Fostering Innovation Through Company Culture
Our organization is a multicultural, multi-talented pot composed of individuals from diverse backgrounds, countries of origin and ethnicities. The small organization of fewer than 50 people, represents at least eight different nationalities and a female workforce of about 60%. That composition and diversity make our company organically inclusive.
Culture as an alignment force:
Our organization doesn’t rely on a vision or a mission statement. Instead, we believe in our culture as an organic guiding force that will naturally and organically drive every individual and every team toward one common place where we want to take the brand and the organization to. That culture is encapsulated in our company manifesto, and in our 10 operating guidelines, which are even written in our office’s walls to encourage, empower and inspire all individuals to live by them.
- Believe in the power of brand building
- Spread the vibrant magic of Mexicanity
- Be the strategic category catalyst
- Always focus on value, not price
- Be an outlier and break the produce mold
- Educate, educate, educate
- Act as a responsible category leader
- Celebrate wins, and then improve them
- Develop the best people in the industry
- Work hard, and always have fun
Additionally, the organization puts in place empowerment initiatives and gender equality as catalysts to drive progress and innovation: One example of the steps the company is talking toward fostering a positive workforce culture and empowerment of employees is the FLI (Female Leadership Initiative). This program kicked off in January 2020. It encompasses a series of actions to develop female leadership to harness female leadership style characteristics to strengthen the organization as a whole. The initial actions include a paid membership for all AFM female employees to become members of the She Runs It organization, including (in addition to the membership benefits) the participation cost and travel expenses to attend one of the organization’s signature events in New York, Chicago or San Francisco. To kick off this initiative AFM invited Keynote speaker and author of the best-seller Grace Meets Grit, Daina Middleton, who visited AFM HQ to offer to all female employees her highly motivational keynote.
Our commitment to gender equality goes beyond our organization, and extends to our core consumers: "Maya" and Maria", as we call them in the general market and in the Hispanic respectively. For them, we became the first produce company to sponsor the #SeeHer movement funded and supported by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Through our commitment with the #SeeHer movement, we make a promise to all female consumers out there, guaranteeing that our messages are constructive and positive for the current and future generations of female consumers.
Among other initiatives, we have a Cultural Committee formed by a group of non-executive employees. The company assigns an annual budget to this initiative, which is allocated by the Committee toward the organization of events and activities aimed to allow the exercise of the operation guidelines which strengthens the culture.
These events and initiatives are conceived, planned and executed by the junior employees, which gives them the opportunity to distill their own creative ideas into the culture of the organization which gets shaped on an ongoing basis.
For more information about our culture contact
Michael Lemos - Sr. Manager, People & Culture at
mlemos@avocadosfrommexico.com