Loida Rosario
Founder and Chairperson
ElCoquiGalleries.com
Loida Rosario is currently the founder and chairperson of ElCoquiGalleries.com, an Internet venture that opened in 2000. Previously, Rosario was a global account manager with responsibility for a $30M market of communications and information services at AT&T. During her tenure at AT&T, she was promoted through positions in product management, market management and sales management.
Rosario was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico where she worked with American, Spanish and Mexican companies in the areas of consumer marketing and insurance.
Rosario is a member of the Daniel Murphy Scholarship Foundation board of directors, and co-chair, corporate advisory board of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs. She has been a leader in promoting education among the Hispanic youth. She co-founded the Summer Enrichment Program sponsored by NSHMBA and has spoken at several public schools in the Chicago area, at the National Council of La Raza Conference, and the US Railroad Retirement Board. Rosario was a part-time professor of Strategic Marketing at Northeastern University. She is also member of the PTA and a volunteer AYSO Soccer Coach.
As a founder of ElCoquiGalleries.com Rosario has been featured in TV Shows Tapestry, CBS and Careers, Channel 21. She was a guest speaker at Crain's Chicago Business Small Business Series, Woman's Business Development Center Conference, and webgrrls-Chicago.
Rosario is married, and lives in Illinois with her two young children.
1. What was your first job in technology?
2. Who has been your most significant mentor? Why?
3. What has been your greatest challenge and what strategies did you use to overcome obstacles?
4. Who has been the most influential person in your life? Why?
5. What lessons have you learned that would be valuable to women beginning their careers in technology?
6. What new technology do you believe will have the most positive impact on the world in the next 20 years? The most negative impact?
On a lighter note:
2. What was the last book you read? What books do you love to recommend?
3. If you couldn't do what you are doing now, what profession would you choose?
4. What is your definition of success?
My first job in technology was as a product manager in AT&T Computer Systems. Although we did not have the right model for the business, the experience gained by working with the designers and developers at Bell Labs is a great asset in my career.
My best friend who encouraged me to go college at night while I worked full-time. Without her encouragement and example, I would probably had not taken my BS and later my MBA and graduated with honors.
My greatest challenge was being new to technology and overcoming a few people's perceptions about what a young woman, Hispanic and with an accent was supposed to know or understand about technology. As a strategy, I just learned more than the doubters!
My children, they keep me centered.
Learn constantly, ask many questions and believe in yourself ... you probably already know more than those who think they know best.
Life sciences. Life sciences. It is both exciting and world-changing what is happening at the world laboratories in terms of biomedicine and related technologies. It is frightening what the economic forces can do with it.
1. If you could have dinner with any 2 people (living or not), who would they be?
Albert Einstein (my hero), my mother (she died young).
Last read: "Los anos con Laura Diaz," a novel by Carlos Fuentes, famous Mexican writer.
Recommend: Selling the Invisible by Hartry Beckwith. No no-sense marketing/business principles appropriate for the Internet era...an invisible/non-tangible medium.
[My] Current position is my ideal profession, career and passion.
Performing and delivering at your best in everything you do while enjoying life, family and friends.
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