Paystands' Alexandra Navarro Shares Pandemic Lessons
Aliyah Nance (left) and Alexandra Navarro (right) stand in front of a wooden wall in front of a blue Paystand sign.
Alexandra Navarro is the Chief of Staff at Santa Cruz County unicorn Paystand, a blockchain-based B2B payments company with offices in both the U.S. and Mexico. Prior to Paystand, Navarro was the former Senior Director at Digital Nest, Chief of Staff at Latinas in Tech, and also a Santa Cruz Works Titan of Tech in 2020. This is her piece for BizWomen, a news site for women business leaders created by The Business Journal, a media platform that has an audience of over 10 million people.
"One of my personal mantras is: believe in resilience; turn problems into opportunities! While the pandemic was a very confusing and difficult time, it also gave humanity an incredible opportunity to learn some challenging lessons.
Two specific pandemic lessons come strongly to my mind. One is the importance of making a positive impact on others and two, striving for life balance.
When the shutdown happened, I was working as the senior director for Digital NEST, a San Francisco Bay Area non-profit that connects Latin-American youths to a technical skills-building community. In less than a week, we moved all our programs and services online. It was a challenge, but we did it! With businesses shutting their doors, however, I realized we had an incredible resource on our hands. We could all work together to make a huge positive impact on the community around us.
Digital transformation was now a necessity. People who did not own computers or did not know how to work remotely faced steep learning curves. Young people who did not have Internet access at home continued their education from parked cars near fast food restaurants with free WiFi.
We at Digital NEST started a project called @831 (named after the area code of Santa Cruz), to help local business owners — including the Latin American communities that we served — to take their operations online. By offering these services at an affordable cost, we also earned $230,000 to support our organization.
The Digital NEST team created an online local business directory so small business owners could let their customers know “We’re still here! Here’s how we can serve you.” When the physical streets were empty, the highways of the Internet were vast and busy.
Working closely with local small businesses as well as the young staff at Digital NEST showed me a new side of resiliency. People were afraid of losing their homes, and yet they persisted! They threw themselves into their work while also reaching out to the community to find innovative ways to help.
Watching how these young people navigated during these strange times gave me incredible hope for a better world for our next generation.
The other pandemic lesson for me — never lose life balance. Before the pandemic, I often thought it was normal to sacrifice all on the altar of my career, and that saying “no” at work was unacceptable. But suddenly events were canceled, meetings went online, and some occupations ramped up while others slowed to a crawl. So many aspects of our lives changed and it gave me time to reflect more on my purpose, goals and values.
I came up with a few approaches to help me (and others) try to maintain that balance all the time:
Get in contact with nature every day. (Walk on the beach; watch a sunset or a sunrise.)
Exercise at least 30-45 minutes. (As a parent, this is even more essential to help the family burn off energy!)
Connect daily with your inner self and follow your intuition.
Be present, and give space and quality to what you are doing. If you are with your family, be there not only physically but mentally. The same for meetings, friends…and yourself!
Write out your agenda with everything: personal and professional tasks daily and weekly.
Bring your values with you to every meeting and aspect of your life. For me, it’s compassion, family and faith. The moment you fail to bring them to the table, STOP and regroup.
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About Paystand
For the past century, business payments have struggled to keep up with digitization. Every other part of the enterprise has gone digital, yet commercial finance has been left behind in an analog world plagued by costly fees, inefficient systems, and paper-driven processes. It’s time for a more seamless, simple, and intuitive way to manage transactions.
We created Paystand to eliminate fees, digitize the cash cycle, and create a self-driving money experience for businesses.