Giselle Mota is a superstar Instructor who’s taught Interise’s SBA Emerging Leaders class in Tampa, FL for 4 years. She is the founder of Preductiv, a platform aimed at equipping organizations with the strategies to bolster productivity through optimizing learning and development. In this post Giselle shares what it’s like to work with Interise as a facilitator and an entrepreneur.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
I am a Learning Strategist and founder of Preductiv. Preductiv provides organizations at Learning & Development and Human Resource levels with strategies to improve how their people learn at work, thus impacting organizational productivity. This is my newest venture as I’m also involved in assisting with training efforts at PwC, conducting business consulting for CEO’s, and often teaching business college courses. I’ve been in the training and learning space for the past 10 years and enjoy seeing people and organizations tap into their highest potential through Learning and Development.
How did you first get involved in entrepreneurship/small business?
My parents are immigrants into the United States from the Dominican Republic. I grew up watching them struggle and build themselves up through owning their own businesses. While they instilled in me the importance of education and learning, they also entrusted me with an investment during Undergraduate school [where] I owned and operated a staffing and recruiting business that focused on training and developing job seekers. I learned from my failures and successes during that time, and went on to graduate with dual undergraduate degrees in Management and Marketing and then continued on to obtain a Masters in Business with emphasis on organizational design and change management. Throughout that time, I transitioned into Professorship, Instructional Design, Curriculum Development, and more Training and Facilitation to both small business and corporations. I’ve been in different worlds and have always found myself gravitating to small business support.
How has being an Interise Instructor impacted your own business?
In facilitating these sessions and working on the real life cases of various businesses, I have strengthened my own facilitation, business consulting, and strategies. The relationships I’ve made have sometimes even led to the network referring my services to their contacts and network. I’ve spoken at a conference where one of my past participants sat on the Board of Association, have met potential clients through the network, and have oftentimes been able to provide advice and expertise in learning and development to the participants for their own businesses.
What are you doing personally and or professionally that you want people to know about?
T I’ve been speaking at different venues such as TEDx, DisruptHR, the Hacking HR Forum, and several conferences and events on current digital trends such as Artificial Intelligence and its effect on learning and development at work. I’ve been conducting a few interviews, contributing to books and articles, and am excited to continue to contribute a voice to how people and organizations can be impacted in positive ways through strategies and technology.
Why do you teach with Interise?
Although I am involved in the academic and corporate worlds, I value small business greatly. I think that Interise empowers small businesses to thrive to the point where they can empower their own communities and people to thrive as well. Interise upholds what I value so much: learning, development, and training to get people and organizations to reach their best potentials. Not to mention, teaching with Interise is fun and fulfilling on a personal level; the relationships I’ve made have been priceless!
What do you think makes an independent business successful?
Independent businesses are agile; they are forced to think creatively and use limited resources to the best of their capabilities. They don’t get as caught up in the politics and red tape that are often found in more bureaucratic environments. The entrepreneurial spirit and drive that is an innate part of independent business is vital to its success, and often is the force that quite simply makes things happen with grit and determination.
What’s one book every entrepreneur should read?
Start with Why by Simon Sinek. This book starts from a people-centric place rather than numbers, metrics, and other types of extrinsic goals. The latter is important, but every entrepreneur starts with a vision- an inspiration, so it is important to not lose focus of that and to operate from that place and allow everything else to follow and gravitate around it. Entrepreneurs lead from their vision and all stakeholders are wanting and willing to follow not just a product or service, but an inspiration and vision.
GISELLE MOTA | TAMPA, FLORIDA 
Giselle Mota is the founder of Preductiv (bepreductiv.com), consulting organizations in rethinking strategies and systems in workplace learning in order to achieve productive performance and organizational results. She works with trainers and facilitators to help implement sustainable and scalable learning systems; often curating partner elearning solutions.