Montserrat
Medina left her successful career as a Deloitte executive to “invest in her future
for eternal life”
“I don’t know the reason why the
Lord has noticed me. The only thing I know for sure is that I have found ‘the
treasure’”. This is how Montserrat Medina (Valencia, 37 years old) said goodbye
on her LinkedIn account a year ago from her successful life in the Olympus of
technology -Silicon Valley- to enroll in a new project, not business, but spiritual:
becoming a “servant of God” as a contemplative nun in the Augustinian Order.
She left everything “with great
regret” to “heed God’s call to follow him more closely”. While he delayed the
true answer, “that which compromises life”, he used all his talents that “the
infinite goodness of the Lord” granted him to “accumulate riches in this world”.
Among them, being awarded a scholarship for a doctorate in mathematical and
computational engineering at the prestigious Stanford University (USA) or being
part of the renowned Deloitte audit in its area of Advanced Analytics and Artificial
Intelligence.
After a journey between ‘briefings’
and ‘Big Date’, he now dedicates his time to preparing pasta, sweet potato sweets
and praying in silence at the Monastery of Santa Ana, located in the Castellon
town of Sant Mateu. A temple focused on the contemplative life with a business
in hand: the online store ‘El horno de las Monjas’. There he performed spiritual
exercises periodically during his aspirant period until he made the decision to
definitively enter this totally cloistered convent.
In her written goodbye, Montse
recounted the “deep knowledge of the dirt” of her soul as she misunderstood the
“desired perfection” to achieve “thing in this world” instead of “doing the
will of God”. “I have lived twelve years ‘succeding’ according to the world’s
parameters: I have university degrees, I have founded a ‘startup’ that has
acquired a Fortune 100 and at only 34 years old I have become a partner at
Deloitte”, said the now Augustinian nun.
The company that she created in 2011
in California and later sold in Silicon Valley, called Jetlore, pivoted around
digital marketing and managed to build bridges and business relationships with exclusive
clients such as LG, Inditex or eBay Such was the success that the online
payment giant PayPal ended up buying it for several million dollars. “You never
know where you are going to be in five years”, Montse commented in an interview
with a YouTube channel in 2016, although she certainly did not imagine being one
of the thirteen nuns who make up the community of the Monastery of Sant Mateu.
The Spanish guru received
recognition from the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, an international
competition for entrepreneurs and executives, and her name was included in the
list of 21 young Spanish women under 35 years who have revolutionized the world
of startups. However, her existential emptiness increased at the same rate as
her trophy case.
