Political or business life?
Salinas was a deputy in the LXI Legislature (2009-2012), in which she chaired the Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources and coordinated the approval of the Law for the Use of Renewable Energies, which generated a 50% increase in the budget of Branch 16 designated environment.
She was then a senator for the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM) from 2012 to 2018, where she participated in the Commissions on Energy, Hydraulic Resources and Foreign Relations with North America.
For her, political life has a vocation for service, while business life is less so. “Everyone says that employers are there to provide work, yes, but that is not exactly correct, since they are there to solve problems and to the extent that they do so, they have clients and can employ others,” she says.
In politics, he comments, decisions are made that are moderately agreed upon and people are not hired based on skills, which is very sad. So you can be at the table with a person who is the same weight as you, but who has no idea what he is talking about and that generates a terrible level of frustration.
In the business scheme, he continues, you are with people who know, who are speaking because their talent and merit brought them to the table and because their point of view is going to question you from the wisdom to build a better result. “Without a doubt, where more success is achieved is in the life of the entrepreneur, despite this I like both spheres”.
As a businesswoman, the project that she has the most affection for is Fundación Azteca, since, considering her poor academic experience, she believes that education in Mexico is very limited and requires more training models that teach young people to learn and have a critical thinking.
“My education was really from the street, from life, and that marked me a lot because you know real stories, of real people and with real problems, and you start thinking about how to solve them. I think that for that you don’t need so much academy. What you need is to pay attention and understand what resources you have to attract and solve. That is doing business.”
Fátima Masse, director of the Inclusive Society at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), reports that the average unemployment rate of undergraduate graduates in the country is 4.6%. As the school level advances, the number of students is reduced, since of every 100 who enter elementary school, 81 reach high school and 39 go to university, of which only 26 finish it.
However, workers with a bachelor’s degree earn 78% more than those with only a bachelor’s degree and also access better jobs. For every 100 pesos that a high school graduate earns, a graduate receives 178 pesos and is also three times more likely to continue growing within organizations, according to the IMCO.
For Ninfa it doesn’t work like that. “I understand that we live in a world where titles are very important, but sadly in Mexico a title does not guarantee you more than 10,000 pesos a month. I think we have to make a double effort to prepare, from you as a leader rather than as an academic. That is what distinguishes people in their growth in working life”, she assures.
Ninfa Salinas is VP of the executive committee of Grupo Salinas and president of the board of directors of Fundación Azteca, which was created 25 years ago. Since then, the foundation has contributed to strengthening more than 500 civil organizations in the country, has summoned more than 50 million Mexicans as volunteers to care for the environment, has reforested more than 51,000 hectares of trees and has trained more than 132,000 young people, through 16 schools, with a focus on freedom, innovation and creativity in its educational and environmental programs.
Who is Ninfa Salinas Sada?
Neither a businesswoman nor a politician, the most difficult role of her life has been being the mother of two girls and a boy. “He is the one who demands more consistency and absolute dedication. Make a human being grow so that he builds his own possibilities, so that he assumes responsibility in his decision-making and does what he wants to do. That’s when you realize how incongruous you are. You say one thing and you can’t hold it for 10 minutes,” she expresses.
Today, Ninfa knows that there is no perfect balance. The key to success to share in each of her projects, both personal and professional, is to have a lot of discipline and allocate a specific time to each thing. In her office, the photos of her three children stand out, a bookcase that houses the history of art and a very organized desk where her iMac and a landline phone are located.
She cannot hide her taste for design, plants, flowers, the paintings that adorn the walls, or her quest to be a healthy woman. “I understood that we are full of possibilities and that to choose is to give up. If you want to have three jobs, you can do it, but being aware of that choice and from a winning mind, not from failure. When something calls you, you have to do it with all your capacity and talent”, she advises.
Ninfa Salinas defines herself as a curious, enterprising, empathic woman who is full of projects and dreams. As a mom she loves to live and enjoy time with her children, and as a leader who lets people do what she does best.
He does not like to meditate, instead he learned to play the piano during the pandemic and today it is one of his great passions, as well as a stress reliever. Among his favorite books is The Element by Ken Robinson, whom he considers one of the great teachers of education. Also Aléxandros, by Valerio Massimo, a work that recounts the life of Alexander the Great, his leadership journey, how he made decisions and surrounded himself with a team, how he reached the top and then began his decline.
The story of San Michele, a memoir by Swedish physician Axel Munthe and The One Thing, by Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan, “is a great explanation of why it’s important to focus on one thing, rather than multitasking, and why being more precise in the things you want to achieve pushes you more solidly into the future”, he concludes.