Page 51 - 2024 WOMEN FORUM JOURNAL

INDUSTRY LEADER HONOREE
LUCIA TEJEDA
Lucia Tejeda was born in the Bluefields Bay in Nicaragua, Central America. Her professional career started at age 15 when she worked as a secretary for an industrial company while finishing her bachelor’s degree at night. Lucia then completed a university degree in Economics and was promoted into accounting.
During the civil war in Nicaragua, Lucia joined the Army as a Manager of the Maintenance of Transpor- tations Department. Following her military service, Lucia moved into an accounting role within the government, where she made her way up to the position of Financial Director overseeing accounting, inventory and budgeting. Once out of the Government sector, Lucia moved into the hospitality space with Hotel Camino Real as a Front Desk Manager, until political unrest led her to immigrate to the United States and start a new life.
Initially Lucia traveled back and forth between Nicaragua and the United States. After becoming a United States Citizen in 1988 she chose to settle down and try her luck in New Jersey. As Lucia established herself professionally in the US she worked in a variety of roles and industries, including a hosiery company where she began learning about warehouse operations and selling to grocery store clients.
That initial exposure sparked Lucia’s enterprising spirit and led to a venture into launching her own hosiery business of her own. While capital constraints eventually got in the way, Lucia was undeterred: she continued in her quest for continuous learning and relationship building to achieve success in sales. Lucia’s Sales career path included Liberty Cookware out of West New York, where she became top Salesperson with the highest selling record. Through that role she made a new contact within the Dairy Division of Procter & Gamble in New Jersey with whom she worked next. Her building expertise in sales and with grocery customers then brought Lucia to the Condal Company.
Along that journey Lucia developed relationships with the Supermarket owners and maintained these relation- ships as friendly as possible. She then went to work at Hess Company which was a Dairy Company and would be more advantageous and profitable. Her first territory was Manhattan where she had the opportunity to sell to many of the burgeoning independent store owners that she still maintains friendships with to this day.
As another example of that success, Lucia’s reputation reached Nebraskaland before she did: Richard Romanoff reached out to let her know that she was the one giving him strong competition against the business that he was establishing then. A successful sales and businessperson himself, Richard asked Lucia to join him at Nebraskaland. Over the past 31 years, Lucia has progressed from Salesperson to creating the Sales Department, managing it and now holding the position of Vice President of Sales. Throughout this time, Lucia has been married to her husband for 34 years, a wonderful man whom she calls her support and inspiration.