Natalia Gomez is the newest addition to the leadership team of Elenas, Latin America’s first Social Commerce Marketplace, empowering women to achieve financial independence. She is joining as Country Manager to lead the operation in Colombia, sustaining their accelerated growth and aiming to maximize their success. 

Elenas is revolutionizing the $26 billion direct sales market in Latin America through social media and e-commerce. Through the Elenas platform, beauty personal care brands are closely linked with a huge seller network, also called “embajadoras”. Sellers on the platform use social media such as WhatsApp to promote and sell brands' products. Sellers only need to focus on the dissemination and sale of the product, while Elenas handles the delivery of the product and collection.

Natalia is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 12 years of experience leading sales teams at multinationals. Her career started in sales at Groupon, one of the pioneers of the e-commerce marketplace, where she accomplished major sales results across Latin America. Unlocking the opportunity to lead the sales department in Colombia and Panama. 

As the new year starts, we took the opportunity to talk to Natalia about this new position, her expectations for the upcoming months of work, and her role as a startup leader. 

Introduction in her own words

My name is Natalia Gomez, I'm an entrepreneur with management experience in sales at multinationals. My main focus is sales, customer service, and strategy. I have had the opportunity to work with companies like Falabella.com, and Linio.com, and for the past 5 years, I led the e-commerce division at Rappi, where I created and launched the e-commerce. 

I'm a Mom of two amazing children of 3 and 6 years old, raising them in a Colombian-Swedish family, which has been a unique opportunity to live in two different and enriching cultural environments for their personal, emotional, and educational development. 

My first experience started at Groupon in 2010 when the company was arriving in Colombia and I was hired to help develop the sales team. My first role was as an account manager, where I had the opportunity to learn and grow in the commercial environment, activating some of the most important companies in the country in the platform and closing key negotiations to foster revenue growth. After this opportunity, I was appointed Head of Sales of Colombia and Panamá, leading the sales team of both countries.  

Why Elenas? What made you jump? Why at this moment?  

From the first moment, I was captivated by Elenas, it was all about the purpose of the company and its focus towards building real impact in the country's economy. I immediately fell in love with the importance of always helping and empowering millions of women to enable their digital businesses and create new income opportunities for themselves and their families.

Today there are millions of startups being born, new companies being created around the world, but not all of them have a clear vision. In Elenas, the main goal is to support the social and economic development of millions of women to enable labor opportunities from their homes, without majorly disrupting their lives and always prioritizing their wellbeing and the income generation, and this has an important value for me as a leader. 

What are you trying to build at Elenas?

My main goal is to lead Colombia’s operation to a new level of excellence. Having the best product selection to offer to our “embajadoras” and achieving outstanding customer service, along with improved delivery times. 

Since the core of our operation is based on our purpose, one of my goals is to help our “embajadoras” to professionalize their businesses, enabling more tools and knowledge so they can become exceptional sellers, which ultimately will mean more income for their households and new growth opportunities for themselves.
Lastly, one of my goals is to maintain the exponential growth of the operation while we continue working towards a sustainable financial future. At this point, I will be working closely with Zach and Felipe Mejía, VP of Growth, to create a major impact across the entire organization.

What are your three key recommendations for leaders?

Natalia has built an outstanding career, always targeting aggressive goals, leading high-performing teams, and creating major disruptions in the e-commerce ecosystem. As an experienced leader, we wanted her opinion about the three most important recommendations any professional should take into account in their path to becoming leaders.  

• Always make sure to have the best team at your company.
• Be ambitious, always thinking big.
• Never allow “no” as an answer, always foster a propositive culture.