What we talked about
Veronique Rozan shares how she manages TE Connectivity’s worldwide sensor portfolio, builds value-based pricing, navigates tariffs and constant change, and balances (by choice) a demanding executive career with family, offering candid advice for aspiring women leaders.
Show notes
Veronique Rozan strips pricing strategy down to a single principle: charge exactly what the customer is willing to pay, and everything else follows from there. What makes that deceptively hard at TE Connectivity is that she applies that principle across a global sensor portfolio spanning pressure, temperature, position, force, vibration, and optical sensors, serving automotive, industrial, medical, and aerospace markets simultaneously while navigating post-COVID inflation corrections and real-time tariff changes.
What we covered
- Sensors are the starting point of the digital world: every piece of data, from COVID respiration machines to factory condition monitoring to automobile diagnostics, begins with a physical measurement. Veronique describes sensors as the fundamental “touch, feel, hear, see” layer without which no digital decision is possible.
- Her pricing philosophy boils down to value-based pricing: understand what the customer is willing to pay, and find the balance between overshooting (losing market share) and undershooting (sacrificing margin). Price curves are standardized by product line and region to make an otherwise unmanageable SKU count tractable.
- Tariff volatility is a live operational challenge, not an abstract risk. Veronique described her team preparing actively for potential tariff changes on a specific August date, communicating changes to customers in real time, extra work she acknowledges the business “could do without, but it is what it is.”
- After four-plus years of near-constant organizational change at TE Connectivity, Veronique learned that promising stability is a lie, so instead she promises clarity: clear expectations, clear roles, and continuity in personal development regardless of who the manager is. She specifically works to prevent the “reset the clock” problem when team members get new managers.
- She built in mandatory in-person team gatherings for her globally distributed team precisely because remote work collapses coworkers into names and titles. Getting people in the same room, and to customer sites, converts anonymous collaborators into actual human beings, which she says has a measurable effect on communication speed and quality.
- Her advice to younger women aspiring to senior roles is direct: figure out what you want first, then say it out loud to the people who can actually make it happen. Early in her career she waited to be noticed; she now coaches others to ask explicitly rather than assuming managers have a crystal ball.
About Veronique
Veronique Rozan is Senior Director of Product Management and Pricing at TE Connectivity, where she owns the P&L for the company’s full global sensor portfolio and leads teams across the US, Europe, and Asia. She relocated from France to the US about 15 years ago and has grown her scope at TE from a single product line to all sensor technologies across all markets.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vrozan
- Website: https://www.te.com/es/home.html
Episode 33 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:01.438) Welcome back to the Prevetted podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Our guest today is Veronique Rossin, Senior Director of Product Management and Pricing at TE Connectivity. Veronique leads the global strategy of TE’s broad sensor portfolio, pressure, temperature, position, force, vibration and more, serving automotive, industrial, medical and
aerospace customers around the world. Hello, Veronique. How are you doing today?
Veronique Rozan (00:35.398) Hello, I’m very well. How are you Federico?
Federico Ramallo (00:39.916) I am doing great, yes. Today I’m very close to you because I’m in the Bay Area. Usually I am based in Mexico. But I’m a citizen of the world, I’m everywhere. Awesome, so.
Let’s start by, I want to understand a little bit more about what is your current job as a Senior Director of Product Management and Pricing at DE. It sounds a very long name, a long roll name, right? But I’m very interested to learn a little bit more about what you’re doing today.
Veronique Rozan (01:28.08) yeah, absolutely. Very long name because it has a lot of responsibilities, of course. As the senior director of product management and pricing, I’m in charge of the whole sensors portfolio at T-Connectivity. Again, this is a global team around the world and addressing all the different markets in the world. Again, covering all different technologies. Our main…
Federico Ramallo (01:34.669) Right.
Federico Ramallo (01:54.094) you
Veronique Rozan (01:54.3) The is really we own the P &L, product and loss, for those product lines. We identify and we define the strategy and the product roadmaps and drive all the actions to grow the revenue. At the end of the day, it’s all a question of growing the revenue.
Federico Ramallo (02:11.81) Right, right. So that’s the component of pricing. So you’re not only in charge of the product, but also setting the pricing, right?
Veronique Rozan (02:21.424) Yes, yes, we have a separate pricing team who is supporting the product managers. The product managers would be setting the pricing strategy, but then the pricing team is really there to help out with the tactics and implementing, executing the strategy and also helping with everything that is more like internal systems, making sure that all our systems are in sync and…
and make it easy for the customers to order our products. So all the way to, of course, starting with quoting, providing the right pricing, and then following through so that the customers can order our products.
Federico Ramallo (03:02.914) Right. Right. So what do you feel that sensors are such an exciting field right now?
