#OpenForDelivery: There’s No Success Without Really Loving What You Do
Meet Daniela Manrique: Strategic Partner Manager, DoorDashWritten by: Myrna L. DatilusSpotlight Blogger, SIS Daniela Manrique is a Strategic Partner Manager (SPM) at DoorDash in Miami, and is ecstatic to work for a company that has allowed her to evolve both personally and professionally. In the interview process for DoorDash, Daniela felt that she was being introduced to a company that will celebrate her and her Hispanic background, she also felt confident in knowing that she would be affiliated with a company that encourages her to be herself and share her voice. “I’ve never felt like they’ve gone back on their word,” and for these reasons alone, Daniela is extremely excited about her career at Doordash, so let’s take a few steps back to learn more about who exactly Ms. Manrique truly is. Daniela “Dani” Manrique (Man-Ree-Kay) was born and partially raised in Venezuela, and then in Brazil due to her father’s work requiring the family to travel often. From Brazil, the Manrique family moved to Miami, Florida, where they have been for the past 20 years. She attended and graduated with her Bachelors in Marketing & PR from the University of Florida, with that being the furthest she has ever been away from her family in Miami. Due to her travels, Daniela speaks four different languages (English, Spanish, Portugese, and French), and has an appreciation for many different cultures and people. Being so culturally & educationally sound has allowed Dani to have a general passion for people by helping, building and maintaining relationships with the people she encounters in her life. The trend I have found by spotlighting these amazing women, is that just like me, we are all passionate about the human experience and how we can help leave each person we meet better than how they were. Although her degree in Marketing & PR is not aligned with her current career in sales, Dani says while working at different companies, she has been inspired to continue her work within the sales industry since she has a natural knack in connecting with people. Prior to bringing her talents to Doordash, Dani worked as a sales intern for Cartier at their Latin American headquarters in Miami for their Latin American Caribbean department. Although that position did not require a lot of client facing opportunities, there were moments where if her managers were out or if she needed to hop on a call with a partner, she would get the chance to help them resolve problems, troubleshoot, or just strategize, which required her to interact with her clients more than usual. Those moments proved to be Dani’s favorites because she was able to do what she loved to do the most, which was to talk, and that is where she really found her passion in building relationships and realized that she wanted to continue to do this on a larger yet impactful scale. Dani has another passion for volunteering her time within her community and she began to realize that she desired a role that would fuse everything that she loved together. She yearned to be able to interact and build relationships with people in her local Hispanic community in Miami; a position that would allow her to help support Hispanic small business owners such as the local restaurant owners. She wanted to also support women or anyone that was from any different culture to help grow and scale their businesses. “I actually started working for Ubereats as an Account Manager, where I was able to really dive deep into that passion of mine, of being able to build relationships, being able to help businesses grow and see the impact that I’m making directly with my merchants and my partners.” She worked in that role for two years as the company started growing pretty quickly, then the pandemic hit, and unfortunately things started changing. DoorDash then reached out to Dani informing her that they were growing their team in Miami, and asked her if this was something that would interest her. “At the time I was very interested in Doordash because of all the things that they were doing for the community and for the restaurants during the pandemic. They were going above and beyond to help everybody and that really resonated with what I was looking for in a company and I liked that they shared my values.” Accepting the offer to work at DoorDash was a no brainer for Dani because she will get to continue what she was doing and what she loves to do at a company that shares the exact values and morals that she does. “I applied and now I’m here…I have finally found a place where I belong and am doing something that truly makes me happy by helping local communities and small businesses.” Dani is truly getting the best of both worlds in her position as a SPM. As a SPM, Dani has a book of business where she manages around 30 accounts, “If I manage a Cheesecake Factory, that account is one local business in the market of Florida, that can be anywhere from South Florida all the way to North Florida. I’m equipped to help them grow their business in whatever capacity that means if that’s helping them with marketing campaigns, social media campaigns, product adoption, talking through, and if they have any issues with operations, I am a support for that as well. Right now with the pandemic, we’ve also been focusing on how we can help them just outside of the platform.” Dani elaborates further by sharing that her team goes even further in helping these local businesses figure out how to find people to work at their restaurants! I have never heard of a tech sales team doing that for any of their accounts, so I was truly impressed to learn that DoorDash goes above and beyond for their clients in such a way. “We sometimes will donate money to help them staff people. I do really cool campaigns with them, like if they want to do a social media campaign, I can