But through her nearly 20 years in the perishable food industry, she has not frequently encountered other leaders who share her experience and her perspective as a woman and a mother. That’s why one particular case, “Karen Bruck: Growing Managers at MercadoLibre,” has resonated with her.

The new case, written by Professor Joshua Margolis with Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal of the Latin America Research Center (LARC), is about a difficult personnel decision Bruck, a rising star in the Argentina-based Amazon rival, faced. In 2017, as corporate sales director at MercadoLibre, she managed a smart and dedicated employee who did not fit the company’s leadership culture—she was seen as too direct and combative. After months of trying to find the right fit for this employee, Bruck had to make a choice: Would she leave her in her current role, transfer her to another position, or fire her?

When Margolis, the James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business Administration and chair of the Program for Leadership Development, presents the dilemma to his Executive Education classes, the students are usually evenly divided regarding the best course of action, but it is in the class conversation that the true lessons of the case emerge.

With the help of the LARC, headed by Miguel, Margolis sought out a protagonist that was not only charged with developing employees, but was also at a pivotal moment in her own development. That’s a situation in which many PLD students find themselves. Choosing Bruck—a Uruguayan mother of two on the fast track in a rapidly growing tech company in South America—was also a step toward diversifying the protagonists represented in the classroom. “We wanted to better reflect where our students are coming from and where they are going to—in terms of biography, geography, industry—all the different dimensions,” Margolis says.

Bruck, who is now vice president, marketplace, Hispanic South America and Retail and Private Label, at MercadoLibre, hopes the case will help students understand that human experiences and emotions are an important part of leadership. “We are not machines,” she says. “Just acknowledge that and don’t be so hard on yourself for not acting like the result of an equation.”

That was the valuable lesson for O’Connor, who saw many similarities between her and Bruck. Through her career, O’Connor had always felt pressure to be a “wise old sage”—a stereotypically male definition of leadership. “I never felt like I fit into that mold,” she says. “Through PLD, I came to realize there are all sorts of different types of leaders who are perfect for different organizations at different times. I just need to be the best version of myself.”