We made an interesting interview to Mónica Galán Bravo, a famous entrepreneur who was a former student of University of Alcalá.
You can also watch the video interview at the end of this article.
Hi Monica, welcome to AHEH. Describe your activity/work/project
I work with corporate clients to improve communication skills within their teams, and I help as well all kinds of professional and individual clients to overcome their fear to speak in public. As a speaker myself, being in contact with big audiences in workshops, seminars and conferences is also a big part of my professional day-to-day.
To work with my clients I developed my own system, which I called Método BRAVO, an easy tool with five steps that allows a fast improvement of anyone´s communication skills. In 2018, I was asked by Ediciones Alienta, the business and professional branch of Editorial Planeta, the biggest publishing group in Spain and Latin America, to turn this Método BRAVO into a book.
So now, after more than ten thousand books sold, eight editions and many weeks in the top of the charts for professional and business publications, I can call myself a writer too.
Describe the path you took to get from university to your current role – what were the biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
When I left College my professional opportunities were diverse since the very beginning. Actually, the fact that even in the first year of classes I had the chance to work as an intern in a company helped a lot… Maybe I didn´t choose the best alternative then, but that experience helped me a lot. I have to admit that I didn´t like that first experience at all, and that was precisely the reason why I decided to change my path and finally found out what I did really like: a company dedicated to organizing big events, a place to gather together hundreds or thousands of people… and that internship I did since the very first year was indeed a key for my future development.
So after I left college, I had many opportunities; everybody was looking for someone able to speak different languages and with a wide set of skills and knowledge. The real challenge those days was not to get lost into that ocean of chances… But I soon found a company that allowed me to bring all that knowledge to practice and learn new tools, especially about communication and public speaking, and that put me on the way to be a real entrepreneur and having my own company.
I worked organizing big events and then I got a job as a producer in a radio show about coaching, leadership, psychology and many other interesting subjects. During that time I could meet and get to know the best national and international experts in many subjects, and that gave me the chance to observe their best practices and analyze what worked with them as communicators and what didn’t work for their audience. Thence I learned about my real purpose, which is to help people to communicate more effectively, and I decided to start my own career as a coach an expert trainer.
When you reflect on your education and training, what were the gaps in terms of preparing you for becoming a professional? And what were the most important skills that your education gave you to enter the job market or start your own Project
There is a fundamental gap that I always believed we should work more within our scholar system, probably more in the spanish system that in other countries around us: to develop our communication skills in order to stop feeling fear when speaking in front of other people.
The other thing that I missed a bit in those years was having a strong network of students and teachers. That was before social media came into our life, and today that connections is a reality via many ways, even our alumni network allows us to reconnect now with our teachers and classmates, but I´d definitively put a big effort in propitiating this kind of relationship and two-way comunication across all the campus… That would let us know about what the other people is doing, what can we learn from other´s experiences in other companies or industries, and so on.
What “top tips” would you give arts and humanities students who are about to start their professional path?
My advice for art and humanities students, and actually for all students of any faculty, is to understand that communication is a common denominator for their future projection in the labor market. Now I have the chance to see many companies from inside, and I can tell you that they value communication skills as one of the most important skills for any position or business function.
How somebody is able to express in public is one of the ways by which we measure a good professional, so my tip is very basic and fundamental if we want to better comunicate our thoughts and ideas: find a way to improve your speaking skills and work them to make your communication more efficient and effective. Always have in mind that, whatever your career path and whatever the industry and the position you work in, you are going to be measured, and even valued, by your ability to communicate with others.
We also have a previous video made on February 2020 by Comunidad Alumni of UAH with an interview to Monica. The video is in Spanish: