Gina Díez-Barroso, a maverick innovator

#Nonconformism and #entrepreneurship are almost synonymous terms. Genuine entrepreneurs question the traditional way of doing things or establishing ideas, undisputed models and, without a doubt, clichés. One of the vectors that drive innovation and creativity consists precisely in challenging generally assumed convictions, firmly rooted beliefs and prejudices. This critical attitude, the driving force of scientific and social transformation, has encountered much resistance in the fields of science (Galileo and Kepler, to cite two examples), art (the impressionist painters in their origins) and the business world (for example, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk).

When the nonconformist spirit is embodied by a woman, the opposition generated is even greater due to the conventions assumed in many of our societies. There is a general bias that leads many to consider excessive or inappropriate for some women to be rebellious and assume a critical role in many professional fields, from politics to business, science or philosophy. In those cases, some qualifiers used have a negative denotation and a charge of disapproval.?

Gina Díez Barroso Azcárraga is the archetype of a nonconformist woman. Founder and president of the architecture and design company Diarq, founder of the Universidad Centro in #Mexico and also of the Dalia women's network, she is also a member of the board of directors of Banco Santander, as well as the Mexican Stock Exchange. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas, as well as of Laurel Strategies and Qualitas of Life Foundation. Likewise, she is a member of Committee 200 (C200) and representative of Mexico in the W20 initiative, women in the G20.

Since her early years, she never took no for an answer, an attitude that earned her the label of ‘problem child’, which at first was seen as a weakness but which in the long run has become an advantage for her. Over time, she recognizes that this nonconformity has become her greatest virtue: "I always try to see how things can be done, to jump over obstacles, because there is nothing easy in life."

Two families come together in Díez Barroso, which have left a significant mark on the business, cultural and academic fabric of Mexico. Her paternal grandfather, Fernando Díez Barroso, was the author of the first accounting manual published in the country and one of the founders of actuarial practice there. Her maternal grandfather, Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, founded various companies, among others Televisa, one of the main media outlets in Latin America. Díez Barroso's parents were Azcárraga Vidaurreta's eldest daughter, Laura, and Fernando Díez Barroso, a renowned businessman and an athlete, apparently the favorite son-in-law of his father-in-law, administrator and financial director of the family business, who fatally died in a plane accident in 1965. The command of Televisa was taken by Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, uncle of Díez Barroso, popularly called “El Tigre” (the tiger), who put the company at the top of its sector in the Spanish-speaking world. Upon his death in 1997, his son Emilio Azcárraga Jean, Díez Barroso's cousin, took charge of the company, which he leads to this day.

Díez Barroso has a close and enormously fond memory of his father, whom he considers his most decisive mentor: “I always talked to him about my plans, my future life, what we were going to do. He was an extremely close person. I think he was the person who influenced me the most: what I have achieved is thanks to my father."

Díez Barroso's professional career has been related to the creation of companies in the field of design, innovation and education. She jokes about how she inherited analytical skills and a quantitative mindset (sometimes called hard skills) from his family, especially from her father's, so handling numbers and accounts comes naturally to her. For this reason, it has been aimed at cultivating "the right hemisphere of the brain" (soft skills, which are supposedly related to emotionality, creativity, artistic abilities and spatial intelligence). This interest is reflected in the companies he has founded.

At conferences, one of the questions she is asked frequently is how she manages to balance her professional and private life. Díez Barroso has been married three times and has five children, in addition to being present in various civil initiatives, foundations and social interest associations. In addition, she regularly cultivates social networks. I am a witness to her capacity for tireless work, her orientation towards action and her speed in making decisions because we have exchanged WhatsApp messages at odd hours and she was still connected and responding naturally. At least in appearance, Díez Barroso maintains a wonderful balance between the various facets of her life.

However, appearances sometimes do not reflect reality, and she confesses that there is no perfect balance, it is a chimerical idea: ?The balance between professional life and private life does not exist. At Dalia we do an exercise with the participants, asking them to identify the different relevant areas of their existence: work, family, hobbies, spirituality... and to assign the space, the importance, that they give to each one of those areas. Obviously, when doing this exercise, we realize that there is no perfect balance, that there are always imbalances, and in addition unforeseen events occur that alter this distribution.”

