This savvy entrepreneur has learned how to balance her family and her career, and now she's learning what a good vacation entails.
“The most important thing I learned in university was how to learn,” says Claudia Mejia of Colombia. Learning is central to
this determined woman who’s spent the last six years in Kyiv, where she founded and now nurtures her growing institutional catering and cleaning business – just as she nurtures her two children.
Life-long Learning
In talking to Mejia at one of her favorite restaurants, Richelieu, it becomes apparent that there’s nothing and no one in her life that she hasn’t learned from. She started her education in her hometown of Armenia – Colombia’s best coffee-growing region – where her father was a successful banker, who now grows coffee nearby. Her mother raised three kids the “old-fashioned” way; now 60, she remains a source of quiet pride to her entrepreneurial daughter (she certainly hopes to inherit her mother’s ability to age gracefully). Mejia’s older sister currently directs Colombia’s state tourism agency, and her younger brother is a successful orthodontic surgeon.
What she learned from them – mostly that hard work and success breed more success – she continued in university. Mejia received an undergraduate degree in microbiology in Colombia before deciding to study abroad, in Mexico City. In the sprawling Mexican capital she received her Master’s degree in immunology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1993; she lived there for nine years, laying the foundations for her life to date.
In 1992, a university friend introduced Mejia to her future husband at a formal dinner party. The Swiss executive, whose name was Rene Schlegel, immediately fell for Mejia’s bright smile and even brighter brown eyes, but he was likely also struck by her determination.
“I told him I would only marry him only after I finished my degree,” Mejia says after sipping on her Bonaqua mineral water (Hr 15). “And we decided to get married just one month after we met.” Once university was finished, Mejia and Schlegel wed, and then Sebastien and Sabrina – now nine and seven, respectively – were born.
Mejia’s an attentive mother and a savvy entrepreneur. Her friends certainly know her children are the most important things in her life, her employees know that she is as demanding of them as she is of herself, and her suppliers know that she is nobody’s fool.
Attention to Detail
There’s little in Mejia’s life that she overlooks, whether it’s her children’s swimming or dance lessons, a supplier’s urgent phone call, a client’s question about the week’s menu or her own need for down time after dealing with the above and more. She’s currently addicted to the Fox TV series “24,” starring Keifer Sutherland, but in reality she’s addicted to her work and her family.
When Mejia’s “Fruits de Mer” salad of avocado with salmon and shrimp arrives (Hr 39), we begin to talk of her businesses – the appropriately named Spotless office-cleaning service and Alphanow, an institutional catering business that serves hundreds of meals every day to Kyiv’s two American schools, plus a host of other businesses. She began Spotless in 2001 and Alphanow shortly afterwards, quickly selling her new clients (who include the Artema Business Center, Lufthansa, Procter and Gamble, Avis Rent a Car and others) on the advantages of outsourcing the cleaning and cooking work. Not surprisingly, Mejia now has a nanny who helps cook and clean for her household, even while Mejia herself is coordinating the cooking and cleaning for thousands of others.
While in Mexico City raising Sebastien and Sabrina, Mejia occupied her free time with sculpting and painting courses. But in Kyiv, once the two began to attend school full-time, Mejia became restless.
“Originally, I didn’t think of being a businesswoman,” Mejia says simply. “You know, I arrived [in Kyiv] in July 1998, and met local Latina girls who were organizing the annual Latin American Night.” These new Latina friends of Mejia’s, including her close friend Irina from Colombia, were members of the Spanish-Speaking Group of the International Women’s Club of Kyiv, and every year for the previous four had been organizing the charity event. “We did everything ourselves back then,” she adds.
The work was hard, but it didn’t come without its benefits. Mejia and the others designed their own posters for the event, which they also posted across town by themselves, and they even printed their own tickets using a regular office computer. But they sold all 400 tickets for the event and raised great amounts of money for worthy IWCK charities. As an example of their success, in 2000 they raised $6,000 and, just last year at their tenth – and final – such charity night, the total raised was $23,000.
“But I can’t do that anymore,” Mejia says, frowning. “I just have no more time. It’s a lot of hard work, and it was fun – we had many great sponsors and generous people – but after six years there are just too many things in my life now.”
A True Socialite
In addition to the success and the fun of those charity nights, their social atmosphere offered Mejia chances to mingle and network with Kyiv’s most influential businesspeople. Her business ideas may not have originated in her charity work, but her contacts certainly did.
Part and parcel with Mejia’s career and her family life is being social. She loves going to her favorite restaurants to eat, to Art Club 44 for her beloved Long Island Ice Tea, and to Caribbean Club. At the latter she dances and hangs out with close friends from the city’s Latin community, speaking Spanish (though she also speaks English, Russian and German) with Irina, Christina from Ecuador, and other local Spanish-speaking women every bit as successful and Latina as she is. And one of the things that she’s invariably doing no matter where she is networking.
“Right now I’m focused on developing my client base,” Mejia says matter-of-factly. She wants her businesses here to grow just as she’s seen her children grow. Recently she joined the European Business Association and frequently attends their “Eurodrink” parties to mingle and make business contacts. She’s come a long way and knows she still has a long way she wants to go.
Part of what keeps Mejia grounded in reality is what she knows first-hand about running her own businesses.
“I remember what it was like to work the cash register at Kyiv International School that first year,” she says with a look on her face that calls to mind the dread she must’ve felt then. She’s even had to let go of an unprofitable child care service that she began, but through it all she remains focused on her goals – success and stability – as would befit the daughter of a banker. And it’s not about money for her, but about getting to a point in life that’s comfortable – where the phone doesn’t ring constantly, where there are no more clients to worry about, where the only thing left is to sit back and truly enjoy life.
The way you live changes as you get older, Mejia believes, both in terms of how you vacation and where you live. When you’re young it’s all about partying and staying with friends; in your twenties you want to visit new places and see everything; in your thirties you’re more settled; and after that you don’t want much of anything except peace and quiet. Mejia feels lucky that her husband Rene loves to travel as she does, but lately their vacations have been subdued, simple and quiet.
“The last two years I’ve told Rene, ‘We don’t need to go to other places,’” she says, gracefully lighting up a cigarette. “You just need quiet, a place on the beach with a good book, and afterwards a good place with music for a nice dinner, and to sleep in the next day.”
Richelieu
23 Chervonoarmiyska, 235-8862.
Open daily from 8 a.m. till the last customer.
English menu: Yes.
English-speaking staff: Yes.
