I remember interviewing her personally, impressed at the time by her polished résumé and confident, articulate presentation, entirely unaware that some of the professional history she’d described had apparently been carefully embellished specifically to make her candidacy more appealing to my hiring team.
I asked her, during that interview, why she’d chosen Aguilar Ventures specifically over several larger, more established firms she’d apparently also applied to that same season. “I wanted to work somewhere I could actually learn from a leader I admired,” she told me, an answer I found genuinely flattering at the time, understanding only much later exactly how calculated that particular phrasing had probably always been. I’ve thought about that exchange often since, understanding it as an early, missed signal of exactly the kind of careful, strategic charm Mauricio himself had once used so effectively on me years earlier. She excelled quickly within the marketing department, earning genuine praise from her direct supervisor for her attention to detail and eagerness to understand the company’s broader financial operations beyond her own immediate role, enthusiasm I now understand carried an entirely different motivation than simple professional ambition.
