It is one thing to be a Girl Scout. It is another thing, entirely, when your family has no money to pay for your dues and troop activities — like Sylvia Acevedo.
That's when a savvy Girl Scout "Brownie" troop leader changed Acevedo's life. She sat down with Acevedo and showed her the way that she could sell enough boxes of Girl Scout cookies to cover it all. At first, the troop leader calculated a huge number — over a hundred boxes — in six weeks. Then she took Acevedo aside and broke the goal down from weeks into more manageable days. That's when Acevedo, 67, realized she only needed to sell a handful of boxes per day.
That made the goal attainable.
"When you're raised in poverty, you don't know how to make your dreams actionable," said Acevedo. But her troop leader showed her exactly what she needed to do by breaking it down into the smallest pieces.
Push Beyond Barriers Like Sylvia Acevedo
Acevedo ultimately did one better than sell enough cookies. She became a rocket scientist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Voyager 2 mission to Jupiter. President Obama later named her to the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. And, of course, she was named CEO of The Girl Scouts of the USA — widely credited for bringing Girl Scouts into the digital age.
How did she do that?
"We rewrote all the curriculum," she said, without a hint of braggadocio. "You had a 100-year-old organization focused on two primary experiences: cookies and camping. I needed a compelling narrative that shifted us from the industrial age to the digital age."
She oversaw the start of 126 new Girl Scout science and engineering (STEM) programs. Among them: a program on coding that even lured in "Daisies" aged five to seven using colored beads on bracelets. During her last year as CEO, more than 1 million STEM merit badges were earned including 180,000 in — of all things — cybersecurity.
Elevate Your Organization
Thanks to Acevedo, this is no longer your grandmother's Girl Scouts.
Just ask Lynelle McKay, the former chief customer officer of Girl Scouts who worked with Acevedo for three years helping to build up the STEM program.
At a national level, the STEM program lured more than $20 million to the national office with support from large corporations. At the local level, McKay says, local funding helped to create STEM centers. And at the all-important girl-to-girl level, the STEM badges were eye-catchers that helped expose girls to important math and science skills that they might not have gotten otherwise.
"Sylvia's early life experience with Girl Scouts helped to guide her own future," said McKay. "Decades later, as CEO, those experiences formed her vision of the immense impact the Girl Scout Movement could make, at scale, to open opportunities for girls and women in STEM."
Rise From Poverty Like Acevedo
More than anything else, it seems, Acevedo's most important leadership lessons were born and nurtured in the constant life challenges that growing up in absolute poverty presented to her and her family. Her dad was born in the U.S. and her mother was born in Mexico. Trying to raise their children was a huge financial challenge.
"We were so poor that my neighborhood faced the last meningitis outbreak in America," she said. This was in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where 11 family members lived in a tiny home with one bathroom. Her sister, Laura, actually caught meningitis and it left her mentally challenged.
That's when, at a very young age, Acevedo started to embrace the basics of great leadership: always being inquisitive; always reading; and learning to never take "no" for an answer — at least the first time.
A Girl Scout leader gave her a terrific tip on how to respond after someone says no: never walk away until you hear "no" three times.
Turn No Into Yes
Acevedo vividly recalls asking a neighbor who was sitting in her station wagon if she wanted to buy a box of cookies. Answer: No. As the neighbor got out of her car, Acevedo asked a second time. Answer: No. But Acevedo didn't give up. She followed the neighbor as she walked toward her home and asked if there was anyone else in her home who she'd like to purchase the cookies for. That worked. She bought a box.
A teacher in her Head Start program perceptively noticed that Acevedo was far more interested in reading than in arts and crafts. So while the other girls were doing arts and crafts, she would give oral book reports to her teacher about her favorite books. "This fostered a love of learning and explaining," she recalled.
Acevedo: Ignore The Doubters
Unfortunately, not all of her teachers and school counselors were quite so encouraging. Acevedo was an honors student in high school and she signed up to speak to her guidance counselor about attending college. She was seated outside the counselor's office when the counselor opened the door, took one look at her skin color, and said: "What are you doing here? Girls like you don't go to college."
