The ever-expanding Women to Watch initiative is making its first ever stop in Ecuador, where AdAge and Adlatina will recognize a distinguished group of women who are blazing trails across marketing and communications. The 12 women will be celebrated at a special lunch event on July 2 at the Banker’s Club in Guayaquil. Here are the honorees:

Susana Calero, marketing consumer manager at La Fabril & Otelo & Fabell
Susana is a marketing engineer with a master’s degree in business administration—and also a wife and mother of two children. She has 20 years of marketing experience in consumer packaged goods companies such as Kimberly Clark, Unilever and Grupo Bimbo, working her way up from an assistant to a leader in marketing and trade marketing. Since 2015, she has led food, home and personal care marketing at La Fabril, currently leading a team of 29 and responsible for 38 brands in more than 30 categories. Susana is a member of Mucho Mejor Ecuador corporation, serves on the jury of Effie Ecuador and Effie Latin America and was named one of the nine leading marketers in Latin America 2018 by Marketers by Adlatina Magazine.

Julia Helena Carrillo, country manager at Ipsos
Julia is an expert in human behavior, consumer attitudes and motivations. She started her own company, Support Consultancy, 29 years ago, which merged with Ipsos Ecuador in 2013. In 2012, she was recognized for her professional excellence by the American Marketing Hall of Fame and she presided over the grand jury of Effie Ecuador in both 2014 and 2016. Julia has been a member of the research team of the World Values Survey since 2015 and has also been involved with Esomar as a speaker, organizer and judge, at both the Latin America and Dublin events; and has twice been a speaker at the International Seminars Statistics Ecuador. Since 2016, she has served on the technical jury of the Exemplary Practices awards program. She is a founding member of the Mujeres por Ecuador collective and is an advocate for the professional advancement of women.

Alexandra Chancay, manager of consumer marketing at Tonicorp
Alexandra has a degree in organizational communication and advertising and 17 years of experience in communications and strategic marketing with a focus on corporate communications, market intelligence and consumer mass-marketing. She was part of the team that launched Brahma Ecuador, led the Budweiser launch in Ecuador and also led the re-launch and repositioning of Helados Topsy in 2012. At Tonicorp, she is currently in charge of 10 categories of dairy products. Alexandra has been part of the jury of the Effie Awards Ecuador since 2004. In 2016, Women for Women invited her to join the first group of women leaders in Guayaquil.

Margarita Dávalos, vice president of programming and sales at Teleamazonas
Four decades ago, Margarita entered the world of television. Her first job was as a direct contact driver in Ecuavisa. A few years later she took over the programming management of Ecuavisa Quito and also was the animator of several contest programs. In 1989, she moved to Gamavisión to work as an operations and production manager, before becoming vice president of programming and sales one year later. After seven years in that role she went to Teleamazonas as vice president of production and went on to became vice president of programming and sales. In 2000, she returned to Gamavisión in the same role, and then also at Channel One. In 2006, she returned to Teleamazonas. She held several workshops in Spanish Television for the production of musical programs, along with other workshops at London Consulting Group and Televisa Mexico.

Guadalupe Durán de Ponce, general manager at Yanbal
Guadalupe has more than 25 years of experience, including 15 years at Microsoft Corporation, where she held a number of roles: she led the Dynamics division for Latin America and the U.S.; was general manager at the Ecuadorian office; director of corporate marketing for the Asia-Pacific region; and ending up at Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters, spearheading its largest global alliance, with Accenture. She also worked at IBM as a channel manager for small and medium businesses in Latin America; and at HP-Compaq as the consumer manager of Compaq for Latin America. Currently, she heads up the general management of Yanbal Ecuador, with the goal of increasing the income opportunities for thousands of Ecuadorian women. Guadalupe is part of the founding team of the Women for Women movement in Ecuador, a community that empowers women through leadership development, changing lives and transforming societies. A graduate of the American School of Quito and San Francisco de Quito University, in 2007 she received Microsoft's coveted Circle of Excellence award.

