“Shark Tank Mexico” TV show to provide female view of business

Mexico City, Nov 10 (EFE).- Convinced that the female view of the business world is very different from the male view, Mexican businesswomen Ana Victoria Garcia and Marisa Lazo and Colombian Andrea Arnau will play key roles in “Shark Tank Mexico: Special Entrepreneurial Women.”

“If there’s a feminine point of view (in business), I think that we women are different from men and that we have greater capacity for empathy, for understanding that the other person is a whole person and not just an employee,” Andrea told EFE on Wednesday at a roundtable with Mexican media.

Within the framework of International Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, which is celebrated on Nov. 19, the program – which features small businesses with big hopes of starting out with the investment of a businessman who evaluates the projects – will be devoted to the women who are seeking a place within the industry.

To do that, the three “sharks” who headline the project were invited to appear on the program, which will be broadcast on the next three Fridays, Nov. 12, 19 and 26.

The owner of Pastelerias Marisa, Marisa Lazo, says that considerable advances have been made to date in understanding the role of women in modern day business.

“For many years, the few women who began to succeed in business dressed like men, spoke like them and now it’s neat that they look at us as feminine and vulnerable,” she said, adding that she’s acted both authentic and strong, but also vulnerable, in front of her workers without losing her leadership position within the pastry business.

In the episodes, Lazo says that she was meticulous in selecting the women’s projects that she wanted to be part of as an investor and conducted a series of interviews with the participants she considered to be best.

“I was interested in knowing what their finances were like, what they knew about the challenges, their strengths and opportunities. Many of the questions were focused on getting to know them better and we even asked them who had inspired them,” she said.

Meanwhile, Ana Victoria, the head of the Victoria147 training and empowerment platform for businesswomen, said that for her it was important to have some chemistry with the leading candidates, since she thought it was fundamental to be able to work well together.

In addition, marketer Andrea Arnau said that she has a predilection for risk and is always interested in projects focusing on innovation, which in general are riskier than other start-ups.

Arnau, Lazo and Garcia will share the set of “Shark Tank Mexico” with the well-known Mexican investor judges Rodrigo Herrera, the founder of Genomma Lab, and the general director of the Telmex Foundation and Uno TV, Arturo Elias Ayub.

“With them, we’ve got a group to play around with,” Ana Victoria said.

Finally, Lazo said she hopes that the program spurs more women to take the business leadership plunge, adding that it will become clear that women are stronger when they are united.

“In Mexico, there’s a bad saying ‘Women will never get along with each other’ and here we’re going to demonstrate that women together can do great things,” Lazo said.

EFE mrl/jmrg/laa/bp