Today we’d like to introduce you to Santiago Bunce.
Hi Santiago, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
For more than 15 years, I have been involved in coaching, consulting, and facilitating for non-profits and for-profit companies, alike. Today, I run an executive coaching and consulting business, but the path to this place has been winding. There have been lessons learned, opportunities missed, luck favored, and incredible colleagues, partners, and mentors.
My interest in this work stems from my desire to serve the individuals and teams who are trying to make something good happen in the world – whether it be through a non-profit, foundation, corporate responsibility team, or any entity interested in social impact. I’ve been fortunate to work in the non-profit, for-profit, and academic sectors, in roles that range from back office support to client-facing executive. The work has occurred in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean and has touched on management consulting, study abroad and international exchange, economic analysis, international development, monitoring and evaluation, sales, and community development. The wide array of experiences not only reflects my eclectic set of interests (even in my education this is true – my undergraduate degree focused on comparative theology, while my graduate work focused on international economics and development), but also my appetite to find the interconnection between seemingly unconnected realities (I once wrote a paper exploring whether or not winning the FIFA World Cup caused an increase in birth rates within the victorious nation – short answer: not really).
The varied and enjoyable path has not only introduced me to wonderful people and ideas, but it has created opportunities to embrace curiosity and learn. I’ve carried this into my current work with Secoya Strategies, as I and my colleagues seek to curate, on behalf of our clients, the various wonderful tools that exist to improve organizational culture and performance, as well as individual professional fulfillment and joy, to be applied as needed within their organization and work.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has only been smooth when it’s reflected upon in hindsight. In the sense that any path has peaks and valleys, I’m sure mine has not been much different than the path of others. There have been times when I’ve been offered the job, and others where I was rejected or was the backup. Other moments when the sale was made, and others still when the project went to a competitor. Days where the work feels incredibly rewarding and the impact is clear, and others where it’s easy to question “why am I doing this job?”
If I think about the current context and how Secoya Strategies exists today, I’d say the greatest struggles were the ones that existed years prior to launching the company. Three years prior to launching Secoya, I had applied to a job with a Fortune 25 company. After a six month interview process, I was informed I was the backup selection and ultimately was not hired for the role. It was a difficult moment, but a turning point in terms of the future of Secoya. That role would have very compelling and impactful, but also all-consuming, and never would have allowed for the creative space, nor time allotment, necessary to design, develop, and launch a company.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Secoya Strategies?
Secoya Strategies builds ecosystems for sustainable performance. An ecosystem of sustainable performance is a space where individuals and teams utilize appropriate disciplines, data, and strategies to deliver consistent and relevant results for key constituencies. These spaces require collaboration, accountability, and agility. We help teams create these ecosystems by leveraging the expertise of lived and learned experts to balance results, processes, and relationships. Our facilitators and coaches work collaboratively across disciplines, providing strategic guidance, analysis, network design, and evaluation to help partners develop networks and organizations that are resilient, equitable, and effective. We commit to facilitating learning with a focus on equity and centering participants’ needs in our work.
Secoya has a strong track record of designing, launching, and managing networks and analyzing strategic pathways. Our current and past clients include networks and organizations committed to public health, school gardening, sustainable food systems, community development, affordable housing, civil rights, volunteering, and education, among others. To these entities we have provided a range of services including network and ecosystem analysis, program design, data discovery and analysis, strategic planning, meeting facilitation, executive coaching, and communications plan development. We provide these services in both English and Spanish, throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe.
Secoya Strategies is committed to being a steward of the mission, vision, values, pillars, and language of the clients we serve. We have extensive experience facilitating and supporting initiatives with a range of participants in various settings from resident town halls to board retreats. The size of these engagements have spanned groups as small as four-person teams to round tables with as many as 150 neighbors. The content of these meetings has been diverse as well and have included members searching for a new vision, strategy, and path for a burgeoning initiative; partners in conflict about programmatic priorities; leaders from various entities convening to collectively build a policy agenda; and even strangers connecting to define a communal vision on local parks. We have also led research and network analysis of hundreds of people and data points and have crafted reports ranging from one-page summaries to 25-page discovery reports.
There is a science and an art to creating ecosystems of performance and linking participants so that connections, closeness, and ultimately use of a network or a program grows and benefits those it is intended for. Secoya works to bring this science and art to life while working with clients and partners.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I would say I have a limited tolerance for risk-taking. So a lot of the decisions around Secoya have been at least somewhat sufficiently informed. That said, there have definitely been risks in starting a company – first the risk of leaving a full-time job to start a company. Then also I think there are risks related to how to best invest resources (financial and time) in the development of the businesses. Figuring out the best answers for where and how to market, which projects to bid on, and who to collaborate with, can feel risky, but I think approaching those things with a learning mentality, can make even perceived “loses” as actual positive insights that make the decision-making and work, better in the future.
Contact Info:
- Email: santiago@secoyastrategies.com
- Website: www.secoyastrategies.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secoyastrategies/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/secoyastrategy
Image Credits
Bruno Wolff
Roxy Azuaje
