Bringing colour to the world

genuinely engage in what’s happening around us. We have a very limited time on Earth and you have to make the most of it.”

When Gisela, who hails from Argentina, spoke at a ‘Women in Business’ event for the Chamber back in January, the audience came away in awe. Not because of any mention of commercial success but genuine wonder as to how she finds the time to be the kind of person everyone aspires to be.

She grew up in Buenos Aires and attended a bilingual school. By 14, she had her first job – and it was an early example of someone who was going to take control of life and mould her own destiny.

“Because I knew English, I found myself teaching the language in a Kindergarten – it was easy!” she said.

“We didn’t have a lot at home. My mum had three jobs and I didn’t see a reason why I shouldn’t work too.

“I learned to be hungry for it and to not be waiting and I’ve carried that along with me. I notice how many people wait for the hero to come through the window, someone to come and save them. I realised very quickly that noone was coming to save me, I would have to do it myself.”

By the age of 22, Gisela was teaching at Buenos Aires University and established a business offering graphic design.

She went door-knocking to sell her services, not to SMEs but to some of the world’s biggest oil giants – and it worked.

“I set up my business and rented out a tiny little office in the centre of Buenos Aires. It was like being in Canary Wharf in London,” explained Gisela.

“At the beginning, the business was doing graphic design. I had two degrees – one in fashion design and one in graphic design and it became apparent that I could help companies and also look at their transition to digital.

“I started knocking on doors – at BP, Shell and Exxon –I went to where the oil companies were and many of them became clients.

“I started doing digital design for them, then logos, then presentations. They started to ask me to design stands for their exhibitions and I began to pick up customers in the radio industry and also satellite companies.

“Then they started to ask me questions about sales. They were saying that I was good at it and they wanted to know what they should do.

“Then it was marketing, then online marketing which was very new at that time. It was clear that I had built their trust.”

When Gisela decided to undertake a Masters Degree in International Marketing it saw her ‘commuting’ to the University of Albany in New York.

“The first time I came back to Argentina, it was clear to me that my future was somewhere else so I sold the business. I was very lucky at that time to be able to do that.

“I started training really hard in international marketing, in understanding human behaviour and what makes people tick. It was a new chapter in my life.

“I was being sponsored by the Head of the University and he took me as his prodigy. He was getting me to create international marketing campaigns and getting me to look at opportunities in Latin America for his clients.

“He would give me a deadline and then said he wanted me to do the presentations in front of the clients. I was thrown in at the deep end. I was then offered jobs by his clients!

But spend an hour in Gisela’s company and there is no hard sell. There is no technical jargon. You meet a real person, to whom integrity is everything – whether it’s offering cyber security to a customer or making the world a better place by supporting kids in Africa to have a good start in life.

Gisela runs Shipston-on-Stour-based Pink Connect – a business that offers a wide range of clients everything from IT support through to telephony services – with her husband, James.

“It all starts with your word,” she said. “It’s when you say who you want to be in life and what you want to be, and you do it. We can just talk about ‘it’ or we can

“I realised that there is opportunity in everything you do. As long as you understand the market, you understand people and product – there is opportunity everywhere and it’s up to you to grab it.”

Gisela moved back to Argentina to a charity that supported people to access white goods before joining a major retailer after impressing them in a presentation.

“They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” she said.