Flavia and Faith: Throwing Things (Not Pasta) at the Wall to See What Sticks

Rachael: Welcome back to Formative, the podcast where today's leaders are interviewed by the leaders of tomorrow. Today our guest is Flavia Garcia, Marketing Director and New Business Development Lead at Garofalo Pasta USA. In our conversation, Flavia explains how marketing shapes the way people see a product, why young people should keep trying new things until something sparks their curiosity, and what a costly mistake taught her about honesty and asking for help.

Hello and welcome. My name is Rachael Gazdick, and I'm your host and CEO of New York Edge. On every episode of Formative, a student from our after-school program joins me as co-host, and today that's Faith from MS 57K. Faith, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? 

Faith: I'm a sixth grader. I dance on my after-school dance team.

My favorite color is pink, and when I grow up, I wanna be a lawyer, and I love to help my friends.

Rachael: That is very cool. I love hearing about how you love to help your friends. Okay, so I think now we're ready to go chat with today's guest.

(START OF INTERVIEW)

Faith: My first question is, explain to me a little bit about what exactly marketing is.

Flavia: So marketing is all about making sure that your product, whatever it is, if it's pasta, if it's a doll, uh, if it's an 

orange juice, is looked at from whoever wants to buy it, the way you would like them to see it. So my job is to actually think about how we can sell to US shoppers, so to people that go to supermarkets in the US, the best pasta possible, and how to make them happy about their purchase.

Faith: Okay. Did you always like marketing?

Flavia: So not really. My first interest was actually food. I was always super interested in food. Whenever I was traveling with my parents, I was lucky enough to go a little bit around Europe. The first thing I wanted to see when I was traveling was supermarkets in every country we were in, and that kind of made me understand that I had a passion for food, and marketing seemed the right way to have people understand what my passions were.

Faith: When did you realize you wanted to work in marketing?

Flavia: So it was probably when I started to notice, always in my supermarket field trips, sometimes abroad or sometimes in Italy, that I was very interested in how things, uh, on the shelves look like. So what was written on the package, what it made me think of, uh, and potentially even, like, some ideas of how I could make that even cooler for the people that were shopping in that supermarket.

Faith: Um, if you didn't work where you were now, where would you like to work now?

Flavia: Oh, very hard question. I ask myself that question many times. So when I was around... When I was still in high school, so a little bit after where you are now, I wanted to be a 

veterinarian, but I then kind of understood that the only reason I wanted to be a veterinarian was 'cause my sister wanted to be a veterinarian, and I didn't really love all kinds of animals.

I only liked dogs and cats. So I was like, "Hmm, I don't think I'm gonna, that thing is gonna fly with me just loving cats and dogs and me being a veterinarian." And plus, I don't love to see needles and blood, so I gave up on that. And I decided that I wanted to do something more connected to people and marketing.

So, like, pretty much trying to change how people look at products made me really connect with people, and that's what I wanted to do.

Faith: Okay. Do you have any advice for young people who don't know what they want to do when they grow up?

Flavia: Yes, and I wish we wouldn't be worrying too much about it, because I think, like, you'll understand what you wanna do when it's the right time for you to understand.

But my advice is to just try to get exposed, meaning, like, try to see if something interests you, and try so many different things. And then when something really catches your attention, you're gonna know. Keep trying until you find that thing that makes you super curious to wanna know more.

Faith: What about your job that you find challenging?

Flavia: So I have a very hard time telling people no, and sometimes, you know, some people come to me 'cause they want to sell me their products, meaning they want me to advertise in their magazine our brand, or they ask me for a discount on the product. Um, and, uh, I have a really hard time sometimes not 

saying yes to everybody, because I would love to help everybody's business.

But unfortunately, sometimes you have to decide what's best for what you wanna do and how you want to show your product. So I have to, I have to say no sometimes, and that's a little bit hard for me.

Faith: What about your job do you enjoy the most?

Flavia: What do I enjoy the most? I think lots of people are interested in food, and I love to see the surprise on people's faces when I tell them how pasta is produced, how much work goes into it, and how there's many differences between one pasta and another.

I see people super surprised 'cause they're not- they didn't know that before. So I love to see how they get super interested in something that can seem so simple like pasta.

Faith: Do you like when your job is more challenging or easy, and why?

Flavia: So I think the best is a combination of those two things. I'm also a mom. I have a five-year-old and a one-year-old, so sometimes when my job is very challenging and also it's challenging at home, the two things combining themselves can be a lot. But, like, you know, you really are good at what you do when you're able to separate your job person from your home person. So when I can, like, you know, look at the challenges at my job and keep them in the office, don't bring them back home with me and 

be upset if something upsetting happens at work, just, you know, come back home and be happy with my kids.

To your point, a good combination of challenging and easy is the best.

Rachael: Do you ever make mistakes at work, and if so, how do you deal with them?

