Carrying Confidence
When Maria joined Competencias para la Vida, she already had some experience with JA programs. At 20 years old, living in Mexico, she believed she had a general idea of what the program would be like, but the reality surprised her in the best way.
“There were things I definitely didn’t expect,” she said. “I learned so many things that I didn’t learn in school.” Before joining the program, Maria had only a limited understanding of key topics like financial literacy, the future of work, and soft skills. “In Mexico,” she explained, “unless you’re studying something like economics, you don’t really learn about these things.”
She arrived with gaps in her experience. She had never written a résumé, never done a job interview, and didn’t know how to present her own skills. But each module helped her put theory into practice. She remembers the interview simulator vividly. She felt nervous, but volunteers from American Express guided her with patient, friendly feedback. One volunteer even paused her mock interview to take a breath and reset.
“It wasn’t harsh at all,” she said. “The volunteer was very kind, and it really helped me.”
The most impactful moment for her came during the business pitch module. She didn’t know her teammates, and they all came from different states. “I didn’t know them. I didn’t know how they worked,” she said. “I worried they wouldn’t take it seriously.”
But as they advanced through the project, she realized something important: everyone who had made it this far in the program shared the same commitment. The team turned out to be collaborative, creative, and fully engaged.
She remembers rehearsing the pitch together, improving it day by day, and even the small bonding moments (like the group deciding to use matching profile photos to make their presentation look polished and unified). “Our team was almost all girls,” she laughed, “so we wanted it to look pretty.”
The experience reshaped how she understood teamwork. In school, she explained, group work often meant dividing tasks and never really collaborating. But this was different. “True teamwork is when everyone understands everything and the final result is something we built together—not just pieces put together at the last minute.”
Growing up, she says, young people in Mexico are often discouraged from entering the workforce early. “There’s a lot of fear,” she explained. “We’re told it will be too hard.”
But the program's instructors shared their own experiences—the good and the bad—and helped students see the workplace from a realistic, empowering perspective. “They show you that not everything is perfect, but not everything is terrible either. Hearing from people closer to our age, people who’ve lived it, helps so much.”
She found budgeting and financial planning to be the most practical lessons from the program. Before, she didn’t have a straightforward method for managing money, but she learned to start with her needs and create a budget intentionally, not just count expenses at the end of the month. “JA helped me understand that this is the starting point. They plant the seed, but I have to grow it.”
In five years, when she’s 25, she hopes to see herself living somewhere new and feeling more at peace with who she is. She imagines having greater stability, a job she feels proud of, and—most importantly—finding a way to “give back” to JA.
“I don’t know exactly how,” she said. “Maybe volunteering in a program. But I want to repay everything these programs gave me.”
Reflecting on her experience with JA and Competencias para la Vida, Maria said the impact goes beyond skills: “It opens up your perspective. Every program has its own essence and teaches you something different. And every person you meet adds something to your life.”
What she carries with her now is confidence—in interviews, in teamwork, in planning for her future, and in her own voice. “Thanks to Junior Achievement, I feel more prepared. The experience gave me the beginning of what I should be doing. Now it’s up to me to keep building.”