We were lucky to catch up with Tomas Ordoñez recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Tomas, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
My biggest life changing risk was leaving my country (Argentina) to come live in the US. Being away from your family and friends is not easy. We are social beings, and to move out to an unknown place means a huge risk from that perspective. Luckily the risk paid off, and I can now say I have made great new friends who I consider family.
I took this risk to enhance my own capacity of generating a positive impact in the world. I knew that the network I wanted to build was going to be 110% more powerful and influential if I were to set base here. The bigger the risk, the bigger the outcome. After almost two years, I can happily say the risk paid off! There is still lot to do, but I am generating awareness on human rights (specially on children’s rights), inspiring empathy on the inequality of the world and driving people to collaborate socially in a whole new level and reaching a much higher impact on humanity than before.
Tomas, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m a 30 y/o argentinian with a huge desire of having a positive impact in the world. My background goes from a Bachelor degree in Communications, working in the Public Relations industry articulating between the private sector and government entities, to founding a nonprofit back in 2017. This last I consider to be a milestone in my personal and professional carrer, “Festejo Solidario” was founded to give kids in poor neighbourhoods of Argentina a joyful birthday. We understood this celebratory moment to be identitary to every childhood. It was at this moment I realized I wanted to dedicate my work to a project that benefit the most vulnerable, children. There is a lot going on in the world, I think now more than ever we need positive leaders. Future generations depend on us!
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Reputation is essential to any leader. It is not something you build within days, weeks, months but years. It is a lifetime construction, building it everyday and easily falling apart anyday if neglected upon. This is why it should be a genuine reflection of one’s expertise and general involvement on a particular topic, area or industry. My Communication academic background and PR work experience helped me understand this on an early stage of my professional carrer and start building my onw personal reputation from the start. It gave me the knowledge to use media as a strategic partner and manage to position myself as a “social entrepreneur” with many news articles, radio appearences and more telling what we were doing with our nonprofit. Also, networking! I understood how important networking was to build reputation and participated in every forum, work-group, events and whatmore related to the nonprofit and entrepreneurship community.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
My advice is from a humanist perspective, a people person perspective. Before employees and employers, a team is made up of individuals. Individuals with their own ambitions, fears, desires, strenghts, difficulties, and much more. Get to know them and understand what drives them, what do they prioritze in a working environment. In my own personal experience, people tend to stay motivated in a place where they feel seen, recognised as a whole individual, not just an employee with tasks from 9 to 5.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sharemybday/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-ordonez/