Andrea Saenz Cabezas
Andrea Saenz is a Customer Experience and Innovation Strategist currently based in Berlin Germany. After finishing her Master’s in Customer Experience and Innovation at IE University, Andrea joined Bayer Pharmaceutical to start her apprenticeship program in the Customer Excellence Academy.
"Define your goals and expectations early, stay humble, be brave, and jump to opportunities when you see them."
She specializes in designing and leading co-creative projects for teams and organizations to be more innovative, to drive customer success, and business development. Andrea has worked as a design consultant for several companies especially in retail florals in the US, Canada, and LATAM. She also led education simulation programs for international organizations in 5 countries in LATAM, finalizing this period with an internship as an advisor in the Mission of Ecuador to United Nations in New York City.
Her diverse background has given her a good understanding of international trade, international organizations, cross cultural communication, and globalization. She finds the world going through a drastic change and aims to seamlessly align customer interactions with the satisfaction they all want to have in their everyday lives.
DEFINE YOUR EXPERIENCE IN ONE WORD
Multinational
IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU THINK PROGRAM HAS CHANGED YOUR LIFE PROFESSIONALLY AND PERSONALLY?
It has leveraged my understanding of the world, opening the doors to new opportunities of growth and self-discovery.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVORITE MEMORY OF YOUR EXPERIENCE?
Long nights working with my friends in projects during MCXI.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO STUDY THIS PROGRAM AT IE?
Because I felt like the program was designed for me, it was just what I was looking for, and I learned from it just in the right time.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE MAIN CHALLENGES THAT YOU ENCOUNTERED ON YOUR WAY? HOW DID YOUR MASTER PROGRAM AND IE HELP YOU THROUGH THESE CHALLENGES?
IE can be very intimidating at the beginning. Everyone is so smart, and interesting I would lie if I say I didn’t doubt myself during the first weeks. But time, good advice, and great friends helped me grow out of this fear. The Academic Director of my program, Andrew McCarthy was always saying, “trust the process”, and so we did as often as possible. MCXI is a very challenging program, but good things never come easy, and it was overall a fantastic experience.
WHAT IS NETWORKING LIKE IN THE PROGRAM?
Due to the pandemic conventional networking was limited, but as I always say, the silver lining of the pandemic was that we got to really focus on our studies. We did lots of networking within our program, with mentors, colleagues, professors, clients, etc. It was such a challenging year that I think everyone really appreciated networking opportunities more than ever. As I read somewhere, networking is about planting relationships, and the MCXI is a great program to do exactly that.
