Her Story
About Renata
Renata Mena serves as a Vendor Manager at Stripe, overseeing vendor operations for customer support teams in a different country. Her responsibilities include ensuring vendors have the necessary tools, data, and access to fulfill contracts effectively. Mena began her professional journey in operations around 2013 or 2014 at Accenture before moving to Meta, where she spent nearly eight years in varied roles including community building, diversity initiatives, and event management. She currently leads the Latino remote chapter at Stripe and is stepping into a global leadership position with resource groups, building on similar volunteer leadership at Meta where she headed the Austin chapter of the Latino community and the global organization. Mena earned a double degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012, which honed her problem-solving and data management skills. She holds COPC certification for vendor management and a PMT certification from Meta. Her career achievements include receiving the Build Social Value Award from the Austin office and the Be Bold Award at Meta for her contributions to community and integrity in the workplace. Mena attributes her success to resilience, developed after moving from Mexico to the United States alone after high school. She supports causes such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Con Mi Madre, a program aiding Latina mothers and daughters in Austin.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Renata
01What do you attribute your success to?
Resilience is the main thing I attribute my success to. When I moved from Mexico here to the States, I was young, I had just finished high school, and I moved by myself. I had to live by myself and be an adult. Everything changed overnight, and I left my family behind, my friends, everything I knew, and just started in a new country by myself. Resilience has a little bit of persistence too, and then consistency, and never giving up, and you fall, you get up, and try again.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Priorities are important, especially now with the baby. Jobs are important but really what matters is finding what matters to you and prioritizing that. To me, that's my family. Setting boundaries between work and live so that you really protect the time that you want to spend on whatever's important to you.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Connections, personal connections has also been key. Making connections and using those connections. The way I got my foot in the door here at Stripe was through the connections that I made at Meta. Meeting people, making that personal connection is something that really helped in my professional career.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Layoffs are every week, causing a lot of qualified people in the market, making it really competitive. AI is another one, everyone wants to automate, but you have to learn how to use it. The biggest opportunity is also AI as a powerful tool for optimizing workflows and using it wisely as assistants for impactful things across teams.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Honesty and authenticity, showing up as the same person at work as outside. Integrity is key, especially at work, not doing shady things, living by your values even when situations get hard. What you see is what you get.
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