What is the number one quality you look for in talent?
Curiosity and kindness. Curiosity because creativity feeds off of it. Kindness because this business and the world [just open any news site these days] can be pretty tough on people.
What part of your role as a leader do you find most rewarding?
Empower people and open as many doors as possible in the process [not necessarily just in the creative department]. Understand that when you help creators and their ideas come to life, you are creating a good and healthy cycle in the agency. Because when they do, businesses prosper, and the people behind these ideas are celebrated, empowered, and grow.
What is the very best career advice you’ve ever received?
There’s no such thing as work and life balance. The life part is overwhelmingly more important than the work part. Life should weigh heavier by a long margin. It is safe to say that it was when I tipped the scales that way– my work improved dramatically.
You have lived, worked and studied in the US, Brazil, Portugal, Singapore and Japan, what advice would you give someone who is interested in working internationally?
Fall in love with a country and its culture first and then with an agency in that country. Not the other way around.
Moving to a country you love –will make you want to do the best work in any agency– just to continue to live in that city.
What is one thing you have learned from the pandemic in 2021 that you hope to carry into the future?
It’s hard because if we see the numbers, the pandemic is very much present. We’ve just learned to live with it, but it continues to exist. I think that one thing that I learned or hit me the hardest is– how much we took for granted before. Being with people, friends, family, travel, just getting out. The simple things that have become much more complex. And they have an impact on life and work.
What was the biggest adjustment you had to make working in Japan?
The language, by far. My first language is Portuguese and I speak English. And as a creative, a large part of my work is to tell stories, engage people on the other side of the table.But in Japan, most of the meetings and presentations are done through an interpreter.
What is something the industry isn’t paying enough attention to that they should?
I think that there are seismic changes on all fronts. What we consume, how we do that. And it changes every day. It’s less of what we aren’t paying attention to— and more of paying increased attention to these changes as they happen as I write [and you read] this.