Acevedo proved her dead wrong. That's in part because, years earlier, her fourth-grade teacher not only encouraged her to attend college but sat down and showed her photos of college campuses. When Acevedo saw the marvelous photos of Stanford University, she made it her goal to go there.
That road was not simple. She had to temporarily put off attending Stanford because the college funds she'd been saving on her own for years had to be used to pay for the funeral of her grandmother. But she got a scholarship at New Mexico State where she earned a bachelor's with honors in industrial engineering.
Later, she got a call out of the blue, that she'd been awarded a full-ride fellowship at Stanford from The National GEM Consortium, where she earned a masters in industrial engineering. She ranks among the first Latina students at Stanford University to earn an M.S. degree in systems engineering.
Drive By Example Like Acevedo
Acevedo always has led by overachieving. And by keeping her cool.
Acevedo sat on a committee in Austin, Texas, to help redraw school attendance boundaries — an issue often fraught with political tension. When the final recommendation was presented at the school board meeting, angry parents exploded with rage. But not Acevedo, who remained calm for someone sitting in such a hot seat, recalls Kathrin Brewer, who, at the time, was executive director of Austin Partners in Education, a nonprofit.
"Sylvia calmly listened to both well-founded and unfounded complaints, expressed fairly personally and viciously in some cases," said Brewer. After the meeting was over, Brewer asked Acevedo how she managed to stay so calm in such a tense meeting. "She said that she was counting her teeth."
Set Lofty Goals, And Reach Them
Acevedo is a leader who sets goals and then achieves them.
She learned that process very early on — way back in Girl Scouts. While on an outdoor camping trip one evening, her troop leader sat beside her and showed her the constellations in the sky. She asked Acevedo if she'd rather earn the Science Badge or the Cooking Badge that she'd been planning to earn. That inspired Acevedo to build a model rocket — which she repeatedly failed to launch. That's when she learned that experiencing failure is an important but painful stop on the road to success.
That night, gazing at the stars, also helped persuade her to become a rocket scientist. But she's taken on even harder missions. She's written about them all in her memoir, "Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist."
Upgrade An Institution Like Acevedo
Acevedo is widely credited with modernizing the Girl Scout cookie program. When she became CEO, the sales were still mostly a cash business which she determined to steer toward digital. Under her tenure, the cookie program swelled from a $760 million program to more than $880 million. Of that amount, more than $500 million was moved from cash to digital payments.
And, yes, she always keeps a pack of Thin Mints in her freezer. "If I have a bad day, and pull one out, it can feel like aroma therapy," she says.
Of course, she still knows the old Girl Scout pledge by heart — and recites it beginning to end.
Shake Off Setbacks
Her quiet message to all leaders: Persevere through whatever life throws at you.
Acevedo was thrown the ultimate test at age 28 while working for International Business Machines in Palo Alto, Calif.
She received a phone call that, in an act of mental despondency, her father had killed her mother and then killed himself. Her parents were both suddenly gone.
"It was like a nuclear bomb went off in the family," she said.
It took two decades of emotional recovery and years of therapy for her to ultimately work through the emotional trauma, says Acevedo. "I'm so grateful for all the therapists who helped me," she said. "I learned about forgiveness and letting go of shame. I worked through the trauma so that I could be whole and not defined by that moment."
Acevedo: Tap Your Roots
Great leaders find ways to recover from just about anything. Once again, it might have been the Girl Scouts that saved her.
Shortly after Acevedo was named CEO, she received an unexpected phone call from a close relative, who simply said, "Thank you for restoring dignity to our family."
Her family's name was no longer linked just to tragedy but now was recognized as one that helped to move the Girl Scouts forward. The Girl Scout's pledge that Acevedo uttered when she first joined her troop as a youngster begins with these words: "On my honor … I will do my best …"
That's precisely what she did.
Acevedo's Keys:
- CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA from 2016 to 2020. Member of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Voyager 2 team.
- Overcame: Childhood poverty, discrimination and a family tragedy.
- Lesson: "I learned about forgiveness and letting go of shame. I worked through the trauma so that I could be whole and not defined by that moment."
