Welcome to Meet Alyce, a series where we’ll introduce you to a member of the Alyce team every other week.
Alyce is made up of empathetic, authentic, caring, kind, fun-loving and interesting people who want to build something great and do some good along the way.
This week, we’re proud to introduce you to Monica Rosales, Senior Partner Manager based out of Washington, D.C.
Learn More About Monica
Q: How have you grown professionally from working at Alyce?
I’ve been at Alyce for two years and I sat on the Success team. I think the one thing that Alyce has afforded me the ability (which I absolutely love) is that I am able to see the business objective goals and then be able to see how other teams interact to get to those goals. I love that because I love the way that businesses work. For example, for us, logistics is a huge piece of our business. But we’re a software company, so we have decided to not pursue being a warehouse expert. Our leaders made that decision and I think that’s so awesome that they said “We’re not gonna do that, let’s find a piece of technology and work with and partner with people in logistics to make sure that we’re both successful.”
Alyce has allowed me to see that vision, and I’ve been surrounded by people who have been very visionary. Sean and Tracy have helped me understand that some people don’t know it’s possible, and it’s given me the tools to go research and present what could be possible and then let others make decisions and guide us to what we’re actually trying to do.
So, in a nutshell, Alyce has given me the safety net to explore other things and to figure out my own passions. It’s helped me set goals and it’s just been a positive experience – furthering my career to things that I really really like.
Q: What has been your proudest moment working at Alyce?
This has been more recent. We have a customer, which I got when I first started (which was two years ago), and they’ve been using a competitor of ours for the whole two years. I remember my first conversation with our admin at the time and I was like “I’m just gonna let you know that we don’t want you using them and I’m gonna figure out how that’s gonna be possible”. It took a lot of effort, time, energy and relationship building to get to a point where they moved away from our competitor. Now they’re using us for everything. Now they are expanding and using us for a bunch of partner stuff, and really relying on us to be their gifting platform. And that just felt really great. As corny as it sounds, it just felt like a huge win because I made that goal with myself, manifested it in the universe and it finally happened. It wasn’t just a me thing, it was lots of pieces of our company coming together, but it was just such a great moment because I was leading it, and now i’m just so happy.
Q: Best advice to give to future Alyce teammates?
There are two pieces of advice when I mentor people who are earlier in their career, and I think the biggest one is, not that nobody knows what they’re doing, but ultimately nobody knows what they’re doing. If you’re sitting in a place of “I don’t want to do something because I’m afraid I’m going to fail”, fail. Don’t care that you’re not going to do something perfect. There is a quote, which I’m not sure who it’s attributed to, Ayanna Pressley happens to say it a lot, (I absolutely love her she’s a congresswoman from MA) “do not let the perfection of the moment get in the way of the progress”. This means don’t try to be perfect and don’t let the fact that the you’re not going to be perfect take away from achieving even a small amount of progress. Progress is better than perfection.
I wish someone would have told me that earlier in my career because I was afraid to go out on a limb and do things with a fear of failing. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that nobody knows what they’re doing. They may have ways to mitigate risk, but when they take on new projects it’s like “OK, we’re learning together, and it’s OK if you fail”. I wish I would have known that earlier because I always felt that people above me in leadership roles knew what they were doing, and that’s not always the case.
So, that would be my biggest piece of advice: We’re all learning and we’re all growing. Feel free to fail as long as you learn from it and progress from it.
Q: Do you have any specific causes you care about or have a passion for?
So it’s kind of a running joke, but I love Elizabeth Warren. So much so that I named my dog after her. She’s the reason why I moved to Massachusetts.
But I think the cause that I really care about has moved and transformed in a way where it’s women’s issues and everything that it encompasses. Everything from women’s health to racial disparity to pay equality. And even just breaking it down more, what it means to be a Black woman in America. Mother mortality rates are so much higher than white women. And I think being able to lift up those who are at the most risk, which happens to be Black women in America. Being able to lift up those voices and create awareness around something as simple as it’s really hard to be a pregnant Black woman in the south and have access to healthcare. It’s very hard for Black women in the south to vote because not a lot of people have access to get a government ID.
So I think a passion of mine would just be women’s issues, women’s equality, and women’s health.
Q: What did you want to be when growing up?
For the longest time, this really may not be a surprise to anyone, but I really wanted to be the first female president of the United States. Then as I got older I was like “I don’t want to be the first woman president, we should have already had one”. This was when I was younger and I didn’t even know what that meant. I think maybe I was bossy, or what is it they say now, “had natural leadership tendencies”. I’m the oldest child, and so I would always talk my brothers into doing things for me. You can call it manipulation but I feel like they were fine negotiation skills.
I want to be a leader and I want to be someone who is knowledgeable and trustworthy and can make things happen. So when I was younger, I wanted to be president.
Fun fact though, when I was in high school, my favorite TV show was The X-Files, and a lot of my life choices are based off of TV shows. Like I live in D.C. because of The West Wing. But I wanted to be Dana Scully from The X-Files. I wanted to be a Forensic Pathologist and I wanted to work for the FBI. So much so that I had pre-interviews with FBI Agents and they were like “Monica, you’re graduating college and think you’re going to work for the FBI? You literally have nothing to offer us no offense.” As I got more real life experience, I was like I have an issue with authority so there’s no way I’d be an FBI Agent.
