Alexandra Copos de Prada: Helping Companies Better Invest in Their Employees

Ladderworks is a publishing platform of diverse picture books and an online curriculum with the mission to empower over a million kids to become social entrepreneurs. Our current series features interviews by our interplanetary journalist Spiffy with inspiring Social Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Builders, and Changemakers who are advancing the UN SDGs. 

Spiffy here with the scoop on the entrepreneurial leaders of Planet Earth. As the only interplanetary journalist stationed on this blue planet, I’m thrilled to present this galactic exclusive with Alexandra Copos de Prada, the founder and CEO of Moonstar.ai. Let’s learn what’s happening at Moonstar.ai and how Alex is making a positive impact in the world.

Spiffy: Hi Alex, thanks a million for talking to me today. What challenge are you addressing through Moonstar.ai?

Alex: Thanks for having me, Spiffy! As CEO of a 1,500-staff hospitality company, I struggled to retain people with us for longer. We were bleeding over 500 employees a year which was costing us over one million euros per year. I initially faced low morale, and a difficulty to attract quality people, as well as develop our high potentials. I tested out many ideas to improve engagement, productivity, and retention, which resulted in halving our attrition rate and saving hundreds of thousands that we then invested back in delivering an exceptional employee experience. Moonstar was built out of my challenge of finding a far-reaching solution to help mid-sized companies invest in their employees to build a highly productive, connected, and happier workforce.

Spiffy: What motivates you to do it, Alex?

Alex: To me it’s all about our mission: improving the lives of frontline employees. I wanted to build a business that has a real impact on how people connect, grow, and build opportunities for themselves and their families. So when we’re going through tough times, we know that the work we’re doing is very important to a lot of people. In retail, for example, one of the main industries where our clients come from, a high employee attrition rate is the norm. People say that this is just the cost of doing business. One is almost expected to join a company and leave shortly after. We’re failing a lot of workers with this mentality.

Spiffy: You’re absolutely right! Can you further elaborate on the impact of your work?

Alex: Our job at Moonstar is to make it easy and cost-effective for companies to invest in their frontline employees, so that it makes business sense to do so.

Spiffy: Is there anything else you would love to tell our audience today?

Alex: Here’s a question for you, Spiffy. What would you recommend to somebody who is thinking about building a company? To start, Woody Allen famously said that 80% of success is showing up. You’ll get lots of energy from researching your idea, mapping your market, and competitors, and most importantly talking to lots of users to understand their pain points and how you can solve them. But at the end of the day, just starting something you feel strongly about to get you out of bed in those early mornings when things are not necessarily going your way, I feel, is the first big piece of advice.

Spiffy: Thanks for speaking with me today, Alex—it’s been an honor!

Alexandra Copos de Prada is the founder and CEO of Moonstar, the only platform to actively build the retention, productivity, and engagement of frontline workers. She built Moonstar to solve her own pain point of retaining her staff with her for longer when she ran two hospitality businesses of 1,500 employees. She wore many hats before—as consultant, public education expert, hotelier, and food retail expert. She has two young daughters and is still learning to marry family life to her profession and passions. (Nominated by Alex Parks at the Harvard Innovation Labs. First published on the Ladderworks website on June 23, 2023.)

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect those of Ladderworks LLC.

© 2023 Ladderworks LLC. Edited by Anushree Nande. Spiffy’s illustration by Shreyas Navare. For the Ladderworks digital curriculum to help K-3 kids advance the UN SDGs, visit Spiffy's Launchpad: Creative Entrepreneurship Workshops for K-3 Kids and their caregivers here.