Lucrezia Spagnolo: Airport Kiosk to Social Enterprise

 Lucrezia's career journey started at an airport foreign exchange counter and took her from Montreal to Toronto to Rome and then back to Canada and eventually into the life of an entrepreneur as CEO of Vesta Social Innovations Technologies.

Check out Vesta's website to learn more: https://www.vestasit.com/

And this week's book recommendation can be found here:  https://brenebrown.com/book/dare-to-lead/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theunexpectedcareer/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unexpectedcareer?_t=8sery0sUV73&_r=1
Webpage: https://theunexpectedcareerpodcast.buzzsprout.com

Transcript

Megan Dunford: 0:00

Welcome to the Unexpected Career Podcast, where we share stories of real people and the twists and turns they've taken along their career journey. I'm Megan Dunford, and as someone who found myself in the payments industry largely by accident, I am fascinated by how people's careers unfold and how they've gotten to where they are today. It's also why I'm passionate about reducing the pressure on young people around going to university. What to take in school and on getting that right first job. My guest today is Lucrezia Spagnuolo, founder and CEO of Vesta Social Innovation Technologies, a social enterprise at the intersection of gender based violence, access to justice, and technology. I loved hearing Lucrezia's journey from being diverted from her desired degree by a university recruiter to how she started out in foreign exchange, and then how a combination of ambition and supportive leadership allowed her to build an amazing career in financial services, both in Canada and in Italy before ultimately the entrepreneurial path chose her. First of all, thank you for doing this.

Lucrezia Spagnolo: 1:16

Yeah. This will be fun. It's my pleasure. We've obviously known each other forever I was thinking about it earlier today which doing the math is always a bit scary Next month will be 21 years that we've known each other. Really? We did;; become friends until after because obviously I didn't really talk the first year. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It is mind blowing when you. Like think about the time, right? Because it feels like yesterday and I don't even know somebody mentioned something recently and it was like, oh, well, that was back in 19, like 99 and realize, that was 25 years ago, that's when I moved to Toronto. It blows my mind. So I've lived here almost as long as I lived in Montreal. Mm hmm. If you take away the seven years in between, right? But still it's just like, oh my god. Yeah, it's crazy. Time is crazy. It is. So, yes, so I'm very excited about this and It gives me also an opportunity to almost like go down memory lane, if you will, and the last couple of months, I've been doing a lot of reflecting of, you know, what brought me here? Where am I now? What do I want to do? Do I want to continue what I'm doing? Do I want to go in a different direction? And sometimes there's just forces outside of our control that You know, we can, we can manipulate or we can kind of help drive in a certain direction, but one thing we can't really control sometimes it's timing. Yes, 100%. And I think that's one of the reasons I'm passionate about this topic and sharing how everyone's story is really different is like most people. I know, including myself, got into the industry I'm in now, by accident. And, and then, like you said, there's so many things that are outside of our control and timing is one of those things. And you make the best decision with what you know and what you have. And then that leads to the next thing. It's not always the path you think it's going to be. And it's never straightforward. But by doing things and experimenting and, You know, you have to make a decision just moving forward, things sort of fall into place, but not always the way you expect, exactly. Exactly. Right. Like if somebody had told me when I was in university, where I'd be now at the age I'm at right now, I don't know if I would have been thrilled or terrified. Because it's so different from where, from where I thought I would be or what I'd be doing. At the same time, I wonder if there would have been a sense of peace knowing that things work out just in a different way. And because I remember there being a lot of fear when I was young. Right. A lot of fear when I was in university I felt that some of my peers and some of my friends had very clear ideas about what they wanted to do and what they wanted to be. And Yeah. I was so envious about that, that clarity that they had. Yeah. It's so scary. And when you're that age Every decision feels so monumental and if you make the wrong one, you could ruin your life and that's not really reality. And I think that pressure is just like increased. So there was pressure for us. But the pressure kids face now with even, you know, their grades in high school and getting into the right university, and then what are they taking in university? Will that lead to a job at the end? The pressure just seems to be getting even worse. It's just so, it's higher, and the parents feel that pressure, too. So, you're right. Would it be good to know back then, what you're doing now? And in some ways, yes, because it's okay, it's going to be okay. And, you can keep making a new decision. Like, if you don't like something, or you started something and it's not working, well, then you can make another decision and you keep going. It's very rare for a path to be completely closed down to you forever. And I've also been thinking a lot. I was talking to somebody actually yesterday. And as we were talking, one of the things that came up was sometimes the influence of, That others have on our decisions and our careers, right? And so realize that the impact certain people make and sometimes a disproportionate impact when you think about it I remember when I was young, when I actually think of my academic career and where it went was very different than what I had envisioned based on some feedback that I got from it wasn't even a guidance counselor. It was like a recruiter from one of the universities and. It just, I just didn't have the self esteem. And when I got that feedback, you know, it completely changed the trajectory of what I went into in university and looking back, that was ridiculous. Now, do I regret what I did? No, it was a different path, but I've always had an inkling and you know this, right? Like I had this very clear. Path that I thought I was going to leave. I was high achiever in school. I was one of those kids that I just learned in a way that is aligned with our education system and so I did. in school without really trying too hard. I mean, I studied, I was a good student and frankly, I was very shy and introverted and I didn't have that many