Ximena Ferro, coordinator of advertising careers at the San Francisco University of Quito
A first-class graduate of the San Francisco de Quito University, Ximena studied a master’s degree in communication marketing and advertising at Emerson College in Boston. She returned to Ecuador to work in marketing for Banco Pichincha and later at Banco Invesplan. Her passion for advertising drove her to a creative role at McCann-Erickson before going on to manage accounts at Vip Publicidad and Maruri Gray. After living in Peru, she became a professor at the USFQ and within a few years she was appointed career coordinator, right before the faculty was recognized as the best in the country at FICE 2018. She has been published in several academic and commercial journals, and has presented papers at universities around the world, including Oxford, Complutense and Palermo. She is about to publish a book on the history of advertising in Ecuador, after interviewing more than 50 industry professionals.

Diana Landucci Kury, special markets sales manager at Thessaly CBC
Diana earned a master’s degree in Business Management from the IDE-Business School before spending the next 15 years developing a flourishing career in marketing. She worked for several companies, including Banco del Pacífico, Unilever and Nestlé, before landing at Thessaly CBC, where she has spent the past decade fulfilling a number of roles—head of brand, marketing manager, director of regional marketing and director of regional insights—managing brands such as Pepsi, Seven, Gatorade, Guitig, Tesalia, 220V and Tropical. To further advance her professional development, Diana has spent the past year working as sales manager for special markets.

Paola Matute Pérez, corporate marketing manager at Holcim Ecuador
Paola experience's cuts across a number of industries: media, at El Universo and GamaTV; finance, at Banco Bolivariano and Banco Guayauquil; and now construction, at Holcim Ecuador, where she is in charge of two of the top brands in the country, Holcim Fuerte and Disensa. She studied at the Universidad Casa Grande, where she graduated in social communication with a mention in marketing, and then as an engineer in integrated communications with a mention in marketing. Paola complemented her studies with a master’s degree in commercial management and marketing; and is currently studying for a diploma in digital business.

Ana María Molina, corporate manager of sustainability and public affairs at Corporación GPF Socofar
Ana María is a journalist and communicator with a master’s degree from the University of Michigan and a diploma in business administration from IDE, Instituto de Empresas. For more than 20 years she has held executive positions in national and international companies, specializing in reputation management and strategic communications. She was director of Philip Morris International in public affairs for the Andean area and director of human resources for Ecuador, Peru and Chile. Since 2011, she has headed up corporate marketing in sustainability and public affairs at Corporación GPF, part of the FEMSA Comercio-Socofar alliance; and is responsible for the positioning of C-GPF, the seventh most reputable company in Ecuador. Ana María is passionate about women’s empowerment and equity.

Javiera Robles, marketing director at Claro
Javiera has spent 22 years of her 25-year career—more than half her life—at Claro, where she has excelled in several positions, mainly in marketing. Having been regional director, she now leads the marketing and services added-value team. She has contributed to Claro's evolution from its beginnings to a convergent telecommunications company with mobile and fixed services within the Ecuadorian market. She has a degree in marketing from the San Francisco University of Quito and an MBA from the University of Barcelona. She considers herself a woman, wife and mother who tries to be better every day, and and is determined to leave her mark in all aspects of her life and to be fulfilled.

Melissa Uscocovich, commercial manager at El Universo newspaper
Melissa's career began during the golden age of Ecuadorian advertising, working as an account executive at Véritas Ogilvy & Mather, led by Roberto Chavarría. In 1995, she joined the newspaper El Universo as an assistant of the projects department, where she spent two years. Then she got married and went to live in Chile where she earned a diploma in marketing from the Pontifical Catholic University of Santiago de Chile. She returned to Ecuador. to El Universo, to lead the creation of the subscription channel, before heading up marketing. Melissa was also a professor at the Casa Grande University, where she gave advertising and communication classes. She has participated in numerous seminars and trainings, such as the executive development program in the IDE at the Cannes Festival; and in several seminars at the International Newspaper Marketing Association, among others. She has a master’s degree in digital marketing.

María Fernanda Villacis Navarrete, marketing manager, Latam Pass and customer service at Latam Airlines Ecuador
María studied communication at the Universidad Casa Grande and marketing engineering at the UEE, before completing a master’s degree in business administration at the UEES. She began her professional career selling advertising space in a media outlet, getting her big break at just 22 when she started leading marketing teams. She has 20 years of experience in marketing management, clocking up a decade each in the food/beverages and airlines industries. She has a reputation for focusing on organizational structure and likes to build multidisciplinary teams from scratch. Maria always leads with the conviction that humility leads to success, declaring that the egos are not part of her team.