Veronique Rozan (03:12.968) It’s a very exciting field because sensors are everywhere. You can think of everything. In a digital world, the reality is you actually have to touch, feel, hear, see, and all this is through sensing elements. You have the sensors, and then you get the information, and then you act on the information. In this world, everything starts with a sensor.
and then gets to some data that you’re going to utilize. The sensors that we actually produce and manufacture and develop in TE Connectivity can go into so many different applications. And I can give you some examples in medical respiration during COVID-19, pressure sensors and temperature sensors going into respiration machines were very critical to the functioning and the operation of those equipment.
So super important, critical for the health of people. And then we can talk about sensors that go into automobiles and trucks, right? So different types of sensors, but still sensors. And then we have IOT. mean, IOT is a big buzzword right now. And we have sensors that can support IOT and condition monitoring and are being used to monitor the condition of equipment.
in big factories, for example, and also signal when to go and maintain and provide diagnostic information. So all crucial application for sensors, and again, they’re pretty much everywhere.
Federico Ramallo (04:54.19) Right, right. I think that sensors are fascinating. used to, started, mean, I eventually my career ended up being software engineering, right? And then I went from that to CEO and running companies. But what I actually studied was industrial engineering, right? And, you know, we would,
review processes and automation and manufacturing. It was a very interesting career. But I never actually, you know, I studied, but I never actually, you know, work on that. So, yeah. And then as a software engineer, play a lot with automation, Coding to automate stuff, right? I still remember the old printers.
the printers in the 90s, when sensors were more expensive, right? So you have an end-of-line sensor, right? With a little switch. So then the printer, you could move the head, and then if you move it, turn it on and whatnot, then it would go back all the way to find the end-of-line, right? And we could play with that because it was very easy and fun.
and I was young and bored and anyway. And then now with there is a coding algorithm that you can use to uniquely identify the position, for instance, on elevators, right? You can see the stripe of codes, And the sensors that can detect. without having needing to go up or down, you can know exactly where it is even if the power.
Veronique Rozan (06:23.944) You
Federico Ramallo (06:52.664) power goes out, right? So there is, I think that the evolution of sensor allow us to have from, you know, a binary zero one, now we have sensors with more complexity, more information and more, you know, spectrum of data, right?
Veronique Rozan (07:15.344) Absolutely. And the application are, I mean, everywhere and we can’t really count them all, right? It’s indefinite really in terms of everything you can do with sensors, really, really. Again, as I said earlier, it’s the starting point, right? You have, you need to start with the measurement of something, whether it’s a temperature, whether it’s position.
Federico Ramallo (07:29.934) you
Veronique Rozan (07:44.708) its pressure can be vibration. We do speed, for example, optical sensors as well. You’ll need all of this and sometimes more and more combined so that you can actually make decisions or extract some information that is crucial to make a decision eventually.
Federico Ramallo (08:04.45) Right, right. I remember that there’s also, for instance, for temperature sensors, you have bimetals, right? So it’s basically you measure the temperature by measuring the variance of resistance between two metals, right? And then they degrade over time. So the quality of those sensors allows you to have that sensor working for a longer and longer time, right? So you can basically trust the data that it gives you, right?
Veronique Rozan (08:34.911) Yeah, this is super important indeed to be able to trust the data and that you can go back to something that is tangible, right? Especially in those days where there’s so much information everywhere and you can’t really say if it’s true or not.
Federico Ramallo (08:55.116) Right, right. Yeah, I I remember on those type of systems, we would have to write code to validate that the sensor was actually correct, right? Which, you know, again, it’s a solution for a problem that you wouldn’t have if you have a good quality sensor, right? Yeah. But we were limited to the quality of the sensor we could use. So anyway, it was a longer story, but yeah.
Veronique Rozan (09:05.906) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Veronique Rozan (09:15.848) All right.
Federico Ramallo (09:25.134) So you mentioned about pricing, right? What is the complexity of pricing for sensors? I understand particularly because you’re operating worldwide, right?
Veronique Rozan (09:42.396) Yeah, so in terms of complexity for pricing is of course, it’s indexed on the product strategy and the product, our products are global, right? So you have to cover different regions. So you have to understand the different dynamics of the different regions, what the expectations are from the customer, understand the competition out there. Are you in a leading position or are you just another one on that same market? Super important.
And then the strategy, right? Because you could be looking for becoming the leader or to be only another one, right? A me too, as we say here. So it’s really all the dynamics between the regions, between the customer’s behavior, the competitors, our own strategy in how we want to go and grow and win to define what that pricing strategy is going to look like eventually. So what, of course, we don’t want to have
one product, one price type of strategy, it has to be aggregated, otherwise it’s impossible to manage. And what we’ve been doing in the past years, we’re trying to simplify our structures for pricing so that we have different price curves and we just apply them differently for different product lines and regions.
