Latinos Doing Their Thing Presents…
Orna was born in Israel of Argentinean parents. Her ancestry is Jewish, and her forebears come from Spain, Syria, Egypt and Russia. Orna has family members living in Latin America, the US, Israel, France, Mexico, Switzerland and Italy. In an effort to escape the relentless Middle East violence against the young Jewish state, at a young age Orna and her family moved to Argentina, only to have to leave Argentina when she was in high school to escape the military repression and non-stop anti-Semitism.
Orna, as she describes herself was twice a penniless immigrant in a family of seven. However, that did not stop her from setting high goals and surpassing amazing feats.
Imagine a woman, that through hard work in babysitting, typing resumes, teaching and tutoring in Spanish and Math and even working as a camp counselor, was able to pay her way through engineering school. While attending school, Orna and her family did all they could to make it and stay strong. For part of her college years, Orna and her family had to live in low income housing and had to request assistance from local government officials in hopes of obtaining their visas and not be forced to return to the militarized Argentina.
After much diligence, Orna received her green card and went to work for a major chemical company, where she moved up in management and after 15 years left to get a Wharton MBA. Later, she spent another 15 years as corporate advisor and management consultant to CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs of global companies in the US, Europe and Japan.
Orna not only dedicated herself to establishing herself in her career, she is also dedicated and established in her community. She has served on numerous community organization boards, most recently on the local Philadelphia board and then the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, (National Board of NSHMBA) which encourages other Latinos to get advanced management and leadership education.
Here we have a woman that is not only fully bilingual in Spanish and English with university-level mastery of both, but she is also proficient in Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, and has familiarity in German, French and Japanese. There is truly nothing this woman can’t accomplish.
Today, after two major career changes, she is now running a small medical/engineering translation agency and contemplating a third career, either in a corporate mentoring role or as an online journalist and community activist. While achieving great success in her career, Orna did it with a loving family by her side. Her husband and two adult children are extremely proud of their wife and mom
Although our recognition of Orna ends here, she will surely continue to accomplish great things and continue to be a great contributor to society.
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