Giving advice is a strange kind of time travel. As you dispense it, you find yourself digging back through old memories and discovering they mean something different now than they did when they happened.
Last week, I presented to Miami high schoolers on my career journey and current role heading up environmental strategy for a Fortune 500 company. Somewhere between the title slide and the Q&A, I caught myself referencing not only moments where I’ve made the “right” choices, but also the detours and rejections that led me here. It’s easier to say in hindsight: I am equally grateful those “not so right” moments happened too.
I wasn’t one of those kids that was born knowing I wanted to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an astronaut. Around age 11, my family went on a trip to Yucatan Peninsula, and after my first snorkeling adventure, I decided I wanted to do that forever. Even still, when I applied early decision to the University of Miami, I wasn’t clear what that meant in practice. I was so open to opportunity I applied to, and was denied from, the honors geology program.
(This was my first involuntary pivot. THANK GOD. Can you imagine me studying rocks for a living? Me either.)
I ended up pursuing a degree in Marine Affairs and Policy and International Relations. Thanks to a marine biology lab internship my freshman year, I learned I am not energized by being alone, staring through a microscope for hours, in the lonely, formaldehyde-scented setting of a lab. Through trial and error, I discovered I wasn’t meant to do the science. I was meant to communicate what research findings mean to decision makers. That’s exactly what my degrees prepared me to do.
Still, I found myself newly graduated in 2009 with limited job prospects and no real understanding of my options. Right before I landed on a plan, my advisor Maria called with an offer: a teaching assistant and research position that would let me pursue my Master’s. One year later, I was newly graduated again, still unclear what people with Marine Affairs degrees actually do for a living.
I spent 18 months interviewing, watching my childhood savings and my self confidence dwindle with every rejection. I secured interviews at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and Miami-Dade County’s then Division of Environmental Resources Management (DERM) only to BOMB them both. I’m talking sweating profusely, rambling unintelligibly, bombed. I’m talking I still cringe at the memory when I can’t sleep, bombed. And of course, I didn’t get either job.
At the time, every rejection felt like proof I was doing something wrong. After all, other UM grads with my degrees had all successfully landed positions at both agencies. Looking back, it wasn’t a rejection of me. It was a redirection toward a better fit.
My big break came in the form of a small consulting firm called C3TS, doing environmental impact studies for the Florida Department of Transportation. The job found me by surprise. I showed up to Jeff Marcus’s office in Coral Gables expecting mentorship and I left with a job offer. I didn’t know it at the time, but that transportation experience would become a critical credential for landing my current job.
When I entered the candidate pool in 2019 at my current company, the hiring manager was not sold on me. After C3TS, I spent nearly a decade working for the City of Miami Beach, and she was worried I’d bring a government pace to a fast-moving company. What she didn’t know is that our mayor came from the private sector and ran the city with the same urgency. Plus, we were racing against chronic coastal flooding that forced our residents to wade through knee deep waters and threatened our tourism economy. Most nights, I didn’t leave the office before 8 p.m.
I could have accepted the universe forcing another pivot. Instead, I made my case, leveraging past experience AND redirections (like my transportation work at C3TS) to argue why this role fit. I got the job and six years later, I’m still thriving here. It’s been a perfect match.
Looking back, none of it feels random. The UM rejection, the bombed interviews at FDEP and DERM, even the hiring manager’s hesitation about my fit at my current company—each one forced me to wait for the right timing or the right fit. Some doors closed because they weren’t meant to open for me. Others stayed open because I made the case for why they should. Both were necessary. I’m just grateful to see it now, standing on the other side.
Which “no” sent you in a direction you needed to go, even if it didn’t feel that way in the moment?
Hi, I'm Margarita. 