“Imagine a young girl, all her grandparents are from Mexico, her mom is born in Mexico, and the family struggled with money. Eleven people, one bathroom.”
That was the starting point for Sylvia Acevedo, both in her life and in her keynote address for the Women in Consumer Technology’s 16th Annual CEDIA Networking Reception and Luncheon on Friday. From those humble beginnings, she would go on to serve as CEO of the Girl Scouts of America and an executive for IBM, Dell, and Apple, plus White House Education Commissioner and a rocket scientist at NASA.
Acevedo emphasized the difficult circumstances of her childhood, growing up in a household that only spoke Spanish, on a dirt road that happened to be the location of the last meningitis epidemic in the United States. How, then, did this young girl grow to get a graduate degree from Stanford and live such a successful life?
It wasn’t until Stanford had contacted her in the mid-2000s for an interview that Acevedo looked to her past to search for the answer. She was able to identify major inflection points that taught lessons that were key to her success. The genesis of her journey, Acevedo explained, was her childhood introduction to the organization she would one day lead. “Everything changed when I got invited to this afterschool program called the Girl Scouts,” she recalled.
To pay her way through Girl Scouts, Acevedo needed to sell cookies constantly, a task that initially seemed daunting. To help her succeed, her troop leader imparted two pieces of advice that proved invaluable. “The first: how to create opportunity. Set your goal, break it into smaller pieces, and by the time you do that, the number of cookies you have to sell each day is very manageable,” she explained. “Then she taught me the other thing: Work really hard — and when you’re feeling stuck, ask for help.”
These pieces of advice became cornerstones to how Acevedo learned to create her own opportunities. However, it was the next piece of wisdom from her troop leader, that helped propel her through her education and corporate career. “Never walk away from a sale until you hear ‘no’ three times,” she said. Learning to find common ground when being told “no” the first time helped Acevedo secure a place in Stanford’s graduate program, and helped her develop the persistence needed to land positions at major tech companies.
Finally, Acevedo relayed the final lesson she learned in her career that allowed her advance: “Identify the value you add that aligns with your company’s strategy.” It’s not enough to do your job and exceed expectations, she explained. Learning to communicate the value you add to your superiors is the key to success.
