In conversation with Sarah Arnio

As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to believe that the universe conspires to make things happen.

In 2009 I was working in Business Development for a games art studio In San Francisco. We would often travel for gaming conferences, on one such trip to Austin, my path crossed with Sarah Arnio. She was also in Business Development, working for a Latin American Payments startup.

We chatted briefly, exchanged cards, added each other on LinkedIn, and since we didn’t have an overlap in work, assumed that was that.

Fast forward to 2013, I was driving across the country from San Francisco to Miami, in a Jeep no less (that’s a story for another time) to work at a gaming startup.

As is customary, I changed my information on LinkedIn when we reached Miami and a few days later got a message from Sarah.

Turns out, that woman I met in Austin 4 years earlier, now lived in Miami, a five-minute walk from our new place.

And as they say, the rest is history.

Sarah became my closest friend and confidant in a new city where I was like a fish out of water.

In the years since we’ve grown closer, ground each other, lifted each other up in our personal and professional lives, and are always cheering each other on no matter how many miles apart we live.

I’m in awe of Sarah’s commitment to self-improvement and her ability to take on challenges, sometimes at the most stressful times in her life. She reminds me to put myself first sometimes and the value of taking care of yourself so you can show up for others.

This is the first time we talked about some of these topics and I learned so much. I’m excited to share our conversation with all of you.

Sarah is currently a Senior Manager for Home Services at Walmart based in Bentonville, Arkansas.

How did you start your career in tech?

I would say it was luck. It’s not something I sought out. I graduated college during the recession and I ended up in Latin America, travelling and teaching English, and then through my network, somebody who I had interned with while I was in school, was in Colombia at the time and put me in touch with some startup founders. So I just kind of dove into an industry in a company that I knew very little about and just learned and adapted. I believe that is really something that I have strength for.

I often lament that I’m curious and love learning and I don’t follow just one path but it’s made me resilient and able to adapt. That company evolved from a social gaming company to a payments startup.

We entered fintech and then evolved into a mobile app company that worked on providing software as a service for restaurants.

So, it really kind of felt like a lot of different industries.

You worked for a south American start-up for many years. How was that experience different than working for US-based companies?

I started my career in Latin America so, in the beginning, I didn’t really know the difference between the United States and Latin America. As we grew, I started traveling more, meeting more partners and clients and I really saw the differences.

Two of the biggest differences that I found were that venture capital just wasn’t as fluid or as easy to get into as in the US. At the time, this was in the early 2010s, Brazil was hot so there was some money available, but from US-based venture firms and so there wasn’t as much money or firms to be had in Latin America. Latin America wasn’t appetizing for US-based firms, but eventually, Brazil did catch some companies’ eyes and so we did get some funding there, but I would say we had to be a little bit more scrappy.

Another big difference when it comes to challenges I think is that the customer is different in Latin America when it comes to using technology. The industry I was in specifically, Fintech, we had customers who didn’t have a credit card and then half of those customers who did have a credit card could only be used within Brazil. So there were challenges just kind of getting the customer to understand how to use mobile payments on how to use digital payments.

Who inspires you?

I’m a little bit competitive and I’ll talk about this a little bit later about the whole idea of women having it all.

I look to career women who do seem like they have it all as “people”, they’re the ones that inspire me. So like people like you Priya, for example, where you have a job, this awesome career in tech, these young kids, and you’re doing something on your own; you’re starting something. I love the idea of setting out and starting something, it’s always been on my mind. I feel like I’m a little bit risk-averse though and I haven’t taken that leap to do it.

I’m also really inspired by people who have overcome hardship. So I’m thinking of my partner who is from a very different socioeconomic background than myself who grew up in the Pablo Escobar era of Medellin and had family members killed.

I’m thinking of a good friend of mine who lost her dad to covid this year, these people are still going. They’ve overcome these challenges and they’ve managed to grieve. I don’t want to say move on but overcome and be better and get stronger from these challenges.

A lot of times we see people, and on the surface, they’re rocking their jobs and they’re rocking it in life. But then there’s always these challenges that we can either let consume us, or we can seek to embrace them, let them wash over us, then move on and let that be something that we carry with us. I think just these two people, these two examples in my life have done a really good job of inspiring me.

You went back to school for your MBA after having your son, what drove that decision?

Going to business school is something I had been thinking about since I started in the tech start-up sector. I was in a business development marketing sales kind of role and learned a ton on the job. I always felt like Business School would be helpful to get me to the next level in terms of the next level at a company or the next type of company. It wasn’t until I found out I was pregnant that I actually decided to go to Business School and to do it and make it happen. I felt like if I didn’t do it then I was never going to do it. I wanted to prove to myself that I was kind of at the same level as people who maybe had more traditional business backgrounds.

What was your experience going on maternity leave and coming back to work?

I have two young kids and I have an older stepson, so we have three kids in total. I have two experiences going on maternity leave. One was while I was working from home mostly and had to negotiate my maternity leave because it was such a small company and there wasn’t really any policy.

That transition, going back to work, was really quite easy especially given that I was working from home and my schedule was flexible. Even though I worked with mostly men and Latin Americans I did find that there was a lot of support and I had the flexibility so it wasn’t as shocking as my second experience.

My second experience was when I was working at Walmart and two months after I had started I ended up giving birth. I went on maternity leave and I will say I definitely got more time for maternity leave at Walmart than I did at the startup. Walmart gave me 16 weeks and I know compared to many in Silicon Valley it’s not much, but at the first startup, I had to negotiate three months. Coming back after almost four months of maternity leave at Walmart was pretty jarring. I think it was because of having to be in the office pretty much from 7 to 5, having two small kids and it being winter when I went back. I mean there are a number of factors, but it was tough, it was really tough. I have to say, I was back at work for probably 3 months and then covid hit and so actually coming and working from home was kind of a relief. I had been shocked at just the little amount of time I felt like I had and the overwhelming feeling I had at the end of every day or at the end of every week of just getting my bearings. I just felt like I had no time to stop. My only time for me was when I was pumping at work and so that was not fun.

Coming back after maternity leave can be tough but I spoke to my boss and my team and everybody was very supportive. It was nice that my partner was working two days a week from home at the time so that helped.

How do you balance work and life with 3 kids?

We often hear phrases like “women can have it all!” Or “women can’t have it all”. I like to keep challenging that phrase and that stereotype that “women cannot have it all”. I have heard that “women can have it all but not at the same time” but I like to challenge myself. I think that’s why I went to Business School when I had a small child and why I went to Latin America and tried to break into the tech scene there. I like to have a little bit of a challenge and working with two young kids is probably more than I was expecting. The biggest piece many people talk about is that having a partner who can support you, who you can communicate with, and who will be there for you when you want to keep leaning into your work with the kids at home is vital.

I think it is really tough for two people to have these power jobs. I’m very thankful that my partner works and is a software developer so he does have a demanding job, but his schedule is a lot more flexible than mine. He’s in fewer zoom meetings and he’s not trying to climb the corporate ladder, at least not as much as I am, so that has been really important and helpful. We have honest conversations about this probably weekly.

I think open dialogue and communication, even though it sounds cliche, is really important. I never feel like I have it together.

What do you think is the biggest challenge for the next generation of women in tech?

I see a lot of dialogue and chatter about parity in the industry when it comes to gender and race. I honestly think that this is great, but I also think that this might be a challenge for the next generation of women because these aren’t easy things to solve.

I don’t believe the next generation of women will be at parity to men when it comes to pay, when it comes to their numbers in the C-Suite, or when it comes to their numbers in quantitative or engineering product roles.

I worry that because there is dialogue and conversation about it, women will get told that they don’t need to worry about it because it’s being addressed or it’s being worked on.

I worry that the biggest challenge for them is going to be keeping this topic in front of mind and not letting people tell us that we’ve already had these conversations. We are addressing it, but we have a long way to go in terms of equality for women in tech.

Advice to women wanting to get into the industry, what do you wish you had known?

Something I learned a little bit later in life is that everybody loves to talk about themselves and I don’t mean that in a narcissistic bad way. What I mean is, reach out to people if you see an area that interests you or you see somebody rocking it and you’re curious or you want to know more.

I have found really good results just reaching out and talking to people.

I think many people are open to having conversations and they enjoy talking about what they do, what they’re passionate about. So, I think learning more about what the day-to-day is like for these people, what they’re working on, what lessons they’ve learned and gathering all these tidbits of information can help someone when they’re thinking about getting into tech. Networking is so important and that is a great way to start.