Her Story
About Paula
My career has taken me across continents and industries, always driven by curiosity and a desire to innovate. I started as a mechanical and aerospace engineer, working at NASA doing inspections and reliability checks for space shuttle equipment and ground support equipment. I was born and raised in Colombia, and working at NASA was my first job out of college, just 3-4 years after coming to the U.S., which gave me the confidence to keep pursuing my goals. I also designed satellites for the European Space Agency. I've always had a curiosity to explore different countries, cultures, and languages, so I moved to Europe, to the Netherlands specifically, where I switched sectors and went into oil and gas, working as an offshore engineer on rigs in the North Sea for about 6 years. After that, I decided to do something more innovative that aligned with my values, which drove me to pursue my MBA at Georgetown. From there, I recruited for an internship at Tesla in California, working on Model 3 manufacturing and the assembly line in that high-paced, stressful, innovative environment. That's where I started my automotive journey and got exposed to autonomous vehicle technology. I've worked in a series of startups in Silicon Valley in electric vehicles and fleet management software, always staying at the intersection of deep technical foundation and commercialization of technology at scale. I like transportation because it touches everybody's life one way or another, and there's a lot of room to innovate with automation, electrification, and battery-powered technologies to replace fossil fuels. A recruiter from a trucking company called International, owned by Volkswagen, reached out for a business development role in autonomous trucks, which was my previous role for 2 years. Now I'm a Senior Vice President for Business Development, where my job is to reach new customers to adopt our technology, whether that's public transit agencies, airports, or university campuses. I go to conferences, give panel sessions, schedule calls with interested parties, work on go-to-market strategy, align with our C-suite on major accounts, and draft and negotiate contracts with customers. I also published a book in 2018 on autonomous vehicles and emerging business models after interviewing 30-40 people from founders to regulators to tech workers, which took about a year to complete.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Paula
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
People tend to stay very specific about the type of career or function that they should pursue, like if you have to be an engineer, stay an engineer forever, or if you have to be business. For me, I was more of a generalist, so I had a very good foundation in my first few years out of college, but I like learning about different functions and having a learning curve every couple years, and even going from one industry to the other. That just made me more well-rounded and a more complete person at the end, where I could cross-functionally fit and lead. So I would say don't be afraid to dip your toe in different waters, so to speak. And also, maybe explore more an entrepreneurial environment in your earlier years, when you don't have a mortgage, you don't have children, you don't have high debt. Just be a little bit more adventurous in that regard.
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