Federico Ramallo (11:00.942) Right, Yeah, pricing is very complicated. mean, particularly when you start doing, you know, export import and the local taxes and the local regulations and, know, and the, from what I understand, the amount of product items that you have is so big, right? That the sheer volume, it’s, know, it’s not something, it’s, you know,
Veronique Rozan (11:26.888) Yes, yes, there’s a lot of there’s definitely a lot of activity related to pricing and Technically, it’s complex and difficult. But at the end of the day Pricing strategy is very simple. It’s to me it goes back to its value-based pricing how much is the customer willing to pay and That’s what we’re gonna charge right? We don’t want to overshoot because then you’re missing on on
on market and revenue. And if you’re under, then you’re missing on margin, on profitability. So there’s a right balance.
Federico Ramallo (12:03.202) Right.
Veronique Rozan (12:07.034) And what we do, what we try to do is always put ourselves in the shoes of who is going to buy. What is that customer going to think about when they’re looking at our products? Is the customer willing to pay extra because he’s going to get the performance and value and differentiation? Or they’re not looking for all of this and what they want is just something that works? Then that’s a very different story and different approach.
Federico Ramallo (12:07.49) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (12:33.528) Right.
Have you seen, what are the tendencies that have you seen in prices on the sensor industry overall? Have you seen that prices are going down or going up?
Veronique Rozan (12:50.184) We had a big correction in the Covid years where everything went up and it wasn’t just related to sensors. think everybody saw that inflation went up, everything went up. we were not the exception. also had a big impact on our side and we followed the same trend. Now it’s stabilizing back down and we see a lot of pressure to actually come down, especially because
Unfortunately, now we have to offset some of the other mechanisms that are happening. I will say, will mention tariffs. So we’re being hit, or our customers are being hit by tariffs. We are being hit by tariffs. Our customers are being hit and some will be looking for, okay, well, how do we balance that out? So there’s even more pressure. And then there’s…
competition coming in and seeing that as an opportunity for them because they might have manufacturing located somewhere else. And that’s an advantage compared to others who might be manufacturing in China and needs to import into the U.S. Wherever there is, there’s going to be complication and there’s a lot of pressure coming in. Now, I don’t think that we’ve been, we are at the point that we’re pre-COVID levels of pricing. So we’re still higher.
than that, but clearly there’s a pressure to come down.
Federico Ramallo (14:20.354) Right, right. Yeah, the project that I was talking about before, I’m from Argentina, but I moved to Mexico 17 years ago. And one of the issues we had in Argentina was lack of spare parts for a lot of industries, right? So to give you an example, a MacBook Pro would cost five times more than in the US, right?
because of the importing cost, right? And the importing restrictions, right? It was between tariff, it was between that you could not get access to dollars. So if you buy something you needed to give the dollars but you were unable to buy the dollar. So there was this, you know, illogical restriction that didn’t make sense.
And then from there, you had to pay a lot of taxes to get the product in. And the market is very small because there hasn’t been a lot of development because it’s like one thing leads to another. So then what we would do is we would use local source products.
Veronique Rozan (15:24.764) Mm-hmm.
Veronique Rozan (15:34.258) Yeah, yeah, yes.
Federico Ramallo (15:46.114) that we could buy, there was a very distinctive price between something local or regional versus something that was imported from other countries. So then we would have to figure out what can we do with the limited availability of spare parts that we could have. So yeah, I had a neighbor that has a old BMW.
Veronique Rozan (15:52.089) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Veronique Rozan (16:06.21) okay.
Federico Ramallo (16:15.15) And he loved that car, but he would not be able to buy it again, basically, right? He bought it when the import and export was open. And then after it closed, he was unable to buy the same car again, right? So he loved that car and it was an old BMW 325. It was not any supercar or whatever, but for him,
Veronique Rozan (16:15.154) Thank
Veronique Rozan (16:21.703) Mm-hmm.
Veronique Rozan (16:31.548) Mm-hmm.
Hehehe
Federico Ramallo (16:44.29) It was very important because if he had to buy that car again, he would be unable to, right? Because of the disparity of the prices, right? So the same thing happened with, you would import a machine and then you could not get spare parts for it because, yeah. yeah, it’s very sad when that happens because there’s so much we could do that then the regulations doesn’t allow us to.
Veronique Rozan (16:50.994) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (17:17.378) So yeah, I hear you. Yeah, and those type of regulations, when I say the regulations, mean tariffs, import limits, or there’s so many exports, so many, or additional bureaucracy that is kind of designed so you’re discouraged to import or export, right? So yeah.
Veronique Rozan (17:31.25) exports.
