“You are useless for this”

These are words that were heard by the founder of Semen Cardona when she was young and her career was giving the first steps. In the mid-1980s, Maria Àngels Rial wanted to learn about a form of porcine artificial insemination, a technique still in process in that period. In order to achieve this, she contacted an Insemination Center of Clariana de Cardener, in the center of Catalonia, which it was starting to work with this technique. But the image of a young woman who wanted to get involved in a very masculinized world and in that excessively conservative moment was not well received. Probably, M. Àngels Rial’s question was perceived as the whim of a young woman.

The story of this entrepreneur, who is fully activated in the Semen Cardona’s front and already in the process of generational relief, is a perfect reference for all of that people who struggle for reaching their dream. It may be normal that Semen Cardona opens a new center for artificial insemination at any point in Spain or internationalize in Latin America or Asia. Selling 4 million doses a year and being a leader in the sector can make us see it like a natural path. But few believed in her at the beginning of her story.

Maria Àngels Rial remembers the little willingness she found to teach her the technique and the little confidence that they have deposited in her on more than one occasion. As in college joke, once they got to give her the biggest, dirty and oldest stallion in the farm so as to scare her, but she did not back out. Indeed, the founder of Semen Cardona learned the trade from zero and starting with the extraction process. Although, to evolve, she had to leave and invest much more time and money. The next stop on this trip was in Madrid. To be continued.