Sandra Osorio was able to stay and live in Mérida, Yucatán, the peaceful Mexican city where she was born. She was also able to choose to pursue her profession as a business administrator without becoming involved in learning more languages than her native Spanish. However, from a very young age, this Yucatecan struggled to master Mandarin Chinese and find a position in one of the largest companies in China, dedicated to the manufacture of various products, from batteries for cell phones and electronics to electric cars and trains.
At 34 years of age, Sandra remembers and tells how she began her path to obtain a position in the vehicle division of the BYD company headquarters, located in Shenzhen, China.
“I was studying Chinese in Mexico at the Confucius Institute and I won a scholarship for a camp in China. The experience was something I liked and I made it a point to go back to Asia,” she said.
For Sandra Osorio thus began a series of efforts to master Mandarin Chinese and finally migrate to Asia and demonstrate how brilliant Mexican female talent can be.
Being a higher level student, Sandra obtained a second scholarship in Mexico to improve her Mandarin for a year, studies that she carried out in the north of China, an area where she not only had the challenge of practicing a complicated language, but where the people must withstand extremely low temperatures.
Upon finishing her degree in Mexico, and already mastering Mandarin, Sandra obtained new educational support. On this occasion, she is going to study a master’s degree in International Trade in China, a program that lasts 3 years in that country and that would provide her with the knowledge to connect different nations on the subject of business.
With the postgraduate degree in her curriculum, Sandra continued her professional career in China, a territory that she has conquered today after years of effort and also overcoming the challenges of distance from her family, her country and of her customs.
“It is difficult to start a life in another country, it depends on the person, but men and women have a lot to prove, we have the potential and we have to try it, in Mexico or abroad,” says Sandra, while participating in a demonstration of the power and designs of new electric car models that BYD is about to send to the market in Mexico and other Latin American nations.
Sandra admits that she misses her family, although she says that she talks with them almost daily using WeChat, the main messaging platform in China and whose use is already well adopted by her Yucatecan family.
In her daily work, Sandra attends electric car dealers in America from her office in Shenzhen.
And it is that the BYD car division is taking leaps and bounds to conquer the American continent, where it offers various models and prepares the arrival of more proposals to cover the various ranges.
Sandra says that her task is to obtain the necessary data for the negotiations and expansion of the automaker in America and offers the information in Spanish for those interested.
“Mobility is 100% and BYD is growing very fast,” she says as she smiles to share the favorable expectations she has for the industry in which she participates.
When asked about some advice that she can give to people like her who want to practice professionally abroad, Sandra emphasizes that everything is a matter of trust.
“People have everything to be able to shine in other places, so there is no fear if it is in Africa or China, that the language is not an impediment, because it is something that can be learned”, she comments.
In addition, to finish off any doubt, she adds convinced: “If you tried it and you didn’t like it, there is Mexico again.”
Source: Forbes
