Darys Estrella knows the way to success very well, and she greatly enjoys the opportunity to share the map and even serve as a guide. The national and international consultant, and an expert in finance, the stock market and sustainability, will present today at the Iberoamerican University (Unibe) her talk "Ingredients to achieve professional success." During the meeting, aimed at students from the house of higher studies, he will share with young people the keys to success in their career.

Regarding the activity, Estrella, who has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and was the first woman to occupy the position of CEO of the Dominican Republic Stock Exchange, talks about her vision of success and why that it is time to change the traditional concept. In this regard, answer some questions.

The theme of her next presentation is the recipe that all young professionals seek. At what point in your career did you discover the ingredients for professional success?

Traditionally success is associated with an endless ladder. That way it would seem that success is never in the present, but in the future. Today, looking back on my life, I can say that I consider success as a state of mind, an attitude towards life that has more elements of the present than of the future. I did not understand success from the important positions I held at different stages of my life, but from the sense of fulfillment that I felt in each of those stages. Success is a living thing, not a thing to make live, it is something that is in our day to day. It is not something that is going to come, but something that is coming. If we make the success depend on a future condition to be fulfilled or to come, we will live permanently in a state of uncertainty, disagreement and ingratitude facing the things that the present offers us.

Why is it important for you to share it at an event like this?

Individuals are not islands. Stories are built on a dynamic and interactive relationship between the individual, her environment and other individuals. So: what is the use of achieving success if we cannot share it with others? What is the use of achieving it if it does not have an impact on the community? My story is a story of sacrifice, but it is above all a story of gratitude. The goals I have achieved can not only be defined by my effort, but also by the support of many people who were on that journey to success. It is important to me to help others because it is the way I have found to thank all those who have helped me.

What can the public expect from this meeting? What will the person who attends the event take?

I would like you to take questions, many questions about what constitutes success for each one of us in particular; new questions about what we consider to be successful in life. I would like to help pave the rough path towards professional success a little, to build a less stereotypical vision of success and above all closer to what we want to be and that makes us happy.

What role does the university play in the training of successful professionals?

That is one of the great challenges that a university education has today. It is faced with the dilemma of forming efficient and obedient human resources or training critical citizens with the capacity to innovate and generate the transformations that a globalized world like the one we live in requires. Universities must be centers for the provocation of thought, spaces where the diversity of ideas, visions, ways of seeing and living life are articulated and turned into tools that can be put at the service of humanity.

What have been the main challenges you have had to face to succeed in your career?

My humble origin, being a woman in a world dominated by men and being Latina in a world of whites.

What do you consider have been your main weapons to achieve this?

A. Where traditionally - and with objective reasons for thinking so - the majority could see a weakness, I saw a strength. This is how I saw my humble origin because I understood that I had no opportunity to be wrong, that in everything I did I had to give everything for everything. There was no room for error, there was no chance to procrastinate, there was no time for regret. It was, almost literally, winning or dying.

B. Being a woman in a male-dominated world I also saw as an advantage. In most meetings I was usually the only woman present. It was the only discordant note and I made sure that note always sounded. It was very difficult to forget what the only woman sitting at the table had to say. This was always accompanied by extreme preparation in every issue that I had to work on. I had to know more than all of the