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Never waste a good crisis with Inês Santos Silva

Make Space for Growth Podcast

Release Date: 08/02/2022

The importance of having fun with Carmen Alfonso Rico show art 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 show art 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 show art 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 show art 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 show art 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 show art 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 show art 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 show art 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 show art 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 show art 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...

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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 LinkedIn 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 to Social Value Generator. She found she was often the only woman attending Tech events, so she decided to create a network for Women in Tech. She assessed that only a small percentage of businesses' procurement goes into woman-owned businesses - so she created a database of women-owned businesses that large corporations can use, so there is no longer the excuse that "they can't find them". What's next?

Time for space

Inês is taking time to define her next steps. She is not in a rush and is, as expected, putting a lot of time into learning. She knows it will involve AI, Web 3 and all the new developments in this area, but she has not defined yet where next she will put her energy. She has been brave to really take a step back and create this space for thought. In her daily life, she has also become better at incorporating moments of space into her life, especially as the pandemic thought us that there is so much we can do remotely.

Looking back

Inês feels the things she has done are mostly connected and the reason they seem so many are because she started early. But more importantly, she reminds us that there are a lot of ideas she had that never had the light of day. She was willing to try a few ideas that were not fully formed (like the first accelerator week for Start-up Pirates). The first step is the one that makes things happen:

"It is much easier to move something that is already moving"

Old piece of advice

The other reflection Ines brings us is one someone shared with her early in her career. As she met someone with a very different lifestyle more than 10 years ago (a famous digital nomad), she questioned his choices to understand what drove him. The answer was simple

"What is the worst that can happen?"

When thinking about it like this, we are often reminded we can probably live with the outcome.

Never waste a good crisis

As for many of her ventures, Inês was early for the pandemic. She got supplies early in February and buckled up. As she did so, she focused on this quote by Churchill to ensure she would not go crazy during these times. She focused on working hard on her company in consulting at the time. One of the things that Inês definitely put to good use, was the time to start eating healthy and take better care of herself.

Final thoughts?

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the 2nd best time is today!

To remember

  • Quote: Never waste a good crisis (Winston Churchill)
  • Word of the Year: Experimentation
  • Book: Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius (and Ines Goodreads list here)
  • Find Ines here
  • See more about Season 3 here

Podcast edited by Alice Stansfield