Veronique Rozan (17:45.776) Yeah, nowadays it’s really hard to navigate through all those because, well, me being in the US, with everything that is changing, we’re all waiting for and expecting some changes again on August 1st. And we’re wondering what that’s going to look like. We have some indications. But it’s also a lot of work on our side to actually take action and implement and then go back and
Federico Ramallo (18:04.035) Right.
Veronique Rozan (18:10.592) and communicate with the customers, inform them of what is changing, what that means to them. And just being on top of it, it’s extra work that, well, we could do without, but it is what it is.
Federico Ramallo (18:25.486) in
Yes, yes. In Argentina, it was so bad that you would go to a distributor to buy a spare part. And they would have the spare part. And you would say, how much? And they would be like, I cannot tell you. Right? I want to sell you the spare part, but I cannot tell you the price. Right? So what they would do is they would call the importer, and they would say, how much does this
Veronique Rozan (18:37.576) Mm-hmm.
Veronique Rozan (18:50.793) wow.
Federico Ramallo (18:58.638) a spare part cost. And then they will say the price and then they will put the profit and then they will sell it to me, right? So the dollar variations, the taxes variations, all of that was calculated real time, right? Plus.
Veronique Rozan (19:21.444) wow. Okay.
Federico Ramallo (19:24.302) In 2023, they had a 70,000 % inflation. It increased in the last weeks of December, but nevertheless, they were at the edge of hyperinflation. But how much does this product cost? Well, today, 500, tomorrow, 550.
If you ask in the evening, it’s going to have different prices, right? So people were used to like every day change the prices for everything, right? Until eventually you go to supermarket and nothing would have prices because they wouldn’t know, right? It was that, you know, that crazy. yeah, it’s those type of things. The issue is uncertainty, right? When you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, you cannot plan.
Veronique Rozan (20:20.882) Yes, correct.
Federico Ramallo (20:21.442) and you keep reacting, right? So yes, yes. I don’t think the US is getting there yet, I live those types of uncertain levels of uncertainty before. for me, it’s more normal, I guess, right? Which is, it is what it is, right? It’s not a good…
Veronique Rozan (20:45.724) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (20:52.214) a good experience to have.
Veronique Rozan (20:55.944) No, I think we’re getting used to it. On my side, when we knew what was going to potentially happen, we got ready, we prepared ourselves and I think we’ve handled the situation pretty well. It’s difficult because it’s real time and you have to change and kind of struggle. But I think we’re handling this pretty well and we’re ready for anything that can happen. So it’s extra.
Again, as I said, we could do without, but if it happens, then we’re ready and we’ll implement as we need to.
Federico Ramallo (21:36.846) So you mentioned you work with global teams, right? Yes. How do you keep a global team focused and motivated during big changes?
Veronique Rozan (21:40.956) Yes.
Veronique Rozan (21:50.472) wow. That’s a very heavy, heavy one. And I can talk about both the globality aspect of the teams and also the change component, because I can tell you that I’ve joined T-Connectivity, it’s been more than four years. And when I joined, we were already on a journey for transformation, so a lot of changes. And if I look back, right, all the four years and a half that I spent,
There’s been a change pretty much every six months or every year. So I’m still standing, I’m still here, right? I’ve gone through many, many changes myself with my own responsibilities because when I started at T-Connectivity, I was also a senior director, but I was responsible for only one portfolio and for some markets, so for industrial medical markets and for the pressure portfolio.
Federico Ramallo (22:29.582) Ha ha ha ha.
Veronique Rozan (22:50.192) And then if I look now, I have the pricing team and I also have all the different portfolios, the different technologies. So across all technologies, but also across all the markets. I’ve really increased my team and responsibilities throughout the years. But that’s, that’s been kind of easy on me because it’s been growing and it’s been really challenging and interesting for me. But I can tell you that many of the team members that I have after
the first one, two years, they were, the feedback that they were giving us and to the leadership was we need stability and of change. Like I came in there and told them, know what? I can promise you that there’s going to be change. There’s no way for me to lie to you and tell you there’s not going to be change. There’s going to be change. It’s life. It’s just the way it is.
Federico Ramallo (23:29.976) Okay, I’m done for the minute.
Veronique Rozan (23:43.896) And it’s very in a dynamic world and the things are going to change and we need to change with, with, with our times and with the dynamics of the business of the markets and everything. But what I can tell you is I’ll try to find stability in terms of you’ll find solace in understanding what the expectations are, what your role is. You’ll have a good idea of what good looks like. And, and we’ll try to, we’ll do our best.
to really keep sight of your own development so that there’s continuity and stability there, right? Because one of the fear in changes is, especially when you change teams, managers is, well, in the past four years, I’ve had five managers. How am I going to grow? Because each manager, I have to kind of start all over again. And I think this is important to find the way to have that continuity. So whenever I had…
new people coming in my team, spend a lot of time with them, understanding where they were heading, and keep that in sight so that we don’t reset the clock all the time, right? It’s the worst thing for someone to say, well, I’ve been working with this manager to get me to the next level for two years, and now I have a new manager, I have to start again. Hard, very hard. So we’ve been trying to really focus and help out.
