Early years and where you came from?
I come from a family of fauna and flora keepers, actually. My mother is a florist, my father is a birds’ breeder and my brother is a reptiles’ breeder as well as a dogs’ trainer. I guess this context inspired me to plant digital trees. It was always everything about Nature in our family. In my first years, I did a lot of o sport. I started playing football at 4 years old and I spent my entire childhood and adolescence practicing with the guys. Later, I joined a female team — Quinta dos Lombos — where I was very happy for 7 years. I guess that without sport I would have never understood that competition has nothing to do with others but for oneself. The focus on constant improvement and increasing the bar level is for sure one of my main traits. I am constantly challenging myself.
How were you introduced to the world of the Portuguese tech industry?
When I accomplished 30 years old, I realized that no one can give me a better opportunity than the one I can give to myself. So, in 2018, I turned my world upside down so I can dedicate myself to build Arboreall. Arboreall aims to become a global solution for personal, professional, and corporate development through an online platform that offers a personal branding tool for people and an employer branding tool for companies in order to shape a novelty way of assessing, recruit and manage talent in the Industry 4.0
Walk me through your work and what you are doing now in the tech industry.
Well, at Arboreall I do a little bit of everything: I am the product owner so I have to envision and design the best products possible. I am the methodology owner so I have to make sure that these products are sustained by an own formula to which we are looking for scientific validation through the Ph.D. that I am doing simultaneously. I am the business owner so I have to be able to set our commercial and marketing strategies as well as relationships. I also have to fundraise among many other things. I am the kind of person who delivers, with passion.
What part of what you do, you love the most?
My favorite part also is the most difficult one, the human part: deal with people. It has been a very enriching journey at the human level, understanding people and be able to get the best of them to make all of this happen is my ultimate challenge. At Arboreall, we embrace diversity, and it has been an adventure to learn from such an early stage with so many different backgrounds, contexts, cultures, ages, and ways of seeing the world. We actively provoke this exchange of knowledge and experience. I believe that companies are proportionally successful the more human they truly are.
How do you think that your background and knowledge impact the way you approach your work in the Portuguese tech industry?
Professionally speaking, I am trained in Branding and now I am doing my Ph.D. in Management (with specialization in Human Resources). In other words, I am getting together my knowledge in brands’ creation, management, and innovation with human resources assessment, management, and recruitment. Summit up, what we are doing in Arboreall is rethinking and reinventing Human Resources from the Branding perspective. We do believe innovation exists in fields’ boundaries and the Human Resources industry is becoming a Branding matter more and more. On the one hand, professionals are looking to stand out as first-choice and on the other hand, companies are looking to stand out as first-choice too. So, Branