MEXICO CITY. “I don’t know what having a baby will entail because we have no moms here, but you have mine and the institution’s entire support. Let’s see what the best way is for you to keep working.” Those were the words of Agustín Carstens, Lorenza Martínez’s first boss in Banco de México, when she became a mom. It was also her first job, as a researcher in the Economic Studies head office and, as a first-time mom, she was anxious about being able to do both things.

It was 1998 and companies in Mexico hadn’t implemented gender equality or maternity policies, even less in the public sector and in a financial institution. Work flexibility was a concession that, in any case, would be made by the boss in turn.

Carstens was true to his word. “I’d work at the office and then go home to be with my daughter, until she started going to school,” recalls Lorenza Martínez. And she repeated the formula as needed. “I had flexibility for a long time with my three girls,” she says.

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The economist, who by that time already had a postgraduate degree (Master’s Degree and Doctorate) from MIT, stayed at Banco de México for seven years on her first stage there. In the last of those years, she became the manager of the Economic Studies area.

For Lorenza Martínez, being a woman and a mother wasn’t an obstacle to achieving her main goal, which was to create a positive impact on her country no matter where she worked or the position she was in. She doesn’t deny it was complicated, especially because of something she didn’t take as a drawback back then: the environment and work schedules were designed by men, because they were the ones who worked. “As women, what used to happen was that to stand out, you had to adapt to a man’s world and a man’s environment”. Not only were these schedules that didn’t promote a balanced life; it was the way they communicated; the way they led meetings. “But that was what I had to do back then; I never questioned it.”

Lorenza has stood out wherever she’s gone and can be proud to say that she’s left a legacy in many of the places she has worked in in the past 23 years, 20 of them in the federal government. Now, in the private sector, she hasn’t lost her touch. In June 2021 she came to direct the digital strategy of Actinver, on which the future of the financial group depends. After only five months in the firm, she was promoted to CEO of Actinver.

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Clarity and open-mindedness

In Lorenza Martinez’s development, there’s more passion and conviction than an exact idea of the places she’d like to be or the positions she’d want to take. “At first, what made me stand out was the love for what I did. I was convinced of my contribution and excited for the projects I worked for,” she says. It’s important to be clear on what you want but only as a general idea, she points out. In other words, it’s about clarity and flexibility, being open to options you may have not thought of before but that will help you grow nonetheless, she states.

“Sometimes, you don’t know where opportunities are going to come from, and most times you will have some that are more attractive than what you initially thought, and if you don’t have a broader clarity of what you want to do, you might be closing off to something,” she explains.

If there was something she was clear on from the start was that she wanted to be a part of initiatives that could be of impact on Mexico. More so than thinking about a position, she was interested in the project themselves. “That’s why I worked at the government for that long, to achieve conditions that could improve the economy, the private sector, among others,” explains Martínez. That explains her career in Banco de México, the Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit, and the Secretariat of Economy. “In each one of them I thought of the projects I was interested in to achieve impact; I wanted them to be motivating and exciting.”

Among her most significant projects was the transformation of the Interbank Electronic Payment System (SPEI), while she was in her second stage at Banco the México, from 2013 to 2018. The SPEI was initially created to operate transactions between banks and people on limited hours, and with the involvement of Lorenza Martínez it turned into a system that operates 24/7, in real-time, and reaches more institutions. “It was a project that really excited me. The volume of operations increased exponentially,” she recalls.

Another example of the impact her job has had was pushing venture capital funds in the country to encourage investment in companies in the early stages. It was between 2008 and 2012, when she was the undersecretary of Industry and Commerce in the Secretariat of Economy. “We generated a fund of funds, for venture capital alongside Nafinsa. The idea was to attract those companies to develop that sector in the country.” Venture capital fund transactions have multiplied and reached 900 million dollars in the first semester of 2021, according to the Transactional Track Report.

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Different trench, same purpose

Even though the impact of the actions of a company can have less reach than the government’s, that doesn’t make them inconsequential, not only for the company but for the public they tend to.

Actinver, a financial group that for the most part manages investments, hired her in June 2021 to lead their digital channel strategy and, through technology, make more people in Mexico use their platforms and invest. “The idea is to democratize investments,” she states. Generally, these products are limited to people and companies with high-income levels. “I love the idea of presenting attractive products to more people. Giving the same financial products no matter the financial level is something that motivates me,” Lorenza Martínez points out. The impact of this project is no small feat. Only in Mexico, 38% of adults, 25 million people, have a financial service but they aren’t offered any yield, the expert claims. That’s her potential market.

She has reaped her first achievements in which -she makes clear- not only her team has participated in but also other companies in the financial group. “We’re working hand in hand in this transformation; we see our results as a shared achievement,” she claims.

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In 2021, Actinver tripled their number of clients and exceeded 100,000. Lorenza Martínez was named CEO of the band in November, five months after arriving at the company. As Lorenza Martínez climbed to the top spots in her professional career, one of the aspects she needed to improve on was her soft skills. Her academic and technical education was unquestionable, with a Master’s Degree and a Doctorate just a few years after finishing her studies.

During her first stage, within a masculine environment where she had to work hard to stand out and do things right, she focused on the analytical tools and structured thinking she had due to her education as an economist. But throughout her path, she had to work on flexibility and empathy. “Wanting to push the projects forward and do things right sometimes blinded me to the person in front of me and considering if that person had time to do their job, if they had any problems, if what I was demanding was in line with what they were able to give,” she recalls. She had to develop those soft skills in her leadership positions. “Today, what I think about the most is my team,” she says. Lorenza Martínez is certain that, by yourself, you can get far, but with a team by your side you can go even further.

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