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Ana Dutra, Leadership Expert

COLUMN = LEADERSHIP

Ana Dutra is the CEO of Mandala Global Advisors, a company she recently founded, and a senior global advisor for Humantelligence, a technology solutions company. She has 28 years of experience as a global executive, consultant, and business leader in industries such as technology, manufacturing, and professional services. In the last six years as the CEO of Korn/Ferry Leadership and Talent Consulting, Dutra created a $300 million new global business through a combination of organic growth, multiple acquisitions, innovative go-to-market approaches, and incorporation of technology and digitalization of products and services.

A Brazilian native with more than 20 years of experience in P&L management, business growth, and C-Level business consulting in more than 30 countries, Dutra is also a director on the boards of the Executives Club of Chicago, the International Women Forum, Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago, Governor State University, and Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL).

Dutra holds an MBA from Kellogg, a Master in Economics from Pontificia Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, and a Juris Doctor from Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, all summa cum laude. Fluent in four languages—Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French—she lives in Northfield, IL, with her husband, their three daughters, and their German Shepherd.

For more information, click here to contact Ana Dutra.

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

– Winston Churchill

This is the age when magical technologies make more and more radically fun ideas plausible, even easy. You’re only limited by your creativity.”

– Martha Beck

You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.”

– Goldie Hawn

You must have chaos within you, to create a dancing star.”

– Frederic Nietzsche

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of inkandescent terror.”

– T.S. Eliott

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

– Leonardo da Vinci

I always maintained that the greatest obstacle in life isn’t danger, it’s boredom. The battle against it is responsible for most of the events in the world — good or ill.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.”

– Benjamin Disraeli

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.”

– Henry David Thoreau

Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes. Think of their needs.”

– Barack Obama

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

– Audre Lorde

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
 what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, ‘That’s going to fail,’ so I can prove myself wrong.”

– Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe

The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. The greatest failure is to not try.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Don’t follow your dreams. Chase them.”

– Richard Dumb

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself—your own thinking coming back at you.”

– Byron Katie

I can’t go back to yesterday—because I was a different person then.”

– Lewis Carroll

If you would create something,
 you must be something.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance.”

– Benjamin Franklin

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

– Jack Kerouac

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

– Charles Darwin

The awakening to the mystery of life is a revolutionary event; in it an old world is destroyed so that a new and better one may take its place.”

– J.J. Van Der Leeuw, The Conquest of Illusion

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”

– Steve Jobs

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

But all the while I was alone, the past was close behind, I seen a lot of women, but she never escaped my mind, and I just grew, tangled up in blue.”

– Bob Dylan

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make Me Feel Important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.”

– Mary Kay Ash

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in your room.”

– A wisdomism

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”

– Lao Tzu

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”

– E.B. White

A diamond is a lump of coal that stuck with it.”

– Norwegian proverb

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

You may ask me for anything you like except time.”

– Napoleon

‎Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

– Booker T. Washington

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

– Mary Oliver

Whosoever knows how to fight well is not angry. Whosoever knows how to conquer enemies does not fight them.”

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

– William Butler Yeats

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.”

– Joseph Addison

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

    Articles by Ana Dutra