Meet Veronica Fernandez, Visa’s senior vice president and regional head of North America commercial solutions — and dynamic career navigator. Across 30 years, 10 roles, and three companies, Veronica has maneuvered the growth, setbacks, and (often lateral) moves of a diverse career path.
The throughline? “Your career is like a dance. Sometimes you take a step forward, sometimes you take a step back,” Veronica tells us. “And that’s okay. It’s a part of your story.”
During our Chat & Learn, Top 10 Recommendations to Navigate a Diverse Career Path, we sat down with Veronica to dive into her best advice on how you, too, can build a unique and fulfilling career. Here are our top takeaways from the conversation.
1. Be prepared.
This starts as early as the job application process. Veronica advises, “Your resume should match the job description. Take your standard resume and tweak it. Also, add something personal to your application.”
She recounts how her partner, also a Visa employee, was combing through hundreds of applications for Visa’s leadership acceleration program and was intrigued when he read that one candidate ran a four-minute mile at Stanford.
Her husband is a huge runner, so he thought, not only did this candidate have all the right professional qualities, but this personal differentiator caused him to talk to the applicant for that first conversation.
To this day, the applicant still works at Visa.
2. Ask for feedback.
Following each interview process she navigated, Veronica returned to the hiring managers and asked for feedback.
“I’d ask them to share why they thought I didn’t quite meet the expectations or the roles and responsibilities for the positions, etcetera. That was super insightful for me.”
Beyond learning how she could improve for the next time, she also nurtured connections with leaders inside Visa and strengthened her presence on their radar. Which led to her next career realization...
3. Always be networking.
Your elevator pitch is one of your greatest assets in your career progression. For Veronica, countless unplanned connections have led to clients, business referrals, and even friendships.
“Alongside networking in the true sense of the word, like cocktail receptions, networking also means being curious. Be curious about others, what they do, and how they do it.”
Veronica recognizes that networking can, at times, feel like a chore. To find motivation, she views it as an exercise. Just like a post-work run that leaves you feeling refreshed, networking opportunities always open doors in her career and prove their value.
4. Take risks.
When Veronica starts to feel complacent in her role, she seeks change.
“If I do something for three or four years and become an expert, I’m ready to get uncomfortable,” she says with a laugh.
Turn to her journey at Visa, and we see the pivots and jumps from director of commercial sales all the way to senior vice president. With each move, Veronica exposed herself to new challenges and obstacles, building the foundation of skills that now informs her work on the leadership team.
5. Think laterally.
Veronica made four — yes, four — lateral moves with Visa before stepping up to a vice president position.
She started on the B2B, or corporate, side before moving into consumer products. Veronica recalls having a limited understanding of the B2C mindset, but she welcomed the opportunity to develop her toolbox of skills.
“What this demonstrates is that you don’t always have to make a move up, right? Sometimes having and doing those lateral moves allows you to do something completely different, expand your skill set, and really build that bread basket that would then help elevate you to the next thing.”
6. Be resilient.
While working as a senior director, Visa opened an opportunity for a vice president — and Veronica immediately raised her hand.
“My boss at the time told me that they were going to look externally, and I told him, ‘Okay, but I’m actually really interested in the role, and I believe I have the skills,’” Veronica recalls. “The lesson here is that people are going to tell you ‘no’ all along the way, but if you're confident in yourself and you know that your skills match that role, you should go for it. At the end of the day, what are you going to lose?”
7. Embrace self-doubt.
“Probably the vast majority of us have walked into a room or taken a job and thought: I’m not sure I can do this. What am I doing here? It still happens to me.
… It helps me to remember that you have grit. You may lose, but you're always going to pick yourself back up and go do it again. So, it's important to build that confidence in yourself.”
8. Tap into your transferable skills.
Veronica points back to her experience transferring from Visa’s B2B to B2C strategy. While she lacked certain acumen, she had a strong work ethic and curiosity to learn.
Other common transferable skills she sees are the ability to collaborate with others and work cross-functionally.
“People will often take a chance on you because of that.”
9. Adopt a growth mindset.
On Veronica’s daughter’s first day of fifth grade, she brought home a sheet on a phenomenon called the “growth mindset.”
“Now, I see it everywhere,” Veronica laughs, “but it’s all about being open to feedback and thinking about the various ways to do something as opposed to accepting your immediate instinct to say ‘no.’”
For Veronica, this mindset has become a tool in her career progression. She explains how “as you get higher up the rung, you're going to work with people that give you hairy problems — and they're going to land those on your desk. The last thing you want is somebody that says, ‘No, that's not going to work.’ You want someone who's going to think: ‘Well, how could that work?’”
10. Give back and get involved.
Veronica views herself as a servant leader, and when you see the list of volunteer positions on her resume, it’s no surprise why. She’s on the board of Visa’s Latinx Connect employee resource group alongside her work externally with Latinas in Tech, and NextUp, the Network of Executive Women.
“Giving back is very important to me, especially as you grow in your career. It's so important for all of us to pull out a chair at the table for others.”
As you chart your career path, Veronica challenges you to consider how your own successes (and horizontal moves) impact those around you.
“Understand what will make others win to succeed as an organization,” she says. “My favorite quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is: ‘For our own success to be real, it has to contribute to the success of others,’ which I think is really true.”
For more insight on how you can navigate a diverse career path, listen to the full conversation with Veronica Fernandezhere. And if you’re interested in taking the next step in your career at Visa, explore their career opportunities here.
