Educating and Inspiring with Joana Dias da Cunha
Release Date: 10/07/2021
The importance of having fun with Carmen Alfonso Rico
Make Space for Growth Podcast
You can feel the energy in the voice or the video. It is contagious. A breath of fresh air in a world that is almost afraid of joy. That is how I felt coming out of recording the new season of the podcast with Carmen Alfonso Rico. It is not every day that you meet someone who is unapologetic about having fun and enjoying what she is doing. Kicking off with politics Carmen wanted to be the US Secretary of State when she was a little girl. Note she was not a US national or living in the US, but that did not seem to stop her. Serendipity determined she would start her career in...
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Listening to Yourself with Samreen Ghani
Make Space for Growth Podcast
Before the summer break, I reconnected with old colleague Samreen Ghani to talk about her journey and her role as President of Moonbug Studios. It had been a long time since our M&A times together! And we end up finding ourselves in a similar life reflection on "how you measure your life"! The Early Days Samreen did not follow the expected path. Her earliest memory from childhood was spelling the word "doctor", which was exciting for her parents as she grew up. In Pakistan, her expected paths would have been doctor, engineer, lawyer or banker if she wanted to define herself...
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Believing in Serendipity with Rita Vilas-Boas
Make Space for Growth Podcast
Rita Vilas Boas first connected with me on Linkedin. After a lot of online engagement, we finally met in person last year to find out we shared . When she was a little girl, Rita wanted to dismantle things and figure out how things worked, but deep down, she wanted to be part of Fame, and dance on a Taxi roof in the streets of New York. Can you picture it? Different lives Rita studied biotechnology but soon found out about marketing, where she started her career. She threw herself into it and got a job at Loreal. For 20 years, she was a marketer in multinationals and large family...
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Finding your happiness with Sabine Tejerina
Make Space for Growth Podcast
When she was a little girl, Sabine wanted to be a businesswoman. In the middle of the pandemic, faced with economic distress in parts of the world and her day job helping large companies restructure and prepare for the economic downfall of Covid, she went on a life change. She became an entrepreneur and has since then been living the rollercoaster of start-up life. "It's not always the big decisions that impact your life", Clay Christensen Share ownership as a goal The idea for Upstreet started with a focus on rewarding customers for loyalty through company shares. Research shows that...
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A life dedicated to purpose with Daniela Barone Soares
Make Space for Growth Podcast
It is unusual to find someone who wanted to be something as a child that they are today. Daniela started volunteering at age 12 and she always knew her life would be dedicated to making the problems of the world better. These experiences increased her resolve to do something about it, even if she did not know how. A glide path "When you look back, it all seems to make sense" Daniela However, it was not so rational at the time. As Daniela was working in Private Equity, she realized her skillset was truly invaluable in the social sector and realized she could start making a difference in this...
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A life dedicated to purpose with Daniela Barone Soares
Make Space for Growth Podcast
It is unusual to find someone who wanted to be something as a child that they are today. Daniela started volunteering at age 12 and she always knew her life would be dedicated to making the problems of the world better. These experiences increased her resolve to do something about it, even if she did not know how. A glide path "When you look back, it all seems to make sense" Daniela However, it was not so rational at the time. As Daniela was working in Private Equity, she realized her skillset was truly invaluable in the social sector and realized she could start making a difference in this...
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Never waste a good crisis with Inês Santos Silva
Make Space for Growth Podcast
With a love for learning since early age, I have a feeling Inês will be learning for many years to come. She is passionate about innovation, and is not scared about solving a challenge. You just have to look at her resume to see this. I lost count of the number of roles and ventures in her profile. A fast-starter Ines assessed start-ups needed support way before it was cool to talk about accelerator programs. So she designed one. And expanded it to multiple cities. She determined there was a need for social ventures long before social impact was a concept. So she dedicated her efforts...
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Never waste a good crisis with Ines Santos Silva
Make Space for Growth Podcast
With a love for learning since early age, I have a feeling Inês will be learning for many years to come. She is passionate about innovation, and is not scared about solving a challenge. You just have to look at her resume to see this. I lost count of the number of roles and ventures in her profile. A fast-starter Ines assessed start-ups needed support way before it was cool to talk about accelerator programs. So she designed one. And expanded it to multiple cities. She determined there was a need for social ventures long before social impact was a concept. So she dedicated her efforts...
