Hi there. I’m glad you’re here.
The Through-Line
Engineer of systems: physical, organizational, commercial.
That’s the through-line. I love holding the vision, figuring out how to make it real, and assembling the structures and teams to build it. Whether as a parent, a partner, or at work, there is intentionality woven in.
Where I Come From
I was born in Venezuela. My mom is Cuban. She was an engineer, which gave me the early imprint that women could have nontraditional careers. My dad is Peruvian and Colombian. The summer after sixth grade, my family emigrated to Miami, and I lived there until I left for college.
My grandparents were Cuban exiles. They left Cuba at 37 and 40 with three children and nothing else, and they were my model for hard work, discipline, and perseverance. They thought traveling the world would be impossible from where they landed. They went on to do it anyway. They taught me to love travel, and somehow every job I’ve had since has required it. (The trail is on my LinkedIn.)
My grandparents also paid for my education at Georgia Tech, where I earned a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering.
Motorola
I started as a mechanical designer in Chicago in 1998, then joined Motorola as a process engineer. I led large-scale facility moves and line reconfigurations, designed accessible systems for disabled workers, and fell in love with structured problem solving. The leadership team, my boss and coworkers at Motorola provided unforgettable training in authenticity, professionalism, sharing the spotlight, and continuous improvement.
Into the Field: Nichiha
In 2008, recently divorced, I pivoted into the building materials industry.
At Nichiha, I shifted the installer training program from a two-day curriculum into a six-hour, scalable field training. I grew the technical department into a field support and design-assist structure that worked hand-in-hand with sales teams. We navigated product certifications through ICC, Miami-Dade, the Florida Building Code, CCMC, TDI, WUI, and other regulatory bodies. We collaborated with engineers, architects, and a manufacturing partner to develop new trim solutions, localized coating processes, designed a clip that won an architectural award, and launched a train-the-trainer model that empowered dealer reps to deliver technical training themselves.
This is where I started to see what most product companies miss: a great product is only half the work. The other half is the system that gets it specified, installed, and reordered. The hands-on side. The field side.
The Leap (2017)
By 2017, reality hit. Technical management wasn’t going to fund three college educations. So I took the scariest leap of my life: out of technical work and into sales. The new role moved me from Atlanta to Los Angeles with three kids and no network.
Learning the Field
I got a drink-from-the-firehose sales immersion from people I still feel lucky to have learned from: Mark Mitchell, Zach Williams of Venveo, and the great mentors I worked with at Nichiha. I started out chasing specs like everyone else. Eventually, through a lot of trial and error, I learned to lean into what I already had: technical knowledge and ten years of visiting job sites and troubleshooting on the spot.
When you lean into who you actually are, life gets so much easier.
Once I figured out how the channel ran, and the entire specification journey along with all of its players, I devised a system. It helped me become the top commercial rep in my company in under 18 months, in a brand new city, with a product line I had never worked with (tile and brick).
It paid off especially well during COVID, when the job site was the only place you could see anyone in person. I doubled down. I still talk about that in my Project Fluent training and workshops.
The result: $211K/month in sales, a $6.4M pipeline, and a system that kept producing after I left.
That was the birth of Project Fluent™, a simple, disciplined, teachable field-first sales system.
VP and the Turnaround (2021)
In 2021, I stepped into an executive role leading a struggling rainscreen business unit at a global manufacturer. I applied the same field systems with a profit-first lens.
Three years later:
| Metric | Result |
| Annual sales | $166K → $3.4M |
| Margins | Negative → 78% |
| Pipeline | $1.2M → $40M |
| SKU rationalization | 300+ → <90 |
| Lead flow (monthly) | 10 → 300+ |
Profit Arc
While I was scaling that unit, I had a realization: innovation without discipline is just expensive chaos. I built the framework that became the core of Profit Arc™, a structured approach to taking the right products to market, killing the wrong ones, and engineering margin into every line. It’s the strategy that turned a stagnant unit into a high-margin engine.
Wholly Pops
Somewhere in there, I also founded Wholly Pops, a paleo and organic frozen dessert brand.
The idea started with Jim, another Nichiha colleague who’s gone on to a big career of his own. He left after a year, and I kept going. I devised the recipes myself, ran the certifications, wrote a gluten-free manifesto, fully funded a Kickstarter to pay for the packaging Whole Foods required, and got the product onto Whole Foods shelves. With massive support from my local community, family, and friends, I learned sales, marketing, supply chain, small-scale manufacturing, commercial kitchens, and the entire stack of running a consumer brand.
I made it to the second round of Shark Tank. I didn’t make the cut. By early 2016 I decided to sell the business and go back to full-time work, and to be more present for my kids.Sometimes you need to build something completely outside your lane to remember why you build at all. Wholly Pops did that for me. (The site is gone, but the Wayback Machine remembers.)
Build Perspectives
My friend Tim Seims, an old Nichiha colleague, and I had been comparing field notes for years. He was in the Pacific Northwest in sales; I was on the East Coast in technical. In 2019, we decided to start recording the conversations as a podcast. We called it Build Perspectives.
Our careers have evolved a lot since. The conversations haven’t. This October it’ll be seven years.
Most of what I know about the building products industry beyond my own narrow lane has come from those conversations and the guests we’ve had on the show.
Conscious Leadership
This story isn’t just about sales or profit. It’s about conscious growth and innovation: clear seeing, aligned action, systems that respect both numbers and people.
I’ve stood in muddy job sites and battled for resources in boardrooms. The last 18 years have taught me how to bridge the gap between what looks good on paper and what actually works in the field. And I keep learning, because the world keeps challenging the building products industry in new ways.
I’m also a reader and writer about what happens at the intersection of operational rigor and inner life, where systems thinking and meaning overlap. That’s the territory of my Substack, Awakening Executive, where I write about the inner game of leadership.
What I Do Now
I help building products companies close the gap from spec to scale, and I teach their sales teams how to win in the field, where deals actually close.
Project Fluent™ is for sales teams that need to learn how to win in the field: the rep starting out, the rep starting over, the single parent putting kids through college, the high performer who knows they could close bigger deals with the right framework but doesn’t have time for protracted trainings that don’t apply to this industry.
Profit Arc™ is for the building product company or business unit leader tired of innovation theatre, looking for results they can apply immediately with minimal expense and direct labor output.
Both are delivered through Spec to Scale LLC, my consulting firm.
Off the Clock
Travel. Between travel to see clients, tradeshows, family and leisure- I’d say we’re home about 50% of the time.
Books. I read voraciously, often three at once. The territory I’m most curious about is the overlap between systems thinking and the inner life.
Family. My husband and I spend most of our time in our beach home in the Florida panhandle with our 2 dogs. We travel to Atlanta often to visit my family and take our RV to California to visit the kids.
Our kids are all grown and doing amazing things
Let’s Talk
If something in my story or my work resonates, I’d love to hear from you.
Work With Me → Consulting, training, and speaking, delivered through Spec to Scale LLC.
Get my Newsletter→ Monthly perspectives on sales execution, product strategy, and what’s actually moving the needle in building products. Free, no filler.
Book a Conversation → Honestly, I’m curious. Every conversation keeps me closer to the pulse of what’s actually happening in this industry. If something here resonates, or you just want to trade notes, let’s spend 15 minutes.
Additional Social Profiles: For some other places that you can find my profile… check these spots, although I don’t use them as much: Medium, Behance, Issuu, About.me, Vimeo, Slideshare, Blogger, Linktree, GitHub, and Personal Websites.