Yazil Navarro

Career Coach

I am a thriving, awesome, and empathetic Chingona who is willing to share experiences, knowledge, and pearls of wisdom along with the opportunity to create a path to expand your career.

I have worked in higher education for more than 13 years in various positions and capacities, as a Learning and Talent Development Programs Manager at a premier, public university in the heart of California – Central Valley. I am a thought leader in employee engagement, mentoring, coaching, and learning. Drawing on my unique background in leadership, development, and analysis of financial industries and organizations, career coaching, adult education, personality influences, and human-centered assessments, I have a profound understanding of how to unlock the best in people, helping organizations and individuals to elevate their potential.

Credentials and experience are important, and I have them. I am a seasoned professional with more than 20 years of cumulative experience. I hold a Master of Business Administrations (MBA), Bachelor of Science degree from an accredited public university located in the Central Valley. I am a certified career coach, practitioner of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Change Management through ProSci, and Influencer, among other professional development certifications. Previous work experience in the private sector includes audit compliance, bilingual services, employee empowerment, and customer service, banking operational strategies in the financial sector (in three distinct Banks). Responsible for employee training, bilingual services, employee supervision, customer satisfaction, and sales strategies in retail.

Elevate and Thrive (pronounced Elevate in Spanish and Thrive in English) is the product of my conscious decision to impact other professional lives by sharing my wealth of knowledge, experiences, strategies, tips, and best practices so that you can build a plan for a better career, transition to another career, or maybe regain control of your current career journey.

One of the most challenging questions I struggle to answer is “Where are you from?” I grew up between two countries – Mexico and the United States. Not feeling American enough in the United States and not feeling Mexican enough in Mexico. Yet, very proud of my bi-culturalism. I grew up learning two languages – honoring Spanish as my first language, and English as my second language. Translating all kinds of school meetings, documents, conversations, and even legal matters to my parents helping them out and learning to be independent. I am not complaining, I learned so much in my childhood and teenage years about insurance, home ownership, and financial decisions. Later in my life, I learned to be grateful for these learning opportunities which taught me to be responsible and independent.

Growing up, I was always proud of my culture, language, and Mexican traditions. I was proudly part of a migrant community – my family worked in the agricultural sector for most of my early life, and I was part of migrant education programs throughout most of my school years up until high school. I am very grateful for all the extra books during summer, the opportunities to go to special field trips, and the exposure to Latino leaders who were examples of people who had attained the much sought-after “American Dream.” People that looked like my family and me. The highlight of my migrant education experience was a trip to Washington D.C. in 2001, with Future Leaders of America representing my school as part of Merced County Office of Education – Migrant Education Programs. The purpose of the trip was to participate in the Youth Leadership Conference, learn from leadership training, and educational experiences, and promote personal development of youth. I’ll never forget this experience in Washington D.C. in August 2001, there was a little spark of ambition and inspiration ignited in my soul.

Visiting Mexico was a dream every year, I would count down the months and days to be back in that colorful land, enjoying the most glorious food, and visiting my friends. I grew up wanting to live in Mexico, as it seemed just fun and comfortable not realizing my parents had made a conscious decision to leave their country to offer a better future to their family.

As I mentioned earlier, my first language was Spanish. I learned English as a second language through ESL classes. In High School, I successfully completed Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish and other subjects practicing my leadership roles and participating as the first Vice President in the Spanish Club. This opportunity provided a first glimpse at the power of unity and community building. During my college and university education, I always excelled and navigated the academic pathway with excellent grades while exercising my social skills. I learned that education is a key to getting your foot in the door at any industry. As a young, bi-cultural, first-generation professional Latina, I had no connections – no relevant network to help me get a job, ah on top of everything, a high-level of experience was always required, and I had very few professional experiences as a recent graduate.

The following years, I built my own network of like-minded colleagues – including former classmates, coworkers, people who inspired me, mentors, etc. I learned to utilize my influential network to discover new employment opportunities, asked for professional references, and reached out for help or guidance to navigate to the next stage of my career. Yes, you guessed it… this was before LinkedIn. When LinkedIn came in the picture, I simply transferred my influential network into this exciting platform. In the corporate world – financial industry, I learned about transferable skillsets, the importance of customer service, and building your credibility among a load of other key skills and abilities. At this point, I capitalized and fully embraced my linguistic fluency in two languages. I then made a self-commitment to continue my learning and growth while balancing my linguistic expertise in English and Spanish. I also experienced the uncertainty of the closure of a company and having to re-apply for my same position once the new company took over. It was then, I secured my position in the new company but negotiated an increase in pay for additional responsibilities and a bonus for speaking Spanish. Early on, I learned that opportunities come up sometimes in disguise, our human nature, personality, and mindset influence the decisions we make in life.

One of my mentors at that time suggested me to apply for an entry-level position in the Human Resources department, a premier research university in California’s Central Valley, the first research university built in the 21st century. Little did I know that application, employment offer, and ultimately career path in the higher education arena was going to transform my life forever. The university setting is one of the best learning environments for me, continuous growth opportunities emerged out of collaborative opportunities, the access to world-class researchers, faculty, and staff members is invaluable. Some of the greatest higher education administrators became my mentors, facilitating access to information/resources for me to learn at a fast pace, completing projects, participating in task forces, building new onboarding, professional development, and engagement programs. In this land of growth and career opportunities, I met some of the most brilliant, eloquent, and humble individuals in academia. These leaders were always willing to share their career stories with me and providing leadership, space, and access to influence them in participating as subject matter experts, guest speakers, or mentors in the programs I developed. It was also in academia where I learned to navigate my career journey while experiencing many challenging and limiting beliefs including imposter syndrome (since English was my second language), low self-confidence, and feeling intimidated by being around highly intelligent scholars and leaders.

I have navigated multiple oceans of growth opportunities, completed train-the-trainer certifications, networked strategically, collaborated in innumerable projects, and I am enthusiastic to share my knowledge and nuggets of accumulated wisdom with you. Thank you for reading this long part of my life story.