Rebeca Hwang

Some of the most meaningful professional relationships begin in the most unexpected ways.

I first met Rebeca while I was in Chile. Someone mentioned she was staying at a hotel and would be leaving the country soon after delivering a training program for a large multinational. Without thinking twice, I took an Uber across the city to meet her.

It was a dark, rainy afternoon. I arrived around six in the evening and found her sitting in the café, her suitcase already beside her.

As I usually do with international speakers, I opened in English. She lives in the United States, teaches at Stanford, and has built an impressive career there, so it seemed the natural thing to do.

Then came the first surprise.

She answered me in Spanish. And not just any Spanish: Spanish with a distinctly Argentine accent.

"How do you come to speak Spanish with an Argentine accent?" I asked.

She explained that her family had moved to Argentina, and that she had grown up there before leaving for the United States.

In that moment, the conversation changed. What had begun as a professional meeting became something far more personal.

Rebeca was warm, approachable and grounded.

And that was striking, because her résumé might lead you to expect someone very different. She was born in Seoul, raised in Argentina, and educated in the United States at MIT and Stanford. She carries three worlds with her: Korean heritage, an Argentine upbringing, and a Silicon Valley career.

That isn't a footnote on her CV. It sits at the very center of who she is and what she brings to a stage.

And there's something else worth understanding about her. She is not a soft-skills speaker who happens to be inspiring. There is serious technical weight beneath everything she does: the academic depth, the years of real experience, the expertise that gives substance to her ideas. When she takes a client's question, she doesn't shrink it; she opens it up, and suddenly you are having a far bigger and more interesting conversation than the one you came for.

But what stayed with me, from the very first minutes, was the person behind all that expertise.

We connected immediately. We exchanged not just emails but phone numbers, because it was clear we could work well together, and that is something I look for very carefully in a speaker.

When a client sends me a brief, my instinct is to go straight to the speaker. This is what they are looking for; what do you think, how would you add value, how do we make it work? For me, that is what a real partnership looks like.

Some time later I reached out to Rebeca again about an event for another client. She happened to be arriving in a new country, still at the airport, and even then, in the middle of her journey, she made time to talk it through.

Her response was immediate and completely natural:

"How can I help? If it's useful, let's set up a video call with the client so they can get to know me and understand what I can bring."

That willingness to show up, to collaborate, to help the client directly is something I value enormously. We ended up talking for twenty minutes, not only about the event but about her classes, her work, and where her speaking was heading. She even offered to introduce me to someone who could join her, since the session we had in mind was a long one.

And this is where, for me, the real value of a speaker becomes visible.

After more than twenty-five years in this profession, I've had the privilege of working with many extraordinary people. Some carry enormous reputations and résumés that justify real confidence, and, occasionally, a touch of the "prima donna" along with them.

There is always a choice.

You can work with a name that impresses but complicates the road. Or you can work with someone whose expertise is exceptional and who is also genuinely willing to work alongside you.

Rebeca is firmly in the second group.

Representing a speaker, for me, is not about finding the most impressive set of credentials. It is about bringing my client the best possible contribution: creating value, making things work, making the speaker part of the solution rather than simply part of the programme.

And when the speaker is someone this knowledgeable, this technically strong, this internationally experienced, and, at the same time, this generous, flexible and human, the relationship stops being a transaction.

It becomes a partnership.

That is what I found on a rainy afternoon in Santiago, with a suitcase beside the table and neither of us knowing quite where that first conversation would lead.

Behind the credentials, behind MIT and Stanford, behind the international career and the technical depth, there was something more valuable still: a genuinely remarkable human being.

And those are the people I believe are truly worth working with.

Written by Felipe Gallardo, a business development consultant and talent advisor helping organizations worldwide find and book the right keynote speaker. More Conversations →