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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.

If you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.”

– Oprah Winfrey

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

– Thomas Dunn

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

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

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

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

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

Don’t follow, lead. Don’t copy, create. Don’t start, finish. Don’t sit still, move. Don’t fit in, stand out. Don’t sit quietly, speak up. (Not all the time, sure, but more often.)”

– Seth Godin

Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.”

– Woodrow Wilson

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”

– Thomas Carlyle

Death is to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”

– Thomas Wolfe

You don’t go into a field that requires cracking people’s heads open or operating on something as delicate as the spinal cord unless you are comfortable with taking risks.”

– Dr. Ben Carson

Your own words are the bricks and mortar
of the dreams you want to realize.
 The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience.”

– Sonia Croquette

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

My task is really not to change myself but to become familiar with who I am.”

– Maureen Cook

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

– Jack Kerouac

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
 Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

– Ella Fitzgerald

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

Destiny is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

– William Jennings Bryan

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

– T.S. Eliot

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

– Lewis Carroll

Some things are destined to be—it just takes us a couple of tries
to get there.”

– J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

A man without a smiling face
 should not open a shop.”

– Chinese Proverb

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

Do not say, ‘why were the former days better than these,’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

– Ecclesiastes, 7:10

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.”

– Voltaire

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more.
 If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

– Oprah Winfrey

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

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

I have spent a good part of my life convincing people that a blank sheet of paper is the greatest opportunity in the world, and not frightening at all.”

– Marty Skler, executive vp, Walt Disney Imagineering

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

– Eleanor Roosevelt

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

– E.B. White

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

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

– Leo Jozef Suenens

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

– Goldie Hawn

You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.”

– Mae West

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

– Benjamin Franklin

A man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.”

– Chinese Proverb

Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

– Anna Quindlen

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

– Robert Frost

I was taught at a very young age that you can do whatever you want to, but you have to make it happen — not just talk about it.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

– Dalai Lama

    Articles by Ana Dutra