MEL #033 | From Tractor Tours to Tech Finance through Cross-Industry Adaptation with Eduardo Arreaga

ARREAGA (00:00)

If you just want to do whatever is in your job description, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to become a leader. You gotta be willing to do more. Yes, you can work smarter than harder. Always there’s going to be that opportunity to find ways to accommodate your leadership development with your day-to-day work on eight hours. But typically, you need more.

ADAMS (00:49)

In this episode, I speak with Eduardo Arreaga, Chief Financial Officer at Neurovitals Inc., which delivers personalized AI-driven mental health care by combining metabolic science, neuroscience, and real-time lab insights. 

Eduardo was inspired to pursue mechanical engineering by his father’s 30-year career at John Deere and the manufacturing-rich environment of Monterrey, Mexico. After starting in design, quality, and production at Carrier Corporation, he leveraged a company-sponsored master’s in finance to move into financial planning and analysis for manufacturing. This led to a 12-year career at MSCI and financial services before transitioning to the startup world. 

In our leadership segment, Eduardo discusses the challenge of building a finance team from scratch in a fast-paced startup environment at mortgage startup, Stavi. He needed to intentionally define and model team behaviors, create a sense of urgency without burnout, foster collaboration across functions, and adapt corporate process discipline to a less structured, rapidly evolving culture. 

Eduardo stresses that leadership is a skill developed through constant practice, intentional learning, and mentorship. He encourages aspiring leaders to practice listening, learning, and teaching daily. Seek mentors who complement their goals and be willing to go beyond their job descriptions to grow their leadership capabilities. 

You can learn more about Eduardo and get his recommended resources in our show notes at drangeliqueadams.com/podcast.

Without further delay, here is my conversation with Eduardo Arreaga.

ADAMS (02:12)

Hi, Eduardo. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

ARREAGA (02:17)

Hi Angelique, thank you for welcoming me. I’m super happy to be here. It’s a great honor. It’s nice to see you again after spending 20 months together in Cambridge. Thank you for having me here.

ADAMS (02:30)

Yes, absolutely. I’m thrilled to have you. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

ARREAGA (02:36)

Yes, this probably goes back to obviously when we were looking at our role models, our parents, in my case, my dad, he’s a mechanical engineer that he worked probably more than 30 years at Yondeer in moderate Mexico, which is that’s my hometown.

So I do remember early days when he was just coming back home excited about, know, a new product that they were developing. He was explaining at dinner time, you know, we’re creating this new tractor is gonna have no EPS, which back in the days it was like, my God, that’s the new and more advanced technology. Now obviously GPS is probably one of the…

You know, are coming by default in tractors or agriculture equipment. And I remember that just the excitement of him being part of an organization that was helping multiple markets because obviously Yundir being an American company with operations in moderate Mexico and not only one facility, multiple facilities.

where even my dad was able to work in two or three facilities. It was just fascinating for me to see how dynamic was through the 30 years of experience that he faced at John Deere. That’s probably one element and I learned, I saw, I was excited. ⁓ And by the way, he played guitar and he was playing, you know, after dinner and whatever.

he kept talking about and I was like, at some point, are you gonna sing or just gonna play and talk about tractors? Anyway, so, and probably the last piece of that, John Deere used to do like an open house for families. And ⁓ part of the open house was to go and see the new line of ⁓ tractors or equipment. And my parents made fun about me, even as of today.

that there were like, I don’t know, 20 or 30 different tractors lined up for a lot of the families to go into the tractor, like look at, you know, the whatever, the keyboard. And I asked my mom and dad to get me in the whatever, 20 different tractors. And at some point they were like, the next one is the same. Anyway, it was a great experience. So that was kind of my first.

and probably the main reason why I ended up this choosing mechanical engineering. The second, I’m coming from a region that is bordering with the US. Monterrey Mexico is 150 miles on Texas, and it’s probably the largest manufacturing hub in Mexico. So the probabilities of success

if you were to be an in-yearing are double or triple that if you were to be an accountant or if you were to be a marketer person. So just by statistics, I follow that rule because a lot of my friends, lot of the families that you get to know, they were either having one member or multiple members in the family working on production and quality on different areas within manufacturing.

Geographically, was for us extremely compelling to be in this world. And again, the amount of opportunities right after college were more than in any probably profession or academic background. So again, that was kind of more a factor of where I was located.

And I think the fact that companies such as John Deere, which was the case of my dad or myself at Carrier Corporation, opens one or two or three facilities, gives you the opportunity to learn from many different areas on engineering. So I was in design at some point, I was in quality at some point, I was in production at some point. So I kind of went through the

through a lot of the areas that it was needed for me to understand kind of the way a manufacturing facility, especially for air conditioning works. Now, the funny part of all this is that one of the classes that I hate the most was thermodynamics. I was about to kill myself and I not only took one, but two thermodynamics and also mechanics of fluids.

So three thermodynamics. And I ended up working in thermodynamics with the air conditioning system, training the workers, being part of transitioning five or six different production facilities. So again, you never know. But when I was there, when I was in college,

ADAMS (07:00)

Right.

ARREAGA (07:19)

taking thermodynamics, I told myself I’m never gonna be in thermodynamics. And I ended up there and I really enjoyed that. At some point, I was like learning the whole cycle. When I hated entropy, I ended up talking about entropy.

ADAMS (07:29)

Yeah.

ARREAGA (07:34)

so that was kind of the reason I chose.

ADAMS (07:38)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You actually had multiple factors that were sort of influencing that decision, a family connection, a regional connection, job opportunities. So that makes total sense. And then you seem to pretty quickly decide that finance is somehow of interest to you because you then almost immediately upon finishing your undergrad, you go and get a master’s in finance. So can you talk about that decision?

ARREAGA (08:02)

So a couple of ⁓ aspects that drove me into finance. So one, a lot of the companies that establish operations in moderate Mexico, probably nowadays not the same, it’s been changing, but a lot of the retention and talent retention.

is through lot of different programs and through offering a lot of scholarships or offering trainings or offering exchange programs with other facilities. So when I was at Carey Corporation, they were as a policy or as a benefit, I should say. They have a master’s degree, fully funded, including books, everything you are going to need.

And it doesn’t matter if it is in manufacturing, arts. It was one of the perks of UTC, which was a parent company of Carey Corporation. So obviously when I was going through the decision of, I go and do a manufacturing master’s degree, which was kind of a logical option, or

ADAMS (08:48)

Wow.

ARREAGA (09:05)

Should I go start doing a master’s, an MBA? So to start getting more about the business. Now I kind of know the technical side of the house. Should I like start learning more about business? Obviously I took a couple of business classes in college, but nothing really substantial for video transition at some point to finance. Went to the business school in Monterey and they told me, ⁓ you just have one year out of.

college so we cannot, you’re not allowed to apply to MBA because you had to have, I think the threshold was like five years of experience. I don’t remember three or five, whatever. But they told me, but you can do finance and then transition in your last couple of semesters to MBA, do a little bit more classes and you can probably have a dual degree, which I like it. I was like, okay, let’s take it.

I started realizing that when I was doing my Master in Finance, that all the doing analysis and understanding the economics of manufacturing was more compelling to me. All the way from like, we need to invest in buying new equipment. Why? Because we want to increase productivity, because we want to reduce defects, or because we want to, whatever may be the case, either increasing or decreasing.

But understanding what’s the return and not only money, but also, again, what is the operational return? Are we accelerating, de-accelerating, reducing, increasing? For whatever reason, that to me was more attracting than creating or designing a new air conditioning or working on ProE and trying to, whatever may be the case, fixing an issue on an air conditioning that it was about to be

install in a casino in Las Vegas. ⁓ And then started like a transition and quickly on the VILA materials. So how you manage a VILA material. we, ⁓ in manufacturing, I was in a VILA order facility. So ⁓ the number of parts were infinite. There were already a combination between first come or FIFO parts. And there were

ADAMS (10:48)

Yeah.