Federico Ramallo (24:45.262) Whatever.
Veronique Rozan (25:11.96) everybody in the team to continue developing and also give some level of stability in terms of the assignments or the responsibilities. Okay, you’ve got this portfolio, you focus on those products, try to keep the same assignments for some period of time so that there’s no disruption too often, even though overall we’ve been changing a lot of things, right? Training.
Federico Ramallo (25:39.096) training, getting people to understand what the expectations are.
Veronique Rozan (25:39.432) getting people to understand what the expectations are. I think this is important. Setting the right goals also is helping navigate through. And then the other thing is on the globality, right? We talked about the fact that, well, I have teams everywhere in the US, in Europe, in Asia, and we’re all pretty much remote. So even if you might have people in the same country, they might not actually meet because they’re in different like…
Federico Ramallo (25:59.246) Right.
Veronique Rozan (26:08.752) locations. So what I implemented also a few years back was to make sure that each team would have the opportunity to get together, meet in one place face to face, so they can really engage together as a team and take the opportunity to go visit customers, to visit sites where we have engineers, where we have operations, et cetera.
Federico Ramallo (26:27.982) together.
Veronique Rozan (26:36.818) So that creates also the dynamics around, people are not just on the phone and teams and dealing with one another. There’s a real human being aspect and approach to it where, you know, we engage as a person. We’re not just some name and some function or some title somewhere in the world. So that’s been very, I think that’s been very important to create that engagement within the teams and that connection.
Federico Ramallo (27:07.262) Right, right.
Veronique Rozan (27:09.616) Pulling in, sir.
Federico Ramallo (27:11.456) It’s a long answer. trying to go through each. But yeah, I think that I agree that the interpersonal relationship, converting a face on Zoom, whatever, or an email, where it’s an anonymous person to a closer relationship, it’s
is a big win on the dynamic of the work because that way you can work better, faster, with better communication. There’s so many benefits for that. And doing it remotely, it’s challenging because everybody’s in their own little cave doing their thing. So it has to be intentional, an intentional effort of
Veronique Rozan (27:55.08) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (28:09.87) you know, integration, team integration. You mentioned about the changes in Evital. I agree to that as well. One thing I’ve seen on bigger organization is that this concept of crystallization of organizational structures and processes that makes
change harder, right? And that makes that big… The issue with that is when you have a bigger team, it’s more likely to happen because you’re a smaller part of a bigger machine, right? So you cannot see the big picture, right? When you’re in a startup, it’s like you and I are working in a startup, we can see the edge of how much runway we have, and then after that…
We’re all dead, right? So we have to work together towards worse and a bigger organization. Sometimes you kind of lose track of that, right? And that leads to this stagnation of people and process, right? Which leads to that the organization loses competitivity, right? Yeah, personally, took me a while. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.
Veronique Rozan (29:11.4) Mm-hmm.
Veronique Rozan (29:35.58) Yeah, whenever there’s a… Yes, go ahead. Now, what I was going to say is, anytime there’s a change, the communication is super important. It’s trickle to explain why the change is happening and be very genuine and authentic about the change. Sometimes we make a change for a certain reason. Let’s just say it, right? It might not be the obvious reasons or whatever that is that is rational for each change.
And being transparent about why we’re doing it and or why we’re not doing something else is important for not necessarily because at the end of the day, you need to go through the change and we’re going to make it happen. So you’re on board, you’re not on board. You might have people who don’t agree. It’s fine too, but at the end of the day, it’s happening.
Federico Ramallo (30:29.196) Right, right. You need the change to happen. Yes, yes. And I think that part of sharing that vision of why that change happens is the change to people and also helps to have more people on board, right.
Federico Ramallo (30:54.798) Yeah, and
At one point of my, I’m a bootstrap entrepreneur, so my experience is limited to what I’ve been doing, but at one point I was proud that, I haven’t had to fire anybody because I was doing such a great show hiring, right? And eventually I realized that was part true, but then I had low performer on the team.
Veronique Rozan (31:25.928) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (31:27.18) that eventually I had to run a low performance process and show them, well, this is what we expect from you. This is what you’re delivering. This is GAP. We give you the opportunity to work on it, but if you’re not, then we have to let you go, right? It took me a while to learn that process.
And if.