Flavia: Yeah. So, I mean, I've made a lot, for sure. Uh, some bigger, some smaller. Uh, one that I remember happened, I wanna say maybe six or seven years ago, where I was deciding the prices of our pasta for a supermarket, and I pretty much copied the wrong numbers in the paper.

And what happened though, is that I did send those numbers to the store, and they were like, um, "Oh, I'm sorry, we already published them. All the price tags are already on the shelves. Now, we can change them only in 60 days." I was like, "What?" And the prices I had given them were so lower than they were supposed to, so the company was gonna lose money because of my clerical mistake.

So what I did was, I went to my boss, my supervisor, and I told them what happened, and I was like, "I'll make up for the mistake with extra work. Uh, what can I do? I'm, I'm so sorry." And he actually told me, "You know what? Everybody does mistakes. The only person who doesn't do mistakes is the one that's not working."

So I've learned from this to always, of course, double-check everything before, especially when it's, like, important 

communications, but also that it's better to bring it up to whoever's, like, you know, responsible for your work, to your teacher in case you're in school, or to your supervisor or whoever it is, and work a solution out together.

Faith: How do you and your team at work build a strong relationship?

Flavia: Yeah. So we are a very small team in, uh, our New York office. It's just four of us, and then we have another person who lives in California on the West Coast. Being a small team, we really need to get along 'cause it's just the four of us, like in a family.

I think what helps us, and this might be, like, a very Italian thing, when it's lunchtime, we stop, and we go to a different table. We don't eat at our desks, and we don't talk about work. So we sit, we enjoy, either it's something we brought from home for lunch, and we chat. And sometimes we also all go out to have a nice dinner together.

Faith: Since you work for a pasta company, does that mean you like pasta as well?

Flavia: That's a very good question, Faith, and also, like, you don't know how many times I get asked if I eat pasta every day. So I love pasta. I don't eat pasta every day. It's funny because my family members complain that I always bring pasta to my friends and we never have pasta at home.

But, uh, I do love pasta. I have to say I also have a favorite shape of pasta. I love the half rigatoni, and I don't really like 

pasta that doesn't have ridges. I don't really like smooth pasta. I like the one that has ridges on top. For example, like, you know how people, some people like the crinkle-cut fries? I like the crinkle-cut fries more than the plain ones.

Faith: Do you have a favorite food besides pasta?

Flavia: I do, but it's pretty similar, and it's pizza, and that's because I'm from this city in Italy called Naples, where the Neapolitan type of pizza has been invented. So just like you have, uh, New York City pizza slices, there's another different type of pizza we have in my city.

So my second favorite food after pasta is pizza. What's yours, Faith?

Faith: Um, my favorite food is seafood.

Flavia: Well, you know what's the best thing ever? Pasta with seafood.

Faith: Yeah. I have it all the time.

Flavia: Have you ever had spaghetti with clams?

Faith: No.

Flavia: You gotta try that, Faith. Trust me. What's your favorite seafood?

Faith: Crab legs. Snow crabs. No, king crab. 

Flavia: Oh, I can't blame you for that one. Super good.

Faith: Cause just, it just has so much meat, and then if you get the right sauce for it…

Flavia: That's perfection, right?

Faith: This is my last and final question. Do you like to cook? If so, what is your favorite dish?

Flavia: Yeah. So I do like to cook. I am not a good cook.

I can do some things, and I do them really well. So I can do a really, really good Bolognese sauce, um, which is like, you know, made with meat and tomato sauce, and you put it on top of pasta, and I learnt it from my mom, who's actually from the, the part of Italy where that recipe was, was invented. So I make a really, really good Bolognese sauce.

Faith: Is it true that if you want to see if spaghetti is cooked, you can throw it against the wall?

Flavia: Absolutely not, Faith. We don't do that. That's like a silly story that somebody started to tell around. The way to do it is to put a timer on, look at what the cooking time says on the packaging, put a timer on and do it that way, or try it yourself, and if it's too crunchy, keep it one more minute.

But no throwing spaghetti on the wall, please.

Rachael: All right. All right. All right, so one final question. If you could go back and speak to yourself at 10, which is Faith's age, what would you tell yourself? 

Flavia: What would I tell myself? To enjoy the days of playing with other kids, that everything is gonna find its place without you even noticing it, and just like, you know, continue to try different things, uh, to see what really makes you super happy.

Rachael: Oh, that's absolutely lovely. So thank you so much.

Flavia: We really enjoyed learning about your work.

(CREDITS)

Rachael: Thanks for listening to Formative, a production of New York Edge. I'm your host, Rachael Gazdick. 

Our production partner for this series is CitizenRacecar. 

This episode was produced by Hajar Eldaas, post-production by Alex Brouwer, original music by Garrett Tiedemann. 

Thanks to the whole team at New York Edge for making this series possible.

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