BELEN DEL AMO: FROM A LINCOLN LEARNER TO A RESILIENT LEADER!

A performance entrepreneur, an author, and a leadership coach with a mission to help current and future generations become sustainable leaders. Meet an inspiring learner from the Class of 1998.

“For a person to thrive from a neurological standpoint, they need three basic needs to be met: the feeling of safety, the feeling of belonging, and the feeling of mastery. In less than a year, Lincoln met all three of those things for me.” Though Belen del Amo only attended Lincoln for her senior year in 1997-1998, the memories built on our campus seem to last a lifetime!

Raised in 21 cities across 4 continents, Belen already thrived in change. After graduating from Lincoln, she launched a non-stop career to challenge herself. She studied International Relations, Italian Studies, and French Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. With three Bachelor’s Degrees under her belt, the next stop was the London School of Economics, where she continued to specialize in her field. By then, she had worked as a banker, a consultant, and a Senior Director at a tech company.

Her MBA in General Management at the INSEAD only furthers her knowledge of organizational behavior. After leading change in startups, private and public companies, and profit and nonprofit institutions, in 2015 she co-founded Perez Fitzgerald, a global leadership resilience firm. Four years later, she created 3vers: a company to help organizations, teams, families, and educators unleash their potential. 

With her new venture also came the publication of her award-winning book How to Thrive By Building Resilience: A Guide for You and Your Child. It’s safe to say that Belen has met all the challenges she has set her eyes on; the most recent being a specialization in Child Development and Mental Health from Stanford University. 

So, what motivated her? How did she develop resilience herself? How did Lincoln prepare Belen for her career? Learn more about the amazing journey of our inspiring former student!

Lincoln opened doors for me and gave me the confidence to enter them with an open mind and a lot of energy.

What drove you in your career?

While I didn't figure out what I wanted to do until well into my career, the pursuit of self-development that my parents imbued in me powered my pursuit for improvement. It was those values that propelled my varied career trajectory. At first, the desire to please my parents drove me to make some of my initial university and career choices. However, once my mom passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and realized that I had one life to live, and I better make it a life I would be proud of living - one that aligned with my passions and values as opposed to what I thought others expected of me.

Through a series of jobs as varied as my multiple globe-trotting upbringing destinations, I learned my passion was to help others become the best version of themselves. Once my father passed away, I lost all fear and gained an additional springboard that propelled me into the unknown- entrepreneurship. I decided it was time to launch my own company, driven by a desire to make a positive impact on our world.

Did you always know that leadership was your calling?

When I finished school, I knew I wanted to be in a leadership position, but was not entirely sure what. I remember telling our yearbook teacher, as I was on the editorial staff for it, that I wanted to be the Secretary General of the United Nations. That would later evolve into becoming a CEO of a FTSE or Fortune 500 company by the time I was 35! But this was my ego talking when I was young. The truth is, after my mother´s death, when I did my soul searching, what I really wanted was to have an impact. When I was younger, I thought you could only achieve that in a hierarchical leadership position. Of course, we all know that could not be further from the truth.

How did the school prepare you for your career?

I grew up moving to a different country or city every year of my life. In our 3VERS resilience program, we explain to people that for a person to thrive from a neurological standpoint, they need three basic needs to be met: the feeling of safety, the feeling of belonging, and the feeling of mastery. In less than a year, Lincoln met all three of those things for me. That meant the school really allowed me to thrive and served as a launchpad for my university life which in turn gave me a solid platform for my career.
The breadth of the IB program and the international community I belonged to during my time at the school meant that the world really was my oyster upon graduation. Lincoln opened doors for me and gave me the confidence to enter them with an open mind and a lot of energy!

I have some of my happiest high school memories from my year at Lincoln.

How and when did you learn to be resilient in your life?

I strongly believe that Third Culture Kids (TCKs), children raised across multiple cultures, naturally develop resilience skills as a way to cope with the multiple changes that occur in their lives from an early age. They often, as was my case, do not realize that they are amassing this set of invisible skills. It was not until I went to INSEAD to get my MBA that my professor Linda Brimm, author of a brilliant book called Global Cosmopolitans, highlighted the vast and valuable skills that a multicultural, and multi-geographic upbringing develops in those that experience it. Her class and book helped me develop language to start understanding some of the initial components of resilience, and this sparked my curiosity in the subject.

Once I co-founded my first company, with an INSEAD classmate of mine who had trained with Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, and I came across some of the latest neuroscience research, the rest was history. We developed a resilience program that built on these sciences and drew on the skill sets that TCKs naturally develop by virtue of their upbringing but that can be taught without having to go through the TCK experience. These are some of the skills that can systematically help any person thrive.

What inspired you to write your book?

I realized that many of the things we were addressing when helping CEOs and their teams thrive, were negative behaviors or self-beliefs that were acquired during childhood. If we could get the research into parents' and educators ́ hands earlier, then we might avoid some of the pitfalls we were observing with global leaders today. We ran into so many CEOs who were by today's societal standards "successful" but were empty inside, near burnout, or worse yet, suffering from mental health issues. It didn't take long to see that much of this started in their youth with behaviors wired and learned at home and school.

I felt it was most urgent to work on prevention rather than fixing issues in adulthood. Writing the book enabled me to then shift the work from focusing on corporate clients to working with educational institutions and parents for the benefit of future generations.    

How do you feel when you think of the Lincoln community?

I have some of my happiest high school memories from my year at Lincoln. I love Buenos Aires and all it has to offer, I loved the diversity of the community, and I loved the energy that one got when you stepped onto that campus. I can still close my eyes and see all my friends hanging out "benching" as we called it, just sitting, chatting and watching, enjoying our nights out, laughing in classes (and yes for the parents reading this, also learning in classes). We were lucky, we had a group that was quite unified. It wasn´t as cliquey as some of the previous schools I had attended. We all went out together at night and paid our dues during the day. It honestly felt like a home away from home.

Are you still in touch with friends from Lincoln?

Yes! I have run into some of them serendipitously in airports and parks around the world and gone out of my way to see many. Some are in the US, some in Europe, and others in Argentina. I recently exchanged WhatsApp messages with a few to recall some of our best high school memories prompted by this article!

How would you describe a Lincoln learner?

Globally minded, inquisitive, multi-faceted, emotionally intelligent.

What advice would you give to our younger students when it comes to resilience and leadership?

Find your intrinsic motivation and passion (those that make your heart race, that makes your eyes twinkle when speaking about them, the ones that make you feel like time flies by when you do them), and align your life to their pursuit. Also, define what success means to you, and that way you will always be free from others´ judgments and their opinions of you for they will cease to be relevant, allowing you to pursue a life of fulfillment and purpose. Focusing on what makes you uniquely you, will ultimately shape your leadership style to help you thrive in the best and worst of times. Not to mention the fact that it will inspire others to do the same. Passion is contagious!