ARREAGA (11:08)

Also parts that they were in stock, especially those that they were like balls, screws, everything that it was applicable to every single unit. But the management of a bill of materials, which is the list of parts needed to assemble and air conditioning, it was massive. And it was a lot of people that they were trying to help on optimizing the bill of material because what happened when the list of materials is wrong, you ended up either

missing parts or asking for more parts that you need or you’re in the middle of the assembly line and you’re missing something, you don’t know where it’s located and you don’t know if it is critical for the equipment. So I start moving in that direction and understanding why there’s the level of precision has to be high.

How can we mitigate any errors? You’re go back and not only understanding the technical part of the equipment, but also again, having a list of materials that will allow you to do everything on time. You’re not gonna be stopping the production line. And again, it was a lot of benefits of doing a rate. And I really enjoy that. I started becoming better and better. so okay. So now I understand that if the bill of material has the right

part numbers in the right station at the right time, we’re gonna be able to increase productivity at the end of the day. And then I started thinking, okay, what about inventory? Okay, so we’re gonna be ordering this X, Y, Z sheet metal. Is there a way we can be more efficient? Because sheet metal is probably the most expensive material or is one of the most expensive. There was aluminum, there was copper. I was like, okay, well.

I know that aluminum, copper and sheet metal is probably the most expensive part in the bill of material. So let me start digging into that. So understanding the economics to me was fascinating.

That was kind of my evolution into what drove me into finance. Obviously, combined with I was in the middle of my master in finance, I was now understanding balance sheets, I was understanding accounting, I was understanding financial planning. So it was perfect because at the time that I finished my master’s degree, there was a perfect opportunity for me to move into FP &A. And that was my first exposure to finance in manufacturing.

And it only lasted two or three years because that’s when I officially transitioned to financial services.

ADAMS (13:28)

Yeah, I was curious about that. you, yeah, so you started finance through manufacturing, which makes sense. I mean, it’s very closely aligned with the engineering side and then you sort of gradually transition. But then you did at some point say, okay, manufacturing, you know, I’m done with that now. And you really just lean completely into financial services. You’ve had multiple.

CFO roles and now you are the CFO of a startup. So can you just talk a little bit about, yeah, just a little bit more about that transition and kind of what you’re working on now.

ARREAGA (13:58)

Yes. So ⁓ when I decided to transition to financial services, was similar kind of approach that I probably followed in my prior roles. There was a new organization that was opening operations in moderate Mexico. MSCI was kind of, you know, it was flashy. They were putting a lot of time and effort on being in every single job fair, trying to recruit all the

key talent across the board, not only financial, not only finance background individuals, that it just, it was interesting. And I was already an FPNA, and I was like, can I transition to financial services? I started questioning myself. Obviously MSCI was a completely different animal. MSCI is a data provider. It’s a public trade organization. Probably right now it’s around 60 billion market cap.

they have operations across the globe. And their main objective is to distribute data that then later is used for index. So you can compare or you can use, when I say index, are the benchmark used in the marketplace to compare your investments, again, that benchmark. The most commonly used benchmark in the States is S &P 500.

but then you can think about there’s food, see raw, so all those different flavors depending on your investment profile. So MSCI is the company that provided data and the software that allows you to do that in an automated fashion. Obviously you run a lot of analysis in the backend, so on and so forth. Obviously all of these, I was not aware of when I was like, ⁓ should I just try? I know F &A, I’ll be there. Long story short, I…

They hired me back in 2009. And the first role that I had, it was supporting what is called global deals, which is still actually nowadays a negotiation that happens with top banks, top asset managers. And when they are buying data or buying software to create an investment strategy,

they, since they have operations across the world, the MSA, the contracting that happened, it’s to include offices and regions and different products, depending on the regions. And every region has their own nuances from an investing standpoint. So I was the backend of those negotiations. So when a seller was about to meet BlackRock, just to you one example,

I was the one doing the research, how many offices BlackRock has, how many products it’s currently using, how many new investment strategies has in the market, what are the gaps of products, MSA products that they don’t have and they need. So I would start doing all the commercial strategy for approaching these global deals and obviously closing out, which was the main objective.

So great journey. I stayed for about 12 years at MSCI, six of those years in Monterey, Mexico. They asked me to relocate to the New York office. On all those years, already I was supporting different functions. I started with global deals, as I mentioned before, and then I was providing ⁓ FP &A support to the commercial team, first in America, then across the globe.

Then to the marketing team, first in America, then across the globe, and then I moved to the States, and I started just expanding my responsibilities. But something that I always remember that it was key, and especially for your audience, when you’re transitioning from industry A to industry B, there are things that in financial services using us as this example, are not as important as they are in manufacturing.

So the one key to me that I consider a big success is that financial services, are not as

focus or discipline for creating processes as manufacturing. Manufacturing, we measure almost every single aspect of the manufacturing process. While in financial services, given the fact that it’s mostly commercial driven, a lot of the things that happen in the backend, they’re not as important as in the manufacturing world, every penny.

every part number, every step into the process, it’s extremely important to get to the margins that you’re expecting. So when I noticed that, I said to myself, you know, I’m working on creating global deals, creating current strategies, and there’s not a process in place. There’s not an SOP. Why? I mean, we’re making healthy margins here.

We’re negotiating with top asset managers. If we just do it in a more repetitive way, I’m pretty sure we’re have more time to maximize the commercial strategy we want to put on the table. So I ended up creating processes. Big success.

ADAMS (18:46)

Yeah, I was just saying that was a huge, they were so lucky to have somebody who had that lens. I mean, that happens to me everywhere I go, whether it be engineering related or not. I’m just taking over the chairmanship of the board of a nonprofit and I’m looking at it and I’m like, okay, first thing we’re going to do is we’re to put in some SOP so we can serve more people and be more effective. And so I just, love that. I love that you found that and brought it with you.

ARREAGA (19:14)

Obviously, it sounds easy, but obviously there’s resistance because they are used to work in an environment that doesn’t require for you to move and then fill out these form or go and log your time span on this and that or sending a notification. So you’re going to find the balance between what the new world that you’re in now.

needs versus what the world that you were coming from, which in this case was manufacturing, used to it. So it was a tricky balance. there were a lot of learnings. There were a lot of failures in the way. But I think in the end, on and on, I’ll say that it was a great experience because a lot of the processes that I ended up implementing, they’re still functioning. And some of them, changed the way to do business. Some of them, they were scrapped. And that’s okay.

But in the end, was a lot of the mindset of processes. I think it ended up helping the organization in many different ways it performed. Six years in New York, again, as I mentioned before, I took additional responsibility. And by the time that I left the organization, I worked in the index unit, which is one of the business units of MSCI. was the finance director for a few months.

And then a great opportunity came to me to transition to the startup world. Obviously the decision, as all the decisions that I’ve made in my life, it was with high risk. It represented a massive change in my life and what I have learned in many, years of being in financial services before in manufacturing.

But it was an exciting opportunity. It was for me to really build something from the ground up and being able to apply all the learnings, experiences, failures from the past and make it in a new organization. STAV is a mortgage tech. When I joined, it was a series A organization.

What Stavi is trying to do is to digitize the closing on real estate transactions. So any activity that is required when signing a document, notarizing a document ID, they note, we’re trying to replace the paper, leave the paper out of the transaction and make it full electronic. Working with lenders, servicers and title companies.

as our key customers and obviously improving the customer experience for the sellers and the buyers that are participating in the transaction to make it faster, better, hopefully more cost effective, more secure. So a lot of great, great attributes that we’ve been adding into the technology. In this transitioning, obviously it was…

One of the key challenges that I really, really like about the opportunity was to create a team from the ground up. New finance organization, first time CFO. So for me was the challenge of can I build a team from the ground up? And if I’m building a new team, I gotta take care not only about processes, but culture. But, you know, choosing the right talent.

for the need of the company. was a new company with less than 50 employees back then. So to me, was a lot of new decisions that I had to make back in the days. But to me, that was part of the challenge. I was super excited about that. Because back in a corporate world where there were thousands and thousands of employees, a lot of the decisions that I

that you do on a daily basis, they have multiple layers. By the time there is a success or a failure, someone is gonna catch it. In this case, in a new organization, obviously, it’s the building, the fact that the culture is not there and you’re be creating that culture as you’re progressing. The fact that there’s no processes and everything is broken and you’re gonna put it together.

That to me was kind of the challenge and the appeal of the opportunity. So I ended up moving from corporate after 12 years at MSCI to Stavi. Now with Stavi, it’s been almost four years, great experience, great learnings, going through different cycles. But again, it’s been a lot of transitioning, which I really like. And at this point, you’re probably saying this person is crazy for all the transitioning.

To my, that’s the way that I like to say myself, that’s the best way to learn and to go through life, trying to go and explore different areas, different businesses, different opportunities. Obviously, you know, I fully respect those individuals that they do a career in the same field, but to myself and probably to many others, being in different places, being in different sites of companies, different environments is what keeps you.

motivated, keeps you excited. And that’s kind of the way that I’ve been navigating my professional journey.

ADAMS (24:17)

Eduardo, what leadership situation are we going to be talking about today?

ARREAGA (24:20)

Let’s use, I’m gonna use the startup world as a leadership example because probably startup happens every multiple times a day. And it’s a constant evolution of leadership. I was mentioning before that I came to this organization as a first finance employee, first time CFO. So one of the key…

leadership skills that to me was critical was building a team, driving behaviors, sense of urgency and decision making. Again, new organization, this is the first time they’re putting together a team. The team is coming with a lot of experience, technical experience in accounting, in financial planning, whatever may be the case. But in an organization that we are trying to figure out a way to

do it could be a lot of confusion, be a lot of, this the way we want us to behave? Do we want to kind of ask a lot of questions or be critical or be, what’s the way you want us to think about it? Because in different organizations, depending on the size, depending on the industry, things just move at a different pace.

and people tend to react in a different way, people tend to move in a different way. So the leader role that I was playing or that I played when I was on the build out mode, it was precisely that. So how am I gonna want my team to behave when a complex situation arrived? Either there’s money needed, there’s an investment to be assessed, there’s an expense to be removed.

or to be eliminated, whatever may be the situation, but what is the way we want them to behave? And to me,

being the role model to that, it was critical as a leader of the organization. And again, this is more an art than a science because as a human, you tend to react different ways depending on the situation. So trying to be consistent on the way I was reacting to those situations, it was kind of my modus operandi.

⁓ Similarly with a sense of urgency, right? So if we are in an organization that is moving at a fast pace, you’re trying not to create bureaucracy because we’re brand new, we’re trying to move the technology as fast as we can, time to market is critical. So how can you create that sense of urgency within the the barriers or the work environment that you wanted to keep or that you wanted to create that is sustainable? You don’t want people to be

reply in a Sunday morning, but you want people to reply in a reasonable time matter, depending on the topic that they are addressing. So a lot of the leadership skills that, again, I try to utilize when I was going through the build out mode, it was me being the one setting up the example. If there was an email coming from the CEO or coming from the COO and it was late, I tried to wait till tomorrow.

or send an email on the back channel and say, wait for me or wait for my team or wait for my FP &A analyst, she or he’s gonna come back and is gonna give you what you need. But I always try to keep it in a consistent and reasonable way to create that specific behavior. Collaboration, mean, again, being a new team, there were team members probably every other week.

So how you welcome those new individuals, how you collaborate, especially those that either they’re completely far away from your function or that you’re interacting on a daily basis with them. How can you make them to feel to be part of the company? To me, was against leading with example, it was critical. And using that leadership skills and say, okay, now we’re gonna be inviting marketing to talk about the new campaign.

And please be prepared with questions because I want you to be part of what they are creating, what they are doing right now. So it’s critical for you to be involved in these conversations. I don’t want you to be sit back because we want to create this collaboration environment. So again, I can give you many different examples, but leadership with or leading with examples to me is critical. It’s been critical and especially for startups or organizations that are

less structure and are growing at a fast pace, leading with example is critical and that’s what I try to do at Stavi. In some cases, again, similarly to any other situations, it’s been working and in some other cases, I learned, I fail, and then I recalibrate.

ADAMS (28:57)

Well, this is a great example. I have the opportunity to work with quite a few hard tech startups. I’m embedded in an accelerator that’s associated with Oak Ridge National Lab. And oftentimes, I will hear some of the founders kind of complain about the pace of their team. They’re not moving fast enough. They don’t have a sense of urgency. And they’ll say, this is a startup kind of implying that the team should know better.

And I love what you said, which is that, okay, I, as the leader have to set the example for what I want. I can’t just assume that people are going to come in and somehow read my mind and know how, you know, how I want decisions to be made, the speed with which I want things to be done. And so I really appreciate you saying, one, I’ve got to be intentional about this. And then two, the first place, you know, once I sort of think through what I really want the first place.

that I have to start is with myself. And so I appreciate that. And I’m curious, how did you think about having to be intentional about it to begin with? Was it something that the leadership team was talking about? Like all of the leadership team was sort of talking about it, or you just had this sense because of your diverse work history, you’re like, well, I know sometimes things are fast, sometimes things are slow. So I’m going to have to actually be intentional about setting the pace that I want.

I’m just curious how you even came to that realization at the outset that this was something you were gonna have to manage.

ARREAGA (30:22)

I think a combination to be frank. So when I joined Stavi, we invested hours and days on setting up the culture of the organization as an organization. And honestly, I gotta tell you that that’s probably the most complex work that I experienced in my entire professional journey.

Yeah, so the financial aspect, the technical aspect is, you you learn, you reapply it, or you, you know, you don’t know, you just go to chat GPT and get, you know, some of the answers. But culture, it’s a different animal. Because it’s a combination of human values and beliefs. It’s a combination of

where you are as an individual. Are we in industry A? Are we in industry B? Are we tech? Are we manufacturing? And probably a combination of where we are as a society. Do we need to be more forefront on this particular topic? Do we need to be more intentional on this topic? Probably that 20 years ago, it was not the case.

really complex and we, I do believe that the work we did, it was ideal for the organization we were trying to build back in at the beginning. So a lot of my decisions or a lot of the way that I extrapolate that exercise with my team was a combination between my prior experiences and the new information that I was getting from the culture.

that we’re trying to promote and establish and first create, promote and established. And when I was gathering that information, I was like, how can I make it in a way that I can also adapt it to where the finance organization is? obviously coming from a corporate where finance was at a different…

stage. was already a center of excellence, having people all over the world, processes. was already probably multiple cultures that they were playing out at the same time because the company acquired companies and it was kind of a mixed match across the board. But I learned it that way. So like, how can I extrapolate the things that I really like from that corporate world?

into these new culture that we’re trying to create. And one example is that incorporate all really every single process or every single initiative, it requires multiple approvals and needs to go to multiple layers and it goes to multiple validations. Running at a fast pace, that can be possible. You gotta be willing to accept

a little bit of imperfection in the processes you’re rolling out and keep fixing those processes as you go and you learned from the first iteration. So to me that was, no, I wanna roll out a perfect process. But then I’m like, no, because we’re running fast. If I try to get a perfection, I’m gonna get stuck.

and I’m not gonna be able to either push a report or close the books or whatever may be the case. So I try to calibrate myself first as an individual. How can I not be that corporate individual that I was three months ago when I was working for a, you know, a thousand or finance organization and be a leader that

it’s operating a new organization in a way that has to move fast. But still we got to put the processes together because we want to control the flow of the money, whatever may be the case. So a lot of calibration through the process. But first I started with myself because that calibration again, coming from a different world, it was like to me, it was mind blowing. Like, my God, why are we buying this

you know, whatever this subscription without approval process. Yeah, because we cannot wait. Oh, yeah, but there should be a middle ground. I mean, yeah, I mean, in corporate, you got to get like three signatures and is included in the budget is including the regional budget is included in the cost center. You got to go through all these, you know, checks and balances. And here’s like the white west. What is going on here? So so that calibration to me was

It was tough, but I learned a lot because to me to be able to then deploy that mentality or share that mentality across the board, you gotta start with myself. And again, that either again, ⁓ pulling me back on like, is this the right decision? What we learned about this investment that we made and we didn’t analyze properly.

what was what we learned about this investment that we did that property? Is that a middle ground so that we can every time that either the CEO or the CEO or any leader in the organization is to pull the trigger on an investment, what are the tools we need to create for creating that independency while creating some checks and balances? So I think that is kind of the way that I’ve been navigating obviously as the company growth

as we spend more money and get more resources, you can always continue to adjust in those particular areas where, you know, either there’s more criticality on keeping money in control, in check, or even, you know, creating flexibility where you know that if there’s flexibility, they can run faster, they can make more decisions, they can bring more customers, they can bring more sales, whatever may be the combination. But I think that’s kind of the way that

that to me has been kind of the combination between a new culture that it was formed, that it was created, me coming from corporate kind of where am I gonna find myself in this situation and then when I calibrate myself, how can I deploy that into my team, into other teams that we’re working and collaborating so that we are not running the Wild West and we’re not running a corporate organization that requires 20 approvals. We’re kind of in the middle and we’re.

creating that flexibility that as we grow, we grow policies, grow checks and balances, we grow approval processes, et cetera, et cetera.

ADAMS (36:49)

All right, Eduardo, as we wrap up, what advice do you have for engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

ARREAGA (36:55)

I like to use a lot of sports analogies as many other leaders in the world. But I like to say that leadership is like any other skill or discipline that requires a lot of practice and requires practicing after the game, before the game, and during the game. So if you want to become a leader, you got to practice.

basketball players that they stick around after the game and they throw a hundred free throws to be better. The same is with leadership. You gotta find ways to practice your leadership. First, your leadership style and then your leadership skill, the way you want to become as leader or you want to be as leader, I should say. It’s all about practice. And there’s many friend examples that you can use for practicing.

grabbing a coffee. It’s as easy as if I wanted to be learning about other functions, other colleagues, other individuals that I admire. Grab a coffee is a simple way to learn and practice. While you’re practicing with your asking questions, you’re listening, you are learning, and you probably are gonna be teaching. So,

Those are, to me, the skills you need to become a leader. You gotta be able to listen. You gotta be able to learn, and you gotta be able to teach. And only communication is key in all of this, but the listening, the teaching, and the learning, it’s all about practicing. If you don’t practice, if you’re not willing to do it, the listening is gonna become troubling. The teaching,

it’s gonna become, you don’t wanna do it, you’re gonna hate it. And the learning, you’re gonna reject it. You’re gonna rejecting it. I think to me that’s key, practice, practice, practice. And the second component that I will say out of if you’re pursuing a leadership role or it’s being mentor. Similar to grabbing a coffee.

You probably grabbing a coffee can be more generic. You can go across the board. You can try to find the diversity in the individuals you’re meeting.

Finding a mentor, it’s a little bit more, you gotta be more thorough. What you wanted to get. If you’re looking for someone that is more on the commercial side, more technical, more strategic, more leaning towards one specific leadership attribute versus other leadership attribute. So you gotta think about who you like to approach and engage from a mentorship standpoint. And obviously,

Hopefully you get the opportunity to be mentored by that individual. Mentorship is to me one of the best gift in society, world. So the more you can get the better and not because you’re in the leadership role. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need mentorship anymore. You need mentorship always. Always there’s new things to learn.

There’s new values to learn. There’s new things to reinforce. Sorry, things to reinforce. There’s always gonna be an opportunity to get value out of mentorship. So that to me, that’s the second component. And then the third one, and this is leadership. You gotta be willing to go over and above. I’m sorry. That’s the only way leadership works.

If you just want to do whatever is in your job description, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to become a leader. You gotta be willing to do more. Yes, you can work smarter than harder. Always there’s going to be that opportunity to find ways to accommodate your leadership development with your day-to-day work on eight hours. But typically, you need more.

you need to engage in more things, you need to participate in more things, either in different areas of your business, in different communities, in different group of people, there’s always gonna be opportunity for you to engage over and above your day-to-day job description, whatever you wanna call it, that is gonna allow you to become a great leader, that is gonna give you the tools and the skills you need to become a leader.

So again, it’s all about there’s sacrifices, there’s willingness, but it’s always gonna take more than just being within your job description. You gotta do more. You gotta find ways to do more. Some are not gonna be that entertaining. Some are gonna be fun. Some are gonna be boring, but you have to do more.

ADAMS (41:13)

Eduardo thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.

ARREAGA (41:16)

Thank you. appreciate the invitation and it’s nice to see you and let’s stay in touch.

ADAMS (41:21)

Absolutely.