friends. So books were my friends I went to great schools, I went through enriched programs, and up until I got to Cégep, because I grew up in Montreal, so we had Cégep, and there I started taking advanced classes, and so advanced calculus, and as an example. But that. Then hit my grades for the first time here was something that I didn't quite grasp as easily and but my pride, if you will, was I was going to go into the enriched classes anyway, never did it cross my mind not to take an enriched class. And maybe gotten that higher GPA so that when I met the recruiter from the universities who said, Oh, you're not going to be able to get into BCom. You're not going to be able to get into business because your math score is low. And my math score was actually still average, but in an enriched class. Yeah. And so by that point, I thought, okay, well, I'm not going to get into McGill, which is the school I wanted to go to. And so I didn't apply to BCom. Oh, wow. You didn't even apply. I didn't even apply. Like for me, failure wasn't an option. I just didn't understand that concept. I mean, the only thing I'd ever failed was my driving test, which I don't think I told people till I was in my thirties. And I still remember the answer I got wrong. Like it's hilarious. I took that test at 16. And to this day, I will tell you the rules of a four way stop sign. Cause that's the answer I got wrong. So it tells you about. Who I am, right? I focus on the mistakes I made. I wasn't focusing on the positives, right? So here was this counselor who said that I wasn't going to be accepted in McGill. I said, where will I be accepted? So how will I get into McGill? And looking back at my grades, then it was like, well, I'm going to go into the arts and I'm going to do political science. So what did you, cause if business was what you were originally wanting why was that originally what you wanted to apply for? What did you think at that time you wanted to do? Or did you have an idea of what you wanted to do when you grew up, before that Incident, I guess. Yeah. So it was interesting because as a small child you know, kindergarten level, I remember, you know, every kid gets asked when they're young and I wanted to be a stewardess, which is what we called them at the time, which was a flight attendant. And that's what I wanted to be when I grew up, because. My parents put me on a plane when I was 18 months old. We went to a lot of trips to Italy when I was younger and I loved flying. I just loved getting on the plane. I loved waking, like waking up in one place, going to bed in another. I thought it was extraordinary. But as I got older, although that was always still in the back of my mind, at one point I got this idea that I wanted to be like the CEO of a company, but I wanted to work in a company. My father was an entrepreneur and I lived the ups and downs without really understanding what they were. And, but here I was like a child of immigrant parents. My mother worked in a sweatshop. My parents really worked really hard and they were working all the time and money was always so tight. And so in my mind, I, as I started to get a little bit older, I equated money with financial independence, like financial independence was my goal. And so what I started to see, whether it was right or not watching TV was that you had to go work in an office. I didn't know what office doing what, but I felt that I had to go where I had to be in a business, in an office somewhere so that. I could then be have like financial security and that somehow evolved into I needed a business degree. But then, of course, you met that counselor who diverted you and you took political science instead. I did. And the idea, and I can imagine explaining that to my parents. And I mean, my father was crushed. He wanted an accountant in the family. And And the thing is that he explained it to me. And of course it made sense years later. I mean, that man continues to school me. It doesn't matter how old I am, how much education I get, how much work experience I get. He still schools me. But I remember at the time, Years later, when I was finally able to hear what he was trying to say to me, was that the reason he wanted me to go into accounting is that if you want any kind of business you're in, and any kind of life experience you want to have, one of the things is that if you understand the math, and you understand the accounting, and you understand the numbers behind everything, you could be successful at whatever you want to do. So for him, it wasn't so much for me to be the accountant, but all I saw was spreadsheets and numbers, which to this day, I mean, they literally put me to sleep. Yeah. Not the most exciting. No. And then I thought, okay, well I'll get an undergrad in whatever I want. Well, actually, my first plan was just get into McGill, do one year of undergrad, and then switch majors because you can switch majors. Mm-Hmm. Of course. And then I got to McGill. And I loved my classes. I mean, I love them. The history, the politics, the political theory. I just loved it. And I got to meet people from all over the world and it was so enriching and hard. It was really hard. All that reading almost killed me. And my friends that did go to BCom, that apparently didn't have the same issues that I did with their concerns, were all failing their first year. Oh, wow. And so, not only were they failing, but they were struggling and they hated it. And every time I would go into the school cafeteria, like their cafeteria where they used to have lunch and meet with them and their friends, I realized all they ever talked about was numbers. They talked about what was the answer to the exam, what was their GPA, and what was the answer to the next homework question. And I thought, where is, when I was. In the arts building, we talked history, we talk languages, we talked culture, we talked, it was all this other. So like the whole cross section and a dialogue of ideas instead of just how do I pass this class? Exactly. Exactly. And and I thought, okay, so I'm not switching to BCom cause that sounds horrible. Yeah. I'm going to finish my undergrad and then I'll go do my MBA. That was the plan. That was the plan. It's not what happened. So what happened? So when you graduated, what was your kind of first job out of school? So my very first job, God helped me was I went to work for my dad and his business for four to six months. And that once again, reinforced two things. I can't do accounting. I can't do anything with numbers. The, again, he tried to set me up with the bookkeeper. So I would do the bookkeeping and understand all of that and that side of the business. And then I realized I couldn't work for my father. Not at that point in my life. And again, I hated this idea. He used to get to Fridays. One of the things that used to make me crazy was my father never turned off his brain. His brain never turned off. So we'd get to Friday and he'd say, Oh, remind me on Monday, we have to do this, this, this, this, and this. And all I wanted to do, if you can imagine as a 21 year old, was I just wanted to go have a great weekend and go out with my friends and go to the clubs. And all he was giving me this to do list that already he put it in my head before Monday. And I thought, I need to go get a job. I need to go get a job where I can turn off my computer at five o'clock on Friday and not think about this at all. And I am never going to be an entrepreneur. So that was sealed. In theory, so that's where my journey started, but then I just started looking for a job and my like, any criteria of what you were looking for. Are you just looking for? No, at that point I honestly felt like. I didn't feel qualified for anything to be honest. I was really concerned about that. At that point was when everybody was like, what are your dreams? What are your passions? That's when those kind of conversations came into play. And at that point, by the time I'd graduated university The idea I had was I wanted to, I'd obviously grown up with this love of, like I said, travel. My parents brought me back and forth to Italy many times when I was younger. So I started getting this dream that I wanted to work in Italy. I wanted to work in fashion and I still had the, I, at that point, it was almost like I wanted to be the CEO of a company, right? That's when it started to come, but I could never verbalize that. Couldn't tell anybody. I felt, I already kind of felt like people thought. I thought too highly of myself because I knew I was smart by that point. And I felt that I had to play that down and I couldn't tell people that's, I could tell people I wanted to move to Italy or I wanted to work in fashion, but I couldn't tell people that I wanted to be a CEO. I mean, I think that's a big ambition for any 21 year old. But I think for women, society doesn't always. Like that size of ambition. But it's sad that you've felt like you had to make yourself smaller and hide, keep that to yourself. I did. And I think also at some point, though, I lost sight of it as I started working, because then I just started looking for a job, any job really. I had applied to work at a foreign exchange booth at the airport. And I was told I didn't get the job. They went with someone else. And then I got a phone call one day saying, from the recruiter, and I found out later that the recruiter actually had made a mistake, that she had Mistaken me and the other candidate and sent the wrong candidates and that person showed up for the first day of work. They were taken aback as to why is this person here? Oh, wow. And so the recruiter called me and said, and can you get to it? Then it was called Door Valley Airport. It was Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport. Can you get to Dorval? I was like, what? I was actually on my way to another job interview, as a waitress. I was literally looking for anything. And and I was like, I can't, I had, I was 21. I had no car. I was like, you know, no, there's no public transit that will get me there in time. And it was like, I can organize myself for tomorrow. And and so that's what started me on the path in foreign exchange. Wow. And didn't you also have a potential job at Holt Renfrew because you were saying before fashion was one of the three bullets that you had in mind. And so how did you end up at Horn Exchange instead of Holt Renfrew? I had already been working there almost a year. Okay. So you had already started. And I'd already started. And it was shift work and so on one hand it was a lot of fun because you start later in the day or you had a very early and I've never been a morning person. So to be at Dorval airport for like five 30, I think we started for that shift was painful. But I liked the the evening ones. And I knew I didn't want to continue in shift work, not that extent. And so I was starting to look around. Like I said, I'd always been a, Kind of ambitious. So I was looking for what's next and so I started applying to different jobs and one of the jobs I'd applied for actually was within the company itself to move to the head office and although it was to be an account executive, which was sales and I was Terrified of sales. I mean, as shy as introverted as I was, I was also insecure about my French my ability to speak French. And so I was just terrified of that, but it was the. opportunity that had arisen except for another job that had come up before, which I didn't apply for, which was to be the executive assistant to the the local regional manager. And that, when I passed up, I didn't want that job. But when the account executive job came up, then I applied for that. Didn't hear from them for months. So I thought this isn't happening. So I started to apply elsewhere. And so an opportunity came up to work at Holt Renfrew at the Giorgio Armani boutique, which I love to Giorgio Armani. And the perk was that you would get two Giorgio Armani suits. a year because that would be your uniform. So massive perk. So I had this plan that I was going to apply. It was a part time position, which was perfect. So my idea was I'm going to transition into fashion by keeping my day job, if you will. But since it was shifts, I could see if I can control kind of the shift work and then Take this job on the weekends and it was coming towards Christmas. we were in the process of them offering me the job. I was very excited about, and then they came back and they said, actually, as we're getting so close to the Christmas season would you be able to take on more shifts? So they didn't just want it on weekends anymore. They wanted to expand it and make it into evenings during the week. And I couldn't do that unless I quit my job. And as this was coming up, I got called for the account executive job. And so while this was happening, then I started interviewing for the account executive job, which was an increase in pay. There was a bonus. There was a variable compensation package, which was the first time I'd ever been introduced to anything like that before. And I'd have regular work hours in an office. And I was like, well, so my reasoning then was I'm going to be going into business working in an office where I'm going to make more money. And there's variable compensation. So instead of yes, I can have two Giorgio Armani suits, or I can have suits from different people if I stay in financial services. I started making the connections between kind of lifestyle. And really it was still about fashion, frankly, for me, right. I can afford the clothes. But there was that time that I made that choice. And so I stayed in financial services and I went into the corporate side of the business. And then you were there for a long time. I got offered a position in Toronto, same company. They were shutting down the office in Montreal and they packaged out the rest of the team and offered me a position in Toronto. And so the company moved me to Toronto. Amazing. And then you moved to Custom House. I did. So the company was acquired and we went through a transition. So we were Thomas Cook. Thomas Cook got acquired by Travelex, which was a foreign exchange and money transfer business out of the UK. What was interesting about that transition is that when I got to Toronto and worked for Thomas Cook, I loved it. I found myself in a group of, and working in a job that was called a dealer, which was an account management, if you will, type of role, but also allowed us To give exchange rates and help talk to customers. And what I loved about it was I love the fact that I didn't. I realized I started to like how to calculate the numbers and do the exchanges. This was before we had software to run all the margins. And so I had a great time. Teacher, one of the team leaders who was great at teaching it, breaking it down to basics. And so I can run the numbers really easily. I loved talking to clients, even though one of the reasons I was hired was to take over the Quebec portfolio. So I had, I was actually speaking French every single day. I was speaking more French in Toronto than I had in Montreal. And so I was speaking French every day and realized I was getting more and more confident speaking in French. And I had a manager who believed in me as management changed. And so I was getting a bigger and bigger portfolio. I loved that I was expanding into a U S based portfolio. Then when and then when travel X came is they wanted to change the restructure and they made us all reapply for our own jobs. And we went, we shrunk from a team of 23. To a team of seven. Wow. That's crazy. Like, how do you manage all your customers? Oh, yes, we got my book of business was quite large at that point. And I used to tease, but one of my managers at the time said, stop saying that is I used to joke and said, the reason I got the job was because I was the token French speaking female. Cause I was the only woman. And I believed at the time that the only reason I got it was that I spoke French and they needed a French speaker. And I think also what also helped was when we went in for the interview, I had one of the worst colds I'd ever had in my life. And I'd been on sick leave and the managers came in to run the interviews. And this is one of those things where I was so sick that I couldn't be nervous because I literally came into the interview with a massive box of Kleenex. Because I couldn't, I, I needed it. I was sneezing continuously. I was really ragged. I had chills. I probably had a fever. I, and I came in, so I was like, I can't touch anybody. And so, in a weird way, I couldn't be nervous. And I just wanted to get out and give the most concise answers I could possibly give. Yeah, get it over with as quickly as possible. Exactly. So there was no fear, no nerves. I was just like, I need to get home to bed. Like, can we scrap this up quickly? I mean, obviously I don't know what was going through their heads, but the way you talk about that job and how much you enjoyed it, I would imagine that came through as well. And certainly in terms of your relationship with your customers, they would have felt that. So I didn't know you then, but I. I know that it wasn't just because you spoke French. Probably not in hindsight, but that's the way I felt, I had great relationships with my customers. In fact I kept some of those relationships, even across borders when I moved to Europe and I moved in a completely different job. And Some of those customers continue to reach out to me, so I knew that I did establish really good relationships with those customers, and that was great. So, I really enjoyed that. Amazing. So how did you end up in Europe? A little bit of serendipity, really. So I was at a crossroads in my career. At that point, I had now changed to custom house. We had already met at that point. When I moved to custom house, I then moved over to take, still have that kind of dealing trading job. But I had also said to the manager at the time that I didn't want to stay in that role. I knew that. To me, that role felt limiting. It was very lucrative and it was fantastic from a financial perspective, but I found it limiting in what you could do with it. And I felt that it was limiting in my career. And so I said that I would go to help expand the business and grow that book because at that point I'd had a pretty substantial book of business that ranged in Canada, Eastern Canada and all the Eastern United States, all the way from New York all the way down to Florida. As well as that, I had an outpost in California And so I had a really substantial book of business said, okay, I would help, with the sales, but I didn't want to stay there. And then through there, I got an opportunity really first, this kind of event management and then in marketing and event management, and then that rolled into a product marketing role, where then I got involved in the rollout and the expansion of, at the time I didn't have the language for it, but ed tech and that was a global rollout. And I. Enjoyed it I loved the the variety of the work that I was doing. I love the fact that in this global workout was the first time I got to work with vendors that were in, so this vendor was based in New Zealand, so there was a time zone differences, the cultural differences. And as we started to roll this out in North America, I got to work with colleagues across North America from a sales marketing product perspective. And I loved that that interdisciplinary and cross departmental collaboration. Bye. I started to get bored once we rolled it out and it got in, it started to work and I was really excited about it. And at the time I realized here we had rolled out a whole new segment that was very profitable for the business and although I'm no longer involved, I believe they're still very heavily involved in that sector and it is one of their major sectors, right? But I was getting bored. And so at that point, the little bell that I had in the back of my head, maybe it's time to go back for my MBA. And I kept procrastinating because I was terrified of taking the GMAT. I was, to this day, I don't know what it is about standardized tests that. I don't think that way, so I know I'd have to practice and get there, but it doesn't come naturally to me. And so I was procrastinating and procrastinating. And then We'd had some, what I, unbeknownst to me, the organization had, was having some challenges with our office based in Italy and based in Rome. So first I had an opportunity where I got this random phone call from, I think it was our CFO at the time. I didn't even know this gentleman. He called me from Victoria, BC. And he said, I heard you speak Italian. I'm sending you some documentation. I need you to translate them for me by the end of the day. I opened my email. And they were financial statements, legal documents that meant next to nothing to me. Yeah, there's a difference between speaking Italian and being able to read legal documents and financial statements in these languages. So I was terrified. I didn't do any of my own work that day. I just spent the day online trying to understand what was being said and honestly, I don't even know what I babbled at the end of the day, but that turned into a An 11 day opportunity, I was asked to fly to Italy with two of our executives and go on a trip with them as they went there to kind of assess the situation locally. We flew back and went back to my regular day to day job. And then I was procrastinating buying the GMAT, the prep GMAT book. And I was like, okay, lunch break today. I'm going, I'm getting the prep book. I can't keep doing this job. It's not fun. I've got to figure out what my next steps are. And then my manager at the time, was she my manager at the time? Might not have been my manager anymore. I don't remember. Rolled her chair over. And said, you're going to get a phone call. And it was like, are you interested in going to Italy for three months? It's like, what? And that day I was offered an opportunity to move to Italy for three months as a secondment to assess the business. And that three months turned into almost seven years. It's crazy, but a an amazing opportunity and be an example of how something that can be really short term can change your life. Like you're making a short term decision, but actually it puts you on a whole new path in a way. Absolutely. And I think, so when I landed in Italy, I was terrified and overwhelmed, but there was It was one thing that happened. Well, two things that happened that in hindsight, and now Understanding a little bit about dynamics and gender dynamics and workplace dynamics. Two things happened. One, the vice president who sent me there had incredible faith in me. And he said to me, because I actually have never tried to talk myself out of a job before, because I literally said to him when then not only going over, are you crazy? This is exactly the words I responded to him. Are you crazy? I have never managed people. I have never managed a country. I've only ever managed a project. And his response to me was. I trust you first and foremost and he said, you know, this business, you understand this business, everything else can be taught and learned and we will support you. We'll put strong people and he listed out who the people would be in Europe. That would be part of my support team and would make sure that. I was supported. And then the other thing he said to me, which were magic to me, you cannot fail. He said, you cannot fail because if you go over and say, there's no business here, we're going to have to shut it down. You've just confirmed what the financial analysts have been telling us for months. Two, you're able to just sustain the business bonus. We didn't even expect that to happen. And three, if by any chance, there's any growth. That's just a cherry on top of the sundae we're not even expecting. And so with that confidence in me, somebody else had confidence in me, I was able to get off the plane and get there. And once I got there and I saw the support that I had, It was the first time in a very long time, maybe the first time in my whole life, where I took control of my career because up until then, I felt a little bit like a rolling stone. Yeah. You kind of go where people have a project or, you know, assign you something or ask you to pick something up and you just go and do that. Exactly. Exactly. It was like, Oh, you need help doing this. I can do that. You need help with that project. Oh, I can figure it out because I was always somebody who liked to figure things out. And and I like fixing. Putting puzzles and pieces together. And I didn't realize that at the time, but that's an actual skill. So it was the first time once I'd been in Italy for a month. And again, I also had a massive, again, support and sponsorship was not only did I have that senior vice president have that faith in me, but the president of the company had faith in me. And he would come to Italy and every time he came, we'd always have a dinner together where it was just he and I, and we talk about my goals, my career, how I wanted to do things. And he coached me during those sessions. And with him, I was able then to devise a plan. With his inspiration and his support, I was able then to see where I wanted to go and I knew at that point that there was rumors that the company was up for sale. And for the first time I took control because I thought, I still remember the exact day where I was, where I thought, I'm going to stay in Italy. I'm not going home at the end of these three months. How do I create value for the company to show that it's worth for me to stay? And so it was the first time when I say I took control of my career, it was the first time that I was like, this is what I want. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to get it, but this is what I, this is what I want. And then started figuring out how to get it. And you did, you were Seven years. I was. So are you still in payments? No. So what are you doing now? No. So in a complete turnaround, I now am an entrepreneur. Like full circle in a way. Full circle. And so when I came back to Canada, I was at a really an inflection point and really wasn't sure. I didn't realize that at the time it took me a long time to realize that I was very burned out. I had been going at a thousand percent. I loved being in Europe. I loved the work that I did, but I had plateaued in my career and I had never had that before. What kept my job interesting. Was there was so many changes. We went through another acquisition. We came part of Western union, you know, then it was a different type of organization, there was massive opportunities there as well, but. Although I got to work on different projects, I didn't progress in my career. We got to grow the business. I got to run a larger business, a lot to work on global projects, but I didn't progress and I stagnated and for that was the first time in my career and. I didn't understand that I'd hit this plateau and I couldn't understand why I couldn't get out of it. I would apply for different roles and I wouldn't get them. I had lost the sponsorship and of those key people within the organization. As much as I tried to build network, it wasn't working. So, I realized I was really frustrated, not just in my career, but it was, living and working in Europe is fun and is a fantasy and it's wonderful. But after a while it gets really challenging. And if you're not getting satisfaction from your life or your