Meet the MY JOB Narrators: Pablo, Xerox LatAm Finance Manager, Córdoba, Argentina
“I’m a finance guy by choice. That means I think that, like it or not, money rules. That’s the reality, and it’s very sad. We’re spending so much time to earn money that we don’t take care of the core of our life–our personal life and our families. Money confuses us.”
—Chapter 11: Pablo, Xerox LatAm Finance Manager, Córdoba, Argentina
How I Met Pablo
Pablo Mira works for Xerox as a regional finance manager for Latin America, based in Córdoba, Argentina.
I met him through my brother Ron, his long-distance coworker in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. In today’s work-world where nearly half of us telecommute from home, these two men work in the same enormous division for a monolithic corporation and, on conference calls, hear the sound of each other’s voices more often than their next-door neighbors.
They, in fact, have something of a bromance going on. They They’ve been through a lot more than skewed spreadsheets and busted budgets together. They bond on Skype over faith, family, and the dream of freedom in their professional future, if ever they manage to get past the bills of today.
Pablo works all over the world, but he still lives in the exact same city where he was born. He’s a numbers guy who sees the world in terms of dollars versus pesos and feels that there’s never enough of either currency or time.
Pablo’s motocicleta muy fresca.
Pablo is the only narrator in this book whose office I did not see: He said it was not a very interesting room and that we could easily conduct his interview via videoconference. Beaming in from the home office at Ron’s house in Kentucky, I sat with Ron, who interrupted constantly with eruptions over office gossip and excitement over how much he and Pablo have in common. When they realized they both drove the same exact model motorcycle, they nearly squealed.
Carina (L), Marisol, Santiago (atop), and Pablo at the beach in Argentina.
Excerpt from Chapter 11, in Pablo’s Own Voice
I’m the eldest son of a strong Sicilian [Italian] father. When I was younger, my dream was to work in finance for a multinational company. My father is an accountant as well. I think that I received a lot of influence from him.
I learned from my father to be the support of the family. According to him, you have to work as many hours as possible to give your family a decent life . . . .
I met my wife, Carina, while I was teaching at the university. She’s a CPA and works in the National Bank of Argentina. We have two children, Marisol, who is seven years old, and Santiago, who is four years old.
I work from my home office two days a week. I spend three days at the Xerox office downtown. Lots of emails, lots of remote meetings . . . I spend the most time working with operations and sales counterparts from LatAm. I try to provide support for them not only in the formal way of a manager . . . I just treat them the same way I’d like to be treated.
Latin America has socialist governments, and . . . We have very corrupted countries, such as Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil, sort of, Argentina, sort of. Two macroeconomic factors that are not common in the U.S. are currency fluctuation and inflation. We have to deal with both of them.
Like it or not, money moves the world. If you want to get a life, you need money for that. Money rules.
Update on Pablo’s New Company
Update: As of 2017, Pablo has a new job, with new business services company Conduet, a spinoff from behemoth Xerox as part of a new strategy to focus on its core business. Pablo continues to perform a Senior Financial role as the business partner for Conduent Customer Care operations in Latam, in such areas as customer care, transportation solutions, healthcare, and digital payments. Like the name itself, Conduent works as an extension of its clients, helping them drive loyalty, retention and customer satisfaction. Sadly, he no longer gets to spend long hours on conference calls with my brother Ron.
Check out this video that Pablo posted on YouTube from the day his division became an independent company:
You can catch Pablo at 2:07 in the above video, taking a selfie with his local coworkers.
Learn more about Conduet in their official company-launch video, here:
Check out Pablo’s chapter in MY JOB: Real People at Work Around the World, available both on Kindle and on paper. And, stay tuned to meet the next narrator, equity investor Nik, in Chapter 12 . . .
Photographs courtesy of Pablo Mira; videos courtesy of Conduet.