Veronique Rozan (31:51.204) It’s not an easy one, but it’s necessary, right? Absolutely necessary. I think it requires maturity and being brave to actually go through this. know that I’m working with, I have directors in my staff and younger ones. When I say younger, don’t make me wrong. Younger in terms of experience, of years of experience in this role. And when they have to…
to deal with that kind of situation is harder for them because they haven’t been there yet. And I’m trying to accompany them through the process, but they need to learn through this. But I know that in my case, I’ve had to go through this and at the end of the day, while you believe, there might be some people who say, this is you managers, this is what you do, this is so inhumane and bad and all.
All of this. You know what? It’s so much better to tell someone, hey, this is not working, right? So let’s try to figure it out. But at the end of the day, it’s also for their benefit. Because if they’re not performing, if they’re not doing great, they’re going to be miserable too. So everybody, at end of the day, it’s a lose-lose. We want to find the win-win. And the win-win might be, well, we part ways. You find another.
great opportunity somewhere else, different function, could be within the same company, could be different assignments. But that’s where the manager is key in understanding where the strengths and weaknesses are and try to guide the person. I’ve had people who thought that they were very good there and they were not interested in other areas. They’re like, well, your strengths are here.
So if you overlap the strength and the motivation, it would be so much better than trying to go after something that you might think you like, but you’re not good at. And sometimes you can train for it, but sometimes you can’t. So having that alignment between, those are the strengths. And that’s what I’m trying to do with my team, where if they have a strength in certain area, I double bet on that area and really have them work more on that area than trying to.
Veronique Rozan (34:15.196) change them completely because I’m of the idea of the opinion that we can change yes, but not completely.
There’s a certain level of growth, there’s development and so on. There’s training you can do. But interestingly, you’re going to be who you are. And there’s so much you can do to change, right? I mean, I’m talking about completely flipping people over. That I don’t, yeah, I’m not convinced that that can happen. And especially after a certain age or experience level.
Federico Ramallo (34:48.694) Right.
Federico Ramallo (35:00.046) Yeah, I I’m 42 now, so I’m learning that the older I get, the less open to change I am.
So I completely understand what you’re saying. Or at least it takes me a longer, more effort to make that change.
Veronique Rozan (35:30.322) Yeah, as we say when we were kids, sponges, right? We learn and we can take everything. And in my experiences when I moved to the US, my kids were two and a half and four and a half. So they were very small. Not that small, but still pretty small. And they got into English. We came from France, so they were very small. And very, very quickly, they absorbed English and other.
Federico Ramallo (35:30.552) Yeah.
Yes.
Federico Ramallo (35:53.485) Right.
Veronique Rozan (35:57.992) I mean, it’s been 15 years now, no need to say they’re little Americans or big Americans now, for sure. But yes, it’s incredible to see how kids learn very fast. as I say, it’s so much easier when you’re younger to learn a new language than if I start now. I did. I actually did. tried to…
I tried to learn Japanese a few years back. I’m still working on it from time to time. It’s not sticking, it’s not staying.
Federico Ramallo (36:37.364) is right yeah japanese is very different very difficult yes i i know i know how to count to 10 in japanese that’s yeah yeah i i practice karate so we do we do you know all everything is in japanese right well the the instructions are in japanese right so i and i coach the kids so
Veronique Rozan (36:41.16) It’s very difficult. Yeah, think it’s just the easiest one for sure.
Veronique Rozan (36:52.104) Very good. It’s pretty good. Don’t ask me.
Veronique Rozan (37:04.057) OK.
Federico Ramallo (37:07.596) Yeah. So I know that, right? That, you know, 10, 20 words, whatever, right? Yeah. But other than that, I cannot speak Japanese. But it’s very different language and culture. Yeah.
Veronique Rozan (37:17.531) interesting.
Veronique Rozan (37:22.248) Well
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
Federico Ramallo (37:33.614) So the
we were talking about changes, know, finding performance, you know, performance issues on the people, right? The thing that I find, one of the things that I work with my team is, I mean, people talk about work-life balance. I…
Veronique Rozan (38:00.828) Heh. Heh heh heh.
Federico Ramallo (38:05.454) I don’t know if I believe in the work-life balance as a concept as it is. I believe that it should be more of a harmony, right? You have work to do, responsibilities. Sometimes you have to focus more on the work, but having that flexibility so you know that you can also spend time with your family, right? And spend time outside of work, right?
It’s more of a circles of responsibility, if that makes sense.
Veronique Rozan (38:40.328) Yeah, this is an interesting topic because I think for the longest time, a lot of people have talked about, yeah, we need to reach that balance between life and work. And it went into, it’s not a balance anymore. It’s do I have more time for myself and less for work? I don’t know how we translate it into something slightly different, but I would agree that it’s more about, it can’t be
It can’t be an equal thing. And it shouldn’t be, it should be thought about it this way. For me, work life balance is there will be times where I’m going to spend a lot of time working and it’s, it’s, it’s part of the job. It’s part of the responsibilities and I like it. And I will put in the hours and the effort because I like it. And the, then there will be times where.
where I need the time for myself, for my family and so on. And that’s gonna be offset that direction. But at the end of the day, I think what’s important is if you feel, there were recent articles on that actually matter. And even I think Barack Obama talked about it in one article saying, well, there’s no such thing really as work-life balance. It’s at the end of the day, it’s your choice and it’s where you wanna put time.
where you are passionate about and what you like, what’s driving you. If you’re in a job that doesn’t interest you, of course you’ll be looking for what you call work-life balance, but it’s more like life than work because you’re not interested in your work. And that’s, I think that’s what’s happened lately where people talk about work-life balance, but it’s, I don’t think that there’s real
Federico Ramallo (40:26.488) you
Veronique Rozan (40:40.05) depth in, well, but what does it mean exactly? You know, I tell my team and others that if I don’t do something, I don’t say I don’t have time for it. I say I don’t take the time for it because it’s a choice. You spend your time where you want. If you’re spending time in a work that, in a job that you don’t like and then you complain that you don’t have enough time for yourself, maybe it’s not the right job for you.
Just saying, I’m probably shocking here for many people, but as a woman who has two kids and grown up kids now, mean, 17, 19, I’m very proud of my achievements because I was able to have a great career so far and I have great kids too. And I’ve been able to manage this. Did I do it by myself? No, of course not. Right. It’s a teamwork. I have a great husband who’s been
Federico Ramallo (41:10.99) Right.
Veronique Rozan (41:37.402) supportive and he’s been there and it’s work because he didn’t have to travel as much as I did. He was there for them and he liked it. I put more, probably more work, more hours on my side at work. I’m a little bit of a workaholic and for me it’s important. So that’s my work-life balance, know, having time with my family but also spending a lot of time at work because I like it.
Federico Ramallo (42:06.264) Yes, yes, I agree. mean, and I think you, you, described perfectly when you say it’s a choice, right? And that’s what I was trying to say of, you know, the original concept of word like balance kind of doesn’t work because if it’s a choice, then it’s not balanced, right? Because balance means 50, 50 exactly, you know, and it’s not like that, right? So when, when you, when you analyze highly successful people,
All of them, know, the top 1 % of successful people, all of them work more than 12 hours a day, right? They work really, really hard, right? And they prioritize on their life work over other activities, right? So does that mean that it’s wrong? No, it’s a choice, right? We choose to do that, right? So…
We choose to work harder, right? And then we can choose to work a little bit less harder if we want to spend more time with the family, right? It’s a choice, yes. And fluctuates, right? Year over year, you know, throughout life, we sometimes prioritize one, sometimes prioritize the other.
Veronique Rozan (43:17.776) It’s a choice. Yes, absolutely.
Veronique Rozan (43:28.148) Yeah, it depends, depends of the requirements or the moments or the dynamics of the moment. We talked about the organization and the change in organization. Again, dynamics of the world around the business, the markets. Same here, right? There will be times in your life where when you might want to spend more time with your family and less time at work. I mean, I had my kids, you see.
I had to stay home a little bit, take care of the pregnancy and the babies for sure. But then I went back, right? So depending on the moment, but also in my career, I started my career, I was traveling a lot. Then I my kids, I had to stop traveling. It just went well at that moment. I changed function and that worked well, right, for me. So that was good. But there will be times when
Federico Ramallo (43:58.53) Hahaha
Veronique Rozan (44:23.164) You’ll have to put one in front and the other maybe in the background a little bit more and vice versa. But at the end of the day, it’s choice. I chose to have children. I could have said, well, no children and work only. That’s not what I envisioned for myself.
Federico Ramallo (44:44.418) Right, right. And I think that, you know, that even though that could have a, you know, a negative effect on the career, right, on the professional career a little bit, but, you know, having kids for both, you know, dads and moms, right, that’s effect. But as you said, moms, you know, they have to carry the baby for nine months and then they have to stay at home, you know, feeding the baby, right? So it’s more than a year.
each, you know, a year, two years, right? So does that have an effect on the career development, right? But I think that, you know, and as you mentioned, having a partner that supports you, you know, you can make the, you know, you can plan that ahead and you can have a family and a career, right? And I think that’s amazing.
Veronique Rozan (45:44.42) I’ve talked to some of my fellow women colleagues and they’re always asking and trying to understand how I managed everything, right? And at the end of the day, you you talked about choice. It’s still a choice. You choose who you’re going to spend your life with. If that person is not going to be supporting you in your career, if this is important for you, maybe think about, you know, finding someone else.
Federico Ramallo (46:04.525) Right.
Veronique Rozan (46:12.466) Sorry to say, but that’s the reality. So that’s part of the choice is at the end of the day, we are in control of our own destiny. I’m very, very strong on this. You’re in control, you decide, you’re in power. You are empowered to lead the life you want to, right? So at the end of the day, as you said, it’s a choice.
It goes way beyond just choosing whether or not you’re going to wear white socks or black socks or whatever. It’s a whole life strategy.
Federico Ramallo (46:54.572) Yes, yes. I think that these, know, now younger generations are having less and less kids, right? And I understand that there is a personal choice. There is a, you know, finding the right partner, right? That’s another challenge, right? But I think that I have one son and, you know,
I’m traveling and my wife stays at home, taking care of our son, But sometimes she travels, so I stay at home with my son, right? But mostly I travel, right? So it’s a little bit unfair for her on that regard. But anyways, we try to be supported as much as supported as each other as possible,
But I think that having a family leads to a happier life, you know, further down the road, right? You know, it’s… When we retire, when we can become grandparents, grandmothers, right? I think that’s a much more fulfilling life.
Veronique Rozan (48:21.32) you
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (48:24.482) than just only focusing on work and work.
Veronique Rozan (48:33.102) Right. I can’t disagree because that’s how I’ve been governing my own existence in life. So yes, I agree.
Federico Ramallo (48:43.884) Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that you’re making excellent choices in that regard, yeah.
Veronique Rozan (48:53.618) So far it’s been working well.
Federico Ramallo (48:57.314) Yes, yes, it’s not easy because there’s always situations and things that happening, but I think that at the end of the day, things work out. yeah. What advice would you give to younger females that are aspiring to become directors or have a more, you
senior executive role, what advice would you give them?
Veronique Rozan (49:32.424) Yeah, I think that when I was younger, I kind of went with the flow and never really positioned myself strategically or asked. And you don’t ask, you don’t get. I was lucky enough, I think, throughout my career to have managers, leaders who would really look out for me and…
make sure that I would always have the next level of responsibilities, the next projects and all of this. So I’m blessed with that and, but I’m thinking.
I could have asked, I could have said, hey, you know, I need some more. And I think at some point I did that, right? But in my early career, it was more, okay, this is happening. Okay, great. yeah, umm, sure. Come on, right? It’s fine at the beginning, but at some point you need to really take control and be again, you are in control of your destiny. And if you’re not taking action, you own your own development.
But you need to share what your expectations and what you have for yourself with the influential people in your life, at work who are going to take you to the next level. So that’s important. So, you know, really speak out, figure it out first, right? I think that’s the first thing. You need to understand exactly what you really want. And sometimes it’s the hardest part of it.
But once you know exactly, then don’t keep it for yourself, right? Because people don’t have a crystal ball. Communicate. Talk about it. Talk about it openly with people around you. Find those people who will be actually able to support you in your journey. Speak up.
Federico Ramallo (51:37.006) Yes, yes, I agree. One thing we’ve noticed when we did this study internally, where we noticed that female employees would apply to a job when they fulfill 100 % of the job description, right? And then male potential employees would do it when they have like 60s, 50s, 70s, you know.
So we tried to change the wording of the job descriptions to invite more women, right? But that worked a little bit, but we realized what you’re saying that, you
Veronique Rozan (52:12.604) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (52:25.176) that they would not speak up and say, hey, I know this, I don’t know this, but I can learn it, right? So we started a community called IT Girls where we motivate female engineers into the tech industry, sharing the experience of senior
engineers, where they say, I did this, I did this, this is how I got to become a senior product designer or software engineer or whatever, right? So they share their experiences and, you know, that has been the way that we’ve been able to contribute to the community, to encourage women to apply to jobs,
Veronique Rozan (53:07.858) Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (53:24.822) starting more to become better candidates for different jobs, right? So it’s pretty much aligned to what you describe.
Veronique Rozan (53:36.732) Yeah, this is great initiative. We need a little push sometimes.
Federico Ramallo (53:43.916) Yes, yes. This is amazing. I thank you very much for having you. We’re running out of time. I don’t want to oversteam the allocated time, but I think it’s very insightful to hear about your experience. I’m hoping that your sharing your story would encourage other women to step up and speak up.
Veronique Rozan (54:11.56) Well, I hope so. And thank you for the opportunity. Really appreciate that I was with you. And I hope that indeed this is going to be inspiring for others. This is possible. You can have a very nice family and still being very, very busy at work and traveling all over the world and having global teams everywhere. It’s possible. So here you go. Just have to make it happen.
Federico Ramallo (54:39.744) It is possible. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much, Veronique.
Veronique Rozan (54:41.51) Hahaha
Veronique Rozan (54:46.684) Thank you.