work, and it's impacting your life satisfaction, then I thought I I'm done. So when I came back to Canada, I was so burned out and I didn't realize it till I heard. Ariana Huffington come speak at an Indigo book signing here in Toronto, and she had just released Thrive, and it was the first time I heard her tell the story about how she woke up in a pool of her own blood, and how that wasn't success, and how that was burnout. And I turned around, I was at that with my sister, and I turned around, looked at her, and I said, I'm burned out. And she said, duh. I didn't know what I was going to do next. I really struggled for a couple of years. And I started thinking of when I was happiest in my career. And I realized the time I was happiest was in the early days of Custom House. I loved that we were. team, but we were so ambitious and everyone that was on the team was really Everybody was smart, everybody. We were a jigsaw puzzle that worked, right? We had different strengths and we didn't maybe see it at the time, but the output that we were able to put out as such a small and young team was incredible and it was invigorating and we were. Even closer than friends at that point. Like we were really intertwined in each other's lives. I still remember when the first person, you know, we all went to everybody's weddings, all we lived milestones together, weddings and parents passing and children being born and first houses being bought and, it's like we all were making, we were all helping each other make these financial and life choices, right? I was the newbie that came into that. But because it was still so small I was just welcomed and intertwined. Within the group as well, whereas, of course, when you get bigger, that gets harder and harder, but it was such a tight knit group back then it was like, I remember even when I had to make decisions on, like, my mortgage, where was I going to go get my mortgage? You'll be like, okay, I'll take it back to the team tomorrow. We'll discuss what the options are. And it was like, Hey, which bank are you going with? What were the terms? You know, we, we discussed these things and it was crazy. I remember going with some of my colleagues and helping them pick out engagement rings for their girlfriends. Like it really was, we did so much together and, but we accomplished also so much for the company. And so I thought, okay, I want to go, I want to go back to a smaller place where I can have impact again. And so I started looking around and what I realized was that everybody within my network at the time was all in this payment space. And everybody told me essentially either I can go work for a competitor. Or go work at a bank. I hated both those options. And I also felt that I wasn't qualified to go work at a bank. I felt even though I had all this experience, I still had that insecurity that I had never done my MBA. Because it was do my MBA, go buy that GMAT book and go do my MBA or go to Italy. So I went to Italy and even when I got to Italy and I started getting a little, antsy because my dream was always an MBA at INSEAD. And I, it's one of my regrets that I never, even while I was living in Europe, I didn't attempt, I didn't think I could ask the company to support and to give me the time to do it, to do it. It's still one of my biggest regrets that I never did that because it was a dream of mine and I was so close, but so anyway, going back to my, how I got to entrepreneurship was then I didn't want to go work for a bank. I didn't want to go work for a competitor. So I thought, okay. Let's see what the startup space looks like in Toronto. There's got to be people doing FinTech and financial services. I realized everybody wanted to take down Western Union. Everybody wants to take down the big banks. And here I thought I was going to meet all these brilliant people. Because my idea of an entrepreneur, although I grew up with my father, who again, always ideas that man cannot walk down the street without having two or three business ideas or business improvement ideas, and I knew I wasn't him. And so I thought I was going to meet all these brilliant people. And I didn't, I did not meet brilliant people at all. I met people with a lot of blind spots is what I'm not, especially because I was talking to people that were trying to do startups in the financial space. And I realized they didn't understand how banking worked and they definitely didn't understand how international payments worked. And I met maybe one organization that was further along. And what I liked about them is that they at least knew they didn't know. Okay. Which is, I mean, that's the key. It's okay to not know if you know that you don't and, you're willing to learn from people who do exactly. But that didn't work out. And but what happened was that at the same time I was doing this and I was talking and researching is that during the day I was trying to understand the startup space in Toronto. I started to spend technology, what's happening here, what FinTech. It was around the time that in Canada, there was. trial was happening, which was around sexual assault and sexual abuse in a workplace in the United States. Bill Cosby was in and out of the news. And then there was the 2016 U. S. primaries, and at night, I couldn't stop reading and following this news, and during the day, I was looking about technology, and then I started to think that I couldn't get the news out of my head. And. Honestly, like these emotions and this rage started building up inside me that I didn't even know I had and I got so upset and so angry and I couldn't believe how common rape culture was and how people were just so nonchalant and casual about just the misogyny. I didn't even have the words for it. I just know I was angry and At this point, I had signed up for a whole bunch of newsletters, incubator spaces, any kind of ideation. I didn't even know what these things were. I just signed up for different information in startups. And it so happened that I don't even know what headline came across my space. But what happened was in my inbox came that an incubator based in Toronto Had opened up what they called an intensive four months program, which now I know is an ideation program. So you've got an idea and how do you take it to a business? And I didn't know how or what or why, but I literally applied with a run on maybe two run on sentences about using existing technology. To eliminate rape culture and they accepted me and I didn't know how or why. I didn't know what first steps I was going to take, but that's, and I knew I came from like this business background. I had run businesses. I knew how to read balance sheets. I knew how to look, do forecasting, and I knew how to manage people. You had to hire and manage and train and grow them. But I didn't know, how do you take an idea to a business? And that's what