Curious by nature,
shaped by people.

I grew up in Taubaté, a mid-sized city in the interior of São Paulo state, reading encyclopedias and wondering how things worked. My father was a physician and my mother a nurse, so medicine was a real possibility. I visited operating rooms with family and engineering labs with friends before choosing electrical engineering. I liked the machinery in both worlds.

Before the job titles

I began learning programming at 14, in 1996. I explored BBS communities, then mIRC and ICQ, and later moderated Brazilian internet forums. The conversations mattered as much as the computers. Some of those interests and friendships are still with me.

My early work was varied: Access databases for residential buildings, websites, party flyers and shifts as a waiter at weddings. During university, I also wrote training manuals on industrial electric motors. Teaching Portuguese found its way into my life, too.

Itajubá and the people I met there

I studied electrical engineering from 2003 to 2008 at UNIFEI in Itajubá, a small town in the mountains of Minas Gerais. Most of us still call it EFEI. The course was demanding. The friendships formed in shared student houses and late-night study sessions have lasted much longer than the exams.

With friends, I organized Churras é o Bixo. Over five years, a small gathering grew into a festival with stages, contracts and security to arrange. It gave me an early taste of running something with other people depending on it.

At the same time, I was exploring Eastern philosophy and questions about consciousness through online communities and IPPB. I was also drawn to how people think, and to the symbolism of tarot. I never felt much need to make all of this fit the same category.

Work, countries and family

My life has been international for a long time, without much of a plan. I spent time in Toronto during university, moved to São Paulo after graduating, then to Madrid in 2016 and to Lisbon after that.

My career took me into sales and leadership at Siemens and Philips Lighting, now Signify. Much of it was public lighting: tenders for cities, where engineering, financing, legal terms and risk all have to arrive at the same answer. My job was usually to get people with very different responsibilities to agree on it. What held my attention was who ends up using a place after dark.

From Madrid I managed services for European projects, then a global services portfolio for public lighting. That included moving a fleet of connected streetlights onto newer mobile networks, which took years. I completed an Executive MBA at IESE in 2020, and later led the pre-sales team for Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Benelux.

Spain was also where my wife and I had our children. We now live in Lisbon, where I lead Signify’s business in Portugal.

The friends I’ve made in each place are the thread through all of it. Some go back almost as far as I can remember, from Taubaté and Itajubá; others I met in São Paulo, Madrid and Lisbon. Keeping them across time zones and long silences takes effort on both sides, and I have never regretted spending it.

Away from work

I once flew 27 hours to Japan to watch Corinthians play. I love football, and while living in Spain I also became an Atlético de Madrid fan.

I like tennis and sometimes miss long walks with my wife and our dogs. These days, noisy playgrounds have mostly taken their place. I read a lot and listen to podcasts and audiobooks.

I’ve spent years learning about investing. It started with stocks and fixed income, and the parts that hold my attention now are real estate and startups, where decisions are slower and harder to undo. Bitcoin and ETFs are part of it too. I want approaches that survive without daily attention and leave time for everything else.

AI is a newer interest. My curiosity about technology goes back much further, especially its effect on how people meet, communicate and work together. The tools have changed quite a bit since those first forums. I’m still interested in the people using them.