As a Latina pioneer in the C-Suite, Ana Corrales challenges herself to think big and to always contribute. She was an early entrepreneur—selling her handmade scrunchies to her classmates. And although she grew up in a STEM home, she found herself continuing to be interested in sales, so she shadowed a few salespeople and realized the field wasn’t as easy as she thought. But, that didn’t stop her. Ana loves learning. As she describes, she finds a subject that interests her, and she just “clicks, clicks, and clicks” online to find more information.
Management observing Ana noticed that she could do a lot of things, so they decided to move her into a management position herself. She has continued to work her way up to her current role as Chief Operating Officer for Google Consumer Hardware. In this role, a few mindsets make her successful. First, she believes you need to be undeterred when pursuing your goals. Second, you need to be willing to be uncomfortable and do the things other people refuse to do because of fear. Her older sister once told her to consider, “What’s the worst that can happen?” She has taken that advice to heart and sometimes just fakes it until she makes it.
Finally, Ana describes for us the importance of finding “white space,” which are those quiet moments when you can just allow yourself to think. She believes these moments have made her a better leader. For Ana, gardening gives her these moments. She savors any time she can get away from her devices and has also learned to say no and draw boundaries around her personal time. Ana has learned a lot through all of her experiences, and she shares those insights with us in this podcast.