She Submitted a Conference Paper in Portuguese. She Didn't Speak Portuguese. She Had Three Months to Learn. Software CEO Katherine on Persistence, Pivots, and Never Giving Up

Two Ways to Fail: Give Up or Die." How Sigma Software CEO Katherine Built a Foreign Office, Completed a Half Ironman, and Learned to Lead on One Rule

"There are only two ways to fail: give up or die. And neither is a reasonable option."

That is the saying Katherine's team uses to remind themselves who they are. She means it literally. When she was trying to open Sigma Software Group's first Latin American office, she tried recruiting agencies, acquisition targets, universities, and different countries for an entire year. Nothing worked. Then in a brainstorming session, someone mentioned speaking at a developer conference. She found one in Brazil, submitted a paper, got accepted to one of the most selective conferences in the region, went, fell in love with the community, and pivoted the entire Latin American strategy to Brazil on the spot.

Then she went back to the same conference the following year and gave her talk in Portuguese. She had submitted the paper in December, in Portuguese, with a translator. The conference was in March. She did not speak Portuguese. She had three months to learn.

Katherine rose from junior software developer to CEO of Sigma Software Group Americas in 16 years. In this episode, she is completely direct about how she actually did it — not as a philosophy, but as a series of specific situations where she refused to stop.

You'll learn:

• How she spent a year hitting walls trying to open a Latin American office, the random brainstorming idea that changed everything, and why resolve in the goal combined with total flexibility in the approach is what finally broke through.
• Why she submitted a conference paper in a language she couldn't speak, learned Portuguese in three months with 15 minutes a day of consistent practice, and used the speech itself to encourage Brazilian engineers not to be afraid of making mistakes in English.
• The grandmother she is named after: a high-level judge described by everyone as tough, smart, and fair. Never nice or sweet. And why Katherine wants to invoke strong opinions rather than be universally liked.
• Why she believes being perceived as aggressive is an acceptable trade-off for being decisive and authentic — and where she draws the line between assertive and actually offensive.
• Her father's career advice that drives her decisiveness: "A wrong direction is better than no direction." Make the call, correct fast, keep moving.
• What she learned from completing a Half Ironman — 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles on a bike, then a half marathon. She was terrified of the bike, had crashes, had scars, genuinely questioned whether to continue. She finished. She signed up for another one.
• How she managed a solo transatlantic flight from Barcelona to Dallas with a one-year-old and a not-yet-three-year-old by accepting beforehand that it would be horrible — and why pre-accepting the struggle removes the frustration when it arrives.
• The two tools she uses when doubt sets in: reminding herself of hard things she has already done, and surrounding herself with people who will do the same reminding when she can't.

About Katherine: CEO of Sigma Software Group Americas, Katherine rose from junior software developer to CEO in 16 years. She leads the Americas expansion for a global software company originally founded in Eastern Europe, including building the company's Brazilian office from the ground up. She is also a Half Ironman finisher and a Portuguese speaker.