started the journey. And that was 2017. By then, I incorporated at the end of 2017. We didn't actually start picking up until 2019, where we got some substantial funding. And now we're in 2024 and fully realized Vesta social innovation technologies. Is a social enterprise and we build tools that work at the intersection of gender based violence work and access to justice. That's incredible. And I think also speaks to the resilience. You incorporated the end of 2017. And, you didn't get funding until 2019 so like the resilience to get something started, figure out how to take the idea and turn it into a business, and then build that I mean that's pretty incredible. I mean there's been. A lot of ups and downs and it has been really challenging. And there's been a lot of times along the way that I thought, what did I do? And and there's been some really low points in it as well. Right. And this journey of entrepreneurship is really different and really challenging and in a weird way brought me. Closer to my father, because it hasn't, hasn't, because he doesn't understand the work that I do, but he understands the challenges of being an entrepreneur. So my time away in Italy also helped with my relationship with my parents distance, I guess, makes the heart grow fonder, um, as well, though, is I really got to learn there. Language, which is my mother tongue, but I really got to learn it. I always understood it, but I really got to understand the culture they came from. And I also realized that they made some very conscious choices and how they raised me and my sister that was different and I understood them a lot better. And having that kind of perspective and then coming back to Canada and building something. I always say that Vesta wouldn't exist without my time in Italy because I went from a country that every time I tried to do something would say, Signora, that's impossible to then when I started my idea about Vesta, I got so much pushback, but they were like, Oh, that's really ambitious. That's going to take at least five years to get off the ground. And I thought five, five years. I went from impossible to five years. Totally doable. Totally manageable. Completely. I did it in three. You think there's you look back on that original when you were a little girl dream university, ending up in payments and then now being an entrepreneur, do you think there are any like common threads or points where you can see actually how those pieces of the journey really connect? I mean, even you were talking about how, Vesta wouldn't exist if you hadn't gone to Italy. Yes. For example. I think there are not maybe direct links, but they're stepping stones that I didn't and it's easier. I think it's Steve Jobs who said that it's easier to connect the dots looking backwards. So I think there's a lot of truth in that, when you think about what I took and it was really shocking for people and still to this day, even though I've been in this space now for so long, and I still get people saying, well, how did you transition from payments to this, especially like social entrepreneurship. And it blew people's minds. And honestly, I was even terrified of telling people. I still remember that first Christmas party we went to after I had started Vesta. And I think I told you, I was scared. I was scared to go back into the room with my old colleagues because I thought they all would have thought I was this massive failure for leaving. Instead, all they wanted to talk about was my work, because they were all so impressed that I had made this leap. But in terms of transferable skills, is that what I realized was that I had a really strong base in compliance, in legal, in regulatory spaces, and did I say privacy already? So privacy was a big issue in Italy way before in Europe way before they were talking privacy in 2008 that didn't hit North America till much later. So when I started even the basis of Vesta and trying to think of how do we build technology, I still remember one of my very first pitches. One of the first people said this is about maintaining data and I went on about why the data needed to be stored in Canada or Switzerland. And I went on to explain how. Privacy works in different countries and how important it is for data protections and how certain regulations in different countries would impact that. And the person just stared at me. And I always incorporated what I called privacy by design and security by design right from the beginning, even like from our very beginning, like applications from like an MVP model. And when I talked to privacy lawyers and then I had. I had the audacity when I think back to call the privacy commissioner of Ontario on his cell phone. Granted, I did not realize that's who I was calling when I got him on the phone, but someone gave me a cell phone and said, Hey, David is willing to talk to you. And I was like, great. Let me talk to David. But that wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't already been on the phone with the Bank of Italy when the new payment services directive came down in Europe and it changed all our banking licenses and, the kind of money transfer licenses and all the changes that had to go through there. So I'd had experience talking to regulators and I also had experience of talking to regulators from an authoritative, if you will, point of view, because I understood those regulations. And frankly, they had no expectations of me understanding that at all. So it's like you said, when you look back, you can see how all those things connect. But when you're starting out, you don't realize how the journey could go and how back to what I was saying at the beginning, like when you start out when you're young, you think oh, this decision is a life or death or make or break my career decision. But it's not because the path doesn't go the way you expect and you learn things like, there's no way I would have thought and I'm sure you wouldn't have like when you started out in payments. Actually, all these things I'm going to learn in payments are going to help me build something completely different in the future. Agreed. If you think about it, I did account management, relationship management. Right. That now is super important. I did sales. Incredibly important. Before I even joined, before we ever met, one of my very, very first jobs while I was still in school was telemarketing, which is the. Oh, I think the worst job in the world. But it meant that I can make phone calls. It taught me that skill. Then when I moved to custom house, I started doing events and events planning. Well, that's huge when you have a startup and trying to build awareness. I worked with the marketing team. I worked with the product team about how to develop product and then market that product. I built sales playbooks to help the sales team. Once I moved into those roles. So not only was I rolling out then product, but then how to connect it to sales. And then when I went to Italy and then I looked at it, then I got more involved from that 360 degree view, seeing how all those pieces fit together, legal compliance, marketing, sales, product, all of those kinds of came together. Well, all of that is necessary to build a company. So. Absolutely. At the time, those were all building blocks to then being able to build a company. So when I started talking right away from the beginning, I found it fascinating. Actually, last year I was at a massive tech conference. I think it's like the second largest in the world. It's the collision conference, the biggest one being the Web Summit in Portugal. So collision, I don't know, a hundred thousand people, it's massive. And so it brings together technology, corporations, startups, organizations from really the whole gamut. And I was talking to somebody and she said. Funny, when I talked to you, I don't think of you as a startup. And I said, what? And I said, how do you see me? And she said, I see you as corporate. And I was so taken aback by that and I asked her what she meant because at first I was like, I didn't know if I should be insulted by that. I didn't know if that was a compliment. I just didn't know. And I don't think she meant it either way. I think for her it was just an observation. And I went back afterwards and I asked her and I said, can you help me understand what that means? And she said, well, it's the thoughtfulness with the way you respond to things. And she said, you, she's like, there's a certain level of professionalism that you bring and the way you articulate problems, solutions, and how you can architect that out and communicate that out. To me, that sounds more corporate. And so I took that as a compliment and saying, okay. I understand what you mean by that. I could see how that's. I mean, in a way, it's an edge as a startup because you already have all that knowledge. So you don't have to learn all of that on the job. But I could see how it's also maybe like a misperception that you would have to overcome as well Cause you get put in boxes. People just naturally put people in boxes. So absolutely. And I never fit in a box. Sometimes I feel entrepreneurship chose me as opposed to, I chose it because I didn't, even when I was looking for a job or every time I've tried to look for a job, I never fit in any one key box. And so. It's challenging, especially now in the world of the ATS systems and so many, resumes going out. I don't have a clear linear path. What I have is somebody who creatively likes to solve problems and I can see big pictures and I can see the whole board and then take that from vision to execution. And, and that's a skill, but it's hard to articulate in a resume. So it is in the current world of ATS that's really hard because it's looking for like buzzwords and job titles and things like that. So that's the boxes are getting more defined in a way. But something you said about Entrepreneurship choosing you, it's like all those things you did before created a path. It wasn't like you chose that path. It's like it created that path in a way. Yeah. Chose exactly. Yeah. So that's what brought me here. Which is amazing. And with the benefit of hindsight is there one piece of advice you wish you could go back in time and give yourself I think there's so much advice I really wish I could give myself. The biggest one is just, I think would be, don't be so afraid of making the wrong decision or making the wrong choice or afraid to speak up and speak your mind. I was so scared. I was scared all the time and I felt completely inadequate and I, Never, ever raised my hand for anything unless I was 110 percent sure that I was right. And entrepreneurship is really humbling I've realized that I started listening to Brene Brown quite a bit a couple of years ago, and really her work around vulnerability, and being able to lead with vulnerability, and being honest and authentic. And I realized that the more I was able to say to people, this is what I know, this is all of this here, I don't know. But I, Will you help me find the answers? And I'm not asking if you have them, but if we come with me on this journey, wouldn't it be cool if we can figure out these answers together? And so the advice I would give myself is don't be scared. Yeah. You don't need to have all the answers yourself. No, no, because there's so many other things I could learn along the way. And there were so many things that I would, you know, tips and tricks and things like that. But the basis of it all is you don't need to be, have all the answers before you say anything. And it's okay. It's going to work out. Just try something. And if it doesn't work out, try something else. I love that. I mean I think that's just, that's such good advice. I wish you had gone back in time and told me that advice too. What's your vision for what's next? Well, as in all things, entrepreneurship, we're best at an interesting point right now. And so I don't really want to go too much into the details, but I see that we're in an inflection point right now. And. I'm working on a project that's got me really excited and that could bring VESTA to the next level and kind of realizing the original vision I had for VESTA and it's looking at gender based violence from a different lens that maybe has been looked at before and I'm very excited about it. That's awesome. I'm excited for you and I'm excited to see where it goes and hear all about it. I can't wait to tell you. thank you so much for doing this and sharing your journey. Even though I've known you for 21 years now, I've learned new things about your journey and just perspectives on decisions you made and how the path found you. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Megan Dunford: 1:01:25

Thank you, Lucrezia, for sharing your incredible journey. The three key takeaways for me were one, the importance of supportive leadership and sponsorship as you build a career. And two, The value of also taking control of your own career and third, the skills you learn in one industry or one area are ultimately the building blocks that create the foundations for you to pivot into something completely different. Lastly, Lucrezia's advice to her younger self about not being so afraid is something that really resonated. But it also struck me that so many of the pivotal moments of her story were when she was scared and did it anyway.

1:02:13

And because Lucrezia mentioned Brené Brown, I'd love to leave a book recommendation. My favorite Brené Brown book is Dare to Lead. Check it out. Thank you for listening to the unexpected career podcast, please follow, share and rate on your favorite podcast provider. The unexpected career podcast is produced, edited and hosted by me, Megan Dunford. See you next week.