SA国际传媒

When scored a Fulbright Scholarship to come from the Dominican Republic to the United States, she didn’t have a clear plan of what she wanted to do. She just knew she wanted to do something (and promised the committee she’d figure it out).

Since then, she’s gone on to start , a drone delivery company backed by Mercedes Benz and Boeing, and even was the youngest appointed member to the

A certified lawyer, Santana also co-established the Dominican Republic鈥檚 Constitutional Court, and she went on to work on the Hyperloop and partner with NASA. She’s currently kickstarting a second company that blends the two worlds of law and tech: Social Glass. The company is going to use software to create a system that will help government organizations improve communication, both within and across different departments. Her hopes are that she creates something similar to G-suite for governments.

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In Season 3 of Proust Goes Tech, Santana tells us about her time growing up in the Dominican Republic, her issues with Google calendar, and her proposed edit for haters on Twitter.

What do you appreciate the most in your friends?

Warmth. I鈥檓 missing my friends so much from the Dominican Republic.

In San Francisco, we鈥檙e brilliant, we鈥檙e driven, but we鈥檙e mechanized. Nothing is organic.

There’s a cultural aspect to living life in that things grow organically, and drinks at 6 don鈥檛 have an end time to it. You don鈥檛 put it in a calendar invite. There鈥檚 no pre-set time period we spend together. Let鈥檚 not have an agenda, and be present鈥攚e want to give each other space to be and my friends gave me that. And my family gives me that. They detach without discarding, and give me the space to be human, very human. And I play with that.

If you were to join my girlfriend and I in the DR, we鈥檇 pick you up, we鈥檇 go to an amazing restaurant with great food鈥攁nd, of course, great rum鈥攁nd then there would be live music. We鈥檇 start there.

What would you otherwise be doing right now?

I鈥檇 be learning software engineering, so being able to build the things I see in my head. English is not my first language; I learned English growing up in the Dominican Republic, and I think to myself, “I should have learned coding, too.”

Right now, I feel like I need a translator all the time鈥攚hether it鈥檚 a designer or a coder. I feel that if I understood software engineering, I鈥檇 be able to talk more directly and help more people.

Your main fault?

It鈥檚 very easy to get into the nitty gritty of things, and I鈥檓 a very detail-oriented person, very picky. So I can go very deep, and I like that, but if you go very deep in things you lose perspective on the level of importance and level of impact you鈥檙e trying to solve.

Sometimes, I spend the whole day fixing something, and I think, “was that really important?”

The quality you most desire in a tweet?

Constructive, contrarian views. In Peter Thiel鈥檚 view, that means something not everybody agrees on, but is a piece of knowledge that has merit to it. It鈥檚 easy to be contrarian, but how can you see that in a constructive complaint? So no, it鈥檚 not just about posting the complaint to Twitter. Get me a positive constructive way to think about that complaint.

Your idea of misery?

Hopelessness. When you feel like there鈥檚 nothing you can do about something. You are locked, and there鈥檚 no alternatives, no choice, no other way. For me, that perspective is rock bottom.

Your chief characteristic?

Creative problem solving. Actually, that sounds packaged.

The thing about me is I always bring options to the table. I always do a step back and reframe.

What skill do you wish you possessed?

A deep understanding of macroeconomics and microeconomics. I鈥檓 always in this dichotomy: big picture, small picture. Let鈥檚 use healthcare as an example. People say, “why are we spending so much money on healthcare in a stupid way?” I want to be able to聽 know where the statistics, the big numbers, fit in the world. When you say $3 billion was spent on healthcare, is it a big deal or not? And I want to understand how every penny was spent. I don鈥檛 just want to understand big policy; I want to understand the granularity of it.

Your most impactful book?

What defines success?

Finding wholeness and freedom in knowing that… I鈥檓 where I should be, and that I鈥檓 becoming a version of myself I couldn鈥檛 even have dreamt of before. Making space for newer and less explored paths and discovering things that don鈥檛 exist in the world yet. Success is doing 鈥測ou鈥� in all your dimensions, and that鈥檚 what I鈥檓 doing now.

When is confidence lost?

When you lose your north, your purpose, your why.

Which buzzword is exhausted?

Passion, entrepreneur.

What virtues do others have that you don鈥檛?

Right now? Patience and speed.

What impact do you want to leave behind?

Having created a new economic model for profitable governments and unveiled the algorithm that turns them into high-performing entities. Having re-defined the concept of “public鈥� and tested new models of governance that work beyond the current geopolitical, partisan, and discourse-driven decision-making.

What鈥檚 the biggest problem tech is failing to solve?

Governance for 鈥渢he rest of us.鈥�

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