn't have to be afraid to do it, because the doors are still open, very open. I still don't know what would be the main reason why I don't see a lot of women as traders, but I would really motivate women to do it, because it's an industry with a lot of revenue and a lot of knowledge that you can learn from. You can literally learn so many things in that environment, not just related to commodities trading, but also stock market and whatnot. No woman should be unwilling to get involved in the industry.

I would put both opportunities and challenges together, and I would say AI. The implementation of AI in the industry helps a lot in terms of all of the calculations and model creation. You can literally just ask an AI to do it. At the same time, it might be wrong, right? So the challenge would be to actually know if the AI is doing it correctly. A lot of times, okay, they will do the calculation and it's amazing, but it's not exactly how it should be done. There is a lot of hallucination going on with ChatGPT and Claude and other AI tools when they generate values or calculations or models. They don't really do it 100% correct. So I think the challenge is really to not be so reliable on AI, but to actually use it as an adjustment tool, not like the tool that actually generates everything. I would just use ChatGPT as an assistant, not as a replacement for your job.

Honesty is the most important thing to me. I'm not a manager, but a lot of times whenever I receive interns and rotation analysts, a lot of those kids come to you acting like they know what they don't know. I think you have to be humble so you can learn, because if you have the mindset that you already know everything, you don't get to learn and see how things actually work. So I think the two main values that I consider are honesty and humbleness. It takes you so far when you're humble, when you are willing to just help and understand and listen and learn. I totally agree that God only gave us two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more. You learn so much when you listen and you try to understand what the other person is telling you.