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Creating Space - Launching Season 3
Make Space for Growth Podcast
Today, I am bringing you the launch of Season 3 - Creating Space. In order to tell you more about the upcoming season, I feel I need to go back in time and explain my concept of word of the year. Because Space is my word of the year. For the last 3 years, I have been defining myself a word of the year. Why a word of the year? I already have goals, values, and even a vision board. I found a word goes beyond and through all that. A word gives me a true north. Believe In 2020, my word of the year was . And that belief helped me hold it together - do you remember the year of Covid? I acted...
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A Journey back through the Season
Make Space for Growth Podcast
For the Season Finale, I went around the world and down into my memory to pick the highlights of this season. What I learnt, what I discovered, what I was impressed about. There is no bittersweet taste in getting to the end of a season. In fact, it is exciting to look back and remember all the amazing women that crossed my path. After the hard to forget year of 2020, my goal was to bring to light in 2021, the stories of what are now almost 2 years of this pandemic, but more importantly, how each of us is looking to lift ourselves up, look forward and face life stronger and together. As for...
info_outlineAs I record my first podcast after my big move, I am a bit nervous. Is the sound ok, is the light ok, is the background decent? And then I start chatting with Joana. Once you get into the chat, it is just a chat between two passionate people. Joana is a sustainability advocate who has created a business around her passion. Fair Bazaar and more recently Fair News are her ways of changing the world of fast fashion one bit at a time. Into a world that we want to live in.
The Journey
Joana always dipped in and out of entrepreneurship. She started off as an entrepreneur straight after Uni, but then decided to spend a few years in the corporate world and then working with start-ups through the arms of Rocket Internet. In 2015, she started seeing the world differently. As she watched the movie "True Costs", she felt like she could no longer go on the same way. It is interesting, so many of us watch movies and think things need to change, it can't go on like that. And then some people do something about it. That is what Joana did - as she immediately started changing her fashion choices, she realized how difficult it was to do so and created a business that allowed sustainable brands to prosper. Fair Bazaar was born.
A multi-stage adventure
After the conception stage, Joana launched a physical presence in Lisbon and later an online shop. Hearing this today feels weird because we have just been through Covid-19 and the surge in online shopping. But at the time, that seemed to make sense. She provided a marketplace for brands and that was at the core of her mission.
However, the pandemic brought her business model under pressure. As she closed down her shops, her online business was insufficient to maintain the business. As an optimist, Joana turned to the other 2 pillars she had for the brand - education and inspiration. Amidst the pandemic, she started Fair News, a digital magazine dedicated to sustainable fashion and lifestyle. And she grew her education practice, venturing into B2B with masterclasses and workshops. Had the pandemic not hit, she may not have taken the brand there yet. Hard to guess now.
Challenges of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship comes associated with the word uncertainty. We have heard that before from other guests at the podcast. So the pandemic added another layer to it, requiring what every entrepreneur has to live and breathe - adapting. Joana has had to make difficult choices during the last 18 months - that included firing people, closing shops. These are the dreaded decisions everyone launching and growing a business hopes they can avoid. And in fact, sometimes, that is the end of it. But Joana faced it as another moment where the business had to adapt and find another way. And she did so through a lens of opportunity, finding new ways to work and grow.
A different life
Living in Lisbon at the time the lockdown hit, Joana escaped the city for lockdown and adopted a new form of living, more communal. The importance of being with family in a time like this not only provided her with the practical support that an entrepreneur trying to hold a business together while having a small child at home needs to have, but also gave her the extra mental support these difficult times required. To help, she doubled down on her discipline of having a running, yoga and meditation practice. Even though she did not develop any new habits (I am still fascinated by my colleague who started a philosophy club), she certainly ensured these key habits of self-care were part of her life.
Looking forward, Joana maintains her optimistic stance. She sees a world of opportunity out there, as there is still so much to do in order to slow down fashion and reduce the costs it has in people's livelihoods and our planet. I hope she continues to promote, educate, and inspire.
Joana's List
- Advice: Importance of diversifying - would have gone to online earlier
- Lesson: Need to adapt
- Book: Search Inside Yourself
- Word: New Opportunities
Connect with us
- Meet Joana on LinkedIn and meet Fair Bazaar or follow them on Instagram
- Join our Make Space for Growth free community online and on Facebook
- Follow me on Linkedin, Instagram or Twitter
And by the way. Rate us on your favourite podcast app!
This podcast is produced by Alice Stansfield