Meet Daniela Manrique: Strategic Partner Manager, DoorDash
Written by: Myrna L. Datilus
Spotlight 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 provide them with that and do whatever it takes to just really help their business grow in general.” It sounds like this position is a very rewarding one since it allows Dani to utilize all her talents in helping people and their local businesses.
Dani believes that DoorDash really inspires her to go above and beyond for her team members, and for the company as a whole since DoorDash has really proven to support local communities. She explains that the company truly surpasses the limits of customer service for their merchants, especially right now in their most times of need, and that aligns perfectly with what she is trying to do for her career and as an individual.“It’s great to be able to combine my job with what inspires me and with what I’m trying to do with my life. It’s very hard to find a combination of those two in one place. So I’ve been very, very lucky and very grateful.” I know from experience how difficult it is to find a company that aligns with what is most important to you as a person and a professional, therefore, Dani’s excitement and happiness truly resonated with me and made me so excited for her as well.
As mentioned earlier, Dani loves to volunteer and the non-profit space, and this is another area where DoorDash has shown up for her. “We get to do a lot of non-profit work as well, for example, in December in the Miami area specifically, we began to promote more Latin American restaurant owners because we wanted to make sure that they also got a lot of visibility in this community. So we did a whole art thing around Art Basel, where we had Hispanic artists draw stuff, and if a customer ordered from that restaurant, they could potentially win this drawing.” How cool?! They did a lot of promotion for the Latin community in December, and it was really impactful for her to be able to be a part of something that is again, promoting her Hispanic community. DoorDash is also doing events for Pride Month this month, and also hosts events for Black History Month in February as well. Being able to do those things and interact with merchants that fit in these communities, makes Dani feel like it also separates DoorDash from their competition and really makes for a mutually beneficial relationship between DoorDash and the merchant.
In regards to Diversity and Inclusion, Dani shared that she has not had any issues at all while working at DoorDash, stating that it is a very inclusive and accepting environment, and “that made me extremely happy because I do feel like there’s so many women out there that don’t necessarily know how to navigate their career because they feel like they’re in a very male dominated career,” As Dani stated, sales and the tech industry is very male dominated, so it makes Dani extremely excited to see more women joining leadership positions within the sales industry, however it has not always been this way. To keep it this way though, Dani does her due diligence by mentoring other women within the organization. She does this with all of the new hires by making sure that she reaches out to women specifically and also to underrepresented individuals to make sure that they understand what tools DoorDash has in place for the underrepresented.
In sharing the challenges she has faced in the past during her sales career, Dani explained how she has felt unheard, undervalued, and not respected in the workforce because she is a Hispanic woman. “Thankfully I don’t experience that anymore and I feel like we’re getting to a point where now people are speaking up, so it’s starting to change, which I’m very grateful for. But when I started working, it was not the case and I wouldn’t get opportunities that I would see my counterparts, who were equally experienced as me, receive, and because they were male or were older, they got a chance and I wouldn’t get that chance.” Sounds familiar? Well, Dani no longer has to experience such unfortunate situations just because she is a Hispanic woman thriving in the sales industry; trust me, with the passion she has for people and what she does to help them, Dani is someone to look out for.
Dani has been volunteering her time in the community since she was in high school and one of her favorite things to do is to volunteer her time with the children. She has a lifelong dream to create her own non-profit for Hispanic children in third world countries. She is not sure if it will be with education, medicine, or by supplying resources, she just knows that she is very passionate about fulfilling that dream. She has been inspired to do so due to the time she has invested with the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. She has made such great connections with the children and families she met within that organization, so much so that one family in particular, contacts her each year for her birthday. If that is not a testament to who Dani is as a person, I am not sure what is!
Dani is competitive, and loves sports. She grew up playing sports such as tennis, soccer, swimming, and ran cross country. This explains why she is successful in sales since we are aware that being in such a role definitely requires someone to have a competitive spirit. To close out our conversation, Dani left us with some wonderful inspiring words. “Don’t let other people crush your dreams. We can do whatever we put our minds to and I’ve seen it and have lived it. If you work for it, you’re going to get there by just being yourself and shining through. Ask yourself, what motivates and inspires you? I don’t want my culture, my gender, or my background to limit me. I want it to empower me, and I want people to know that it is okay to be a strong Hispanic woman. We can be the person to lead a team, to lead a company, or to change the world. I know that we can do it.” Overall, Dani believes that people should use their gender & their culture as a way to push themselves, not to limit themselves. Powerful.
On behalf of the Sistas in Sales (SIS) Family, congratulations Dani on your 1-year anniversary with DoorDash!!
We look forward to seeing more of all the amazing work you do in the local Miami communities.
