Today’s episode of Changing the game was special not only because it was my first ever international interview, but also because I got to talk to Dinia Monge, Co-Founder of Ola Igualdad and a long-time friend of mine.

Ola Igualdad is a consultancy firm created with the sole mission of promoting gender equality in different organizations, while aiding them in achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness with their work.

On a more personal level, Dinia is moved by a strong desire to change the game for women around the world that stems from her own experience with the wall of prejudice that keeps women from ascending to high positions within the corporate world.

From Imbalance, A Spark

“Five years ago, something happened”, Dinia began to explain while talking about her trajectory and how she found herself at a point in her life where it was getting difficult to balance her family life with a job that demanded bi-monthly international flights.

She recalls trying to negotiate this routine with her boss at first, who despite being very comprehensive could only do so much, eventually Dinia began to question herself on whether her current occupation was “close to her heart”.

The answer was no, and in what she called an unusually irrational decision, she quit her job in order to find a greater balance between personal and professional.

For all intents and purposes, this was leap of faith, a jump that combined the exhilarating freedom of freeing oneself from a burden combined with the spine tingling fear that comes with the lack of a safety net.

 And much like any other leap of faith, Dinia was bound to land at an important conclusion that revealed her true motivation.

“I wanted to help other women get that balance. Why couldn’t you really pursue a professional life and also be at comfort with yourself and how you are dealing with time management around family.”

This motivation would eventually lead her into contacting the delicate threads of gender equality in organizations in general and collaborate in the founding of “Ola Igualdad”.

Woman Engineer

Going back on our conversation a bit, some of the more long-term members of my audience may know that one of the biggest focuses of interest at Changing the game is the extremely important subject of women in STEM.

Thus, learning that Dinia originally graduated in engineering and how extraordinary this is in terms of what it means for the struggle for a more equitable society, I just had to ask what her motivation was to choose that field.

“I love math” she responded.

This love of math, combined with being “generally unaware of all the possibilities that math implies” led her to choose between becoming an engineer or an economist, until a certain prominent figure told her:

“If you’d like for your opinions to be heard, don’t become an economist”

And out of a desire to see her work produce solid, measurable outcomes, she became an engineer.

Now, if Dinia was able to make such a big difference in the world without being initially aware of all the paths opened for her by her inclination towards numbers, imagine what young girls today can do if they receive access to this information?

Life In Brazil

At first, what made Dinia choose Brazil, my home country, as her destination after graduating from college instead of somewhere like the US or Australia was a general fascination for the Portuguese language.

Even if her first contact with the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro was a little frightening at first.

This initial fright came more from the unexpected variance in regional dialects in Brazil, but once that barrier was overcome, Dinia tells that she quickly became a Brazilian at heart, fully immersing herself in the culture and history.

There was also what she described as the liberating feeling of a clean slate that comes with going to a place where nobody knows you which gives you the freedom to carve out an entirely new identity for yourself.

Such a feeling came with the price of an initial isolation from some of the cultural differences between Brazil and Costa Rica, combined with an uncomfortable distance from her family

In choosing the road less traveled, Dinia got to have absolutely unique experiences in relation to her colleagues, which in turn equipped her to bring in unique perspectives to her line of work.

Ola Igualdad

Dinia co-founded ola igualdad with a team of United Nations certified consultants and it plays an extremely important role in working alongside organizations of all kinds in order to find the gender gaps within their processes and operations and addressing them.

The first step in this adressing process, she explains, is spreading awareness as “most of these gender gaps are caused by gender bias”, which are unconscious and a part of human psychology, though that by itself is no excuse.

She also explains that because of its inherent relation with the human psyche, this bias can only be eliminated on a long term process, which in turn generates the need for short-term bypasses which are then built with the organization.

It should really go without saying how essential her work is ias it manages to fight inequality from both the individual and introspective front, as well as the collective structural one, both of which are often a great source of suffering and inequality in the world.

Conclusion

A remarkable and adventurous woman, Dinia Monge is someone that never failed to take risks in order to learn, be it in choosing to study and live in Brazil, quitting her job to find balance or taking the charge in the fight for equality.

In all of these steps along her journey Dinia was always able to subtract some unique perspective or valuable insight which she has employed in her quest to make the world a better place for women.

So, with this in mind, it is time for me to ask you: What would you consider to be some of the most valuable experiences in your life? And how can you use them to change the game for yourself and the people around you?