And she corroborates: “One day you realize that perfect balance is impossible and you get rid of the guilt complex (...). The problem is not the demand, it is that you accept that that perfect balance is not achieved, because obviously failures will come, and with them the feeling of guilt. But you have to think that you give what you can give. Men fail too; In general, human beings do what they can, but we all fail.”

Here, she is referring to the frequent feeling that many female professionals have about not being able to devote more time to raising their children, or the perfectionist aspiration of many managers to offer more time and dedication than their male colleagues in the belief that they have to strive harder to obtain similar recognition, unfortunately a real fact in view of the still existing salary gap at many organizations.

All entrepreneurs have the experience of failure, explains Díez Barroso: ?You don't have to be afraid of failing. I have failed many times, but I have always gotten up. "The day you fail is when you fail and you don't get up." Furthermore, she adds with humor: "Entrepreneurs need many remedies against heartburn, knowing that there are no Saturdays or Sundays. They also believe tenaciously in their projects and create great teams.”

Díez Barroso's entrepreneurial activity has been fundamentally directed to the world of architecture and design, creating, for example, the most important lighting company in Latin America. Design provides ways of fixing what doesn't work. Designers experience a kind of click when identifying new needs or improving the way they are solved. Furthermore, contrary to what many think, he maintains that good design has an economic return for its creators.

A clear example of identifying something that was not working well occurred at the beginning of her career, when she was still working for Televisa. At that time the publication portfolio was made up of thirty titles aimed at the mature female audience: magazines on fashion, cooking and related topics with very formal content. Then, explains Díez Barroso, "the click occurred: there was a gap, not filled, with the possibility of launching a magazine aimed at young girls aged 12-16." Her editor's initial response was: "Young girls don't spend money." As in other occasions, Díez Barroso did not accept the negative response and insisted on her proposal. She was convinced of the convenience of a more direct and personal treatment, in addition to focused content, and she baptized her magazine with the title You. Week after week he returned with her proposal, until she got the green light with reservations: "In a year we will have to close it," the editor warned her. “But —explains Díez Barroso— the magazine is still in the market and is the group's best-selling magazine. I was recently invited to the 40th anniversary, and in the auditorium the attendees were shouting with enthusiasm."

Asked about her leadership style, Díez Barroso describes herself as a manager with character: ?I am a strong, firm person, but I engage with the team. They do not work for me, but rather we work together. I realize that am not easy. I am very straight and I set high goals for myself. I like good results. Since I left Televisa I have been thinking about how we can positively impact society with each of the companies and initiatives we founded.”

The people who work with Díez Barroso, and those of us who know her, also value her inspirational leadership. She usually spends time talking to workers, asking them how to improve, and spends time talking to her colleagues at work.

She values professional honesty, ethics and respect and does not like double-sided people "who wear a mask of a different color". She abhors the word tolerance, especially applied to diversity: "Diversity must be embraced, not tolerated." Asked what measures could promote gender diversity in the company, she explains that a principle that must govern inclusion is meritocracy. She does not believe that the quota system on boards is the best way to promote the inclusion of women in senior management positions: ?Appointing women to boards of directors who have no previous experience in C-suite positions is a mistake. Most likely, they perform poorly because they lack management experience. It is necessary to cultivate the professional ladder (pipeline), preparing women to advance, prioritizing training."

She believes that the evidence in favor of the good financial results generated by diversity on boards of directors, which improves company profits by 25-30%, is enough to convince all stakeholders in the business world, especially men: ?Imagine that we are attending a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic with the best repertoire but the strings are not presented. The first people interested in ensuring that the orchestra is complete are the rest of the musicians, and of course the conductor. Something similar happens at companies. If 80% of purchasing decisions are in the hands of female customers, it is absurd not to have women in management positions, especially in companies in the consumer sector, and in any industry in general.”

Díez Barroso is a serial entrepreneur, and it is difficult to imagine her being pleased only with the companies and initiatives she has founded. One of the latest, which I had the opportunity to get to know since its inception, is Centro, in Mexico City, a university focused on creative careers, architecture and design, but also film production, among others. Díez Barroso told me that, in the business plan development phase, the main conclusion of the report from the best consulting firm in Mexico was not to implement the project: "I was not an academic and furthermore the careers that I proposed to develop were considered ‘rare’ by the experts.“ As always, Díez Barroso confronted the refusal with a positive answer. Currently, Centro is one of the successful educational institutions in the country and an international benchmark for innovative education, another of the successes that is the result of Díez Barroso's nonconformity.

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