It’s so important to do what you love in life and to chase your dreams. I was touched to meet in Panama City a new member of the ICON family whose boyhood dream of running a health care Company has come true. I’m thrilled to welcome Felipe Ruiz to the team at ICON Group Panama, Central America and the Caribbean.

Felipe said he has always been fascinated with the health care industry. When he was a child, he even sat down with his father and wrote a business plan for starting a Company, always with Panama at the front of his mind – they were born and lived in their beloved Barranquilla, Colombia.

¨I think the most representative stage of my life was when I graduated from the University of International Professional Business, after having been a semester of final practice in Canada studying English at the business level and doing work practices in an export and import company , that experience was correlated to a sensitive stage of my life where I was very confused and did not know what to do with my life after college and I had a lot of uncertainty and fear, the experience helped me to have a little more clarity in what I wanted I started doing while on the road I was giving more answers, and that’s how I started directly with Districlinic and working with my dad, where my boss has been my mentor, my leader, my role model, my confidence, my guidance and my friend at all times, and it was the best decision I could make because thanks to your help, my mom and my sister, the path has given me the clear answer to what I want to become as a person and as a professional¨.

It is wonderful to hear about his insatiable curiosity and passion for the healthcare sector. I too have been fascinated by the sectorever since I was a small boy, looking up to the family business. Like Felipe, my dreams of owning a Company in the sector came from my personal ambitions. I even had a mentor who just happened to be called Felipe too – my grandfather, Felipe Ruza!.

¨After several years of working in the company and having graduated in Postgraduate Management of Commercial Companies, already with a strong knowledge in my area that was health, after a management of the health system, the sector, clients, suppliers , fairs, congresses all around. The most important challenge that divided my life in two was to have embarked on this great project in Panama and to have to go through what I was not used to and have to learn to be responsible and be completely independent, practically overnight because everything happened very fast, I think it has taken me everything I have lived and I continue to live to be as I am today and see things in a different way and develop as a person and as a professional in a different country¨.

Now almost 20 years later after dreaming of it for the first time, and after several years of working for my family business, Felipe has started working with ICON Group as a regional leader. Every healthcare company has the same components at the start – but what sets us apart is our people. I wish Felipe all the best in his new role and I’m really glad his dream of working in the healthcare industry has come true – and I hope we can live up to it!

¨I think that behind all this adventure all these decisions that one takes, all these experiences that are very satisfying and fruitful at the end of the day, behind all this is the emotional stability that one has, and that helps a lot the family union, the strength and family warmth you have, and most importantly the woman you have as a couple, I think and this has been the most important milestone in my life, that the couple that has one and decides to accompany you in this adventure plays the most important role in all this process because it is the only person who in the middle of the storm is looking for calm and takes you out of strong emotions, at least with me much has happened, and have met the woman that I have today as a girlfriend and which I want to make my wife someday very close, has given me the necessary strength to concentrate more on my work in my purpose and my goals, I feel that this kind of roads without a partner to support you, that forces you and with whom you e you can relieve is vital for your personal and professional development, apart from the family that you will always have them and thank God I have always had my family, and all this is part of the family union that one has, is stability to all the situations in your life is with whom you will be able to tell your whole life, and that is the most important and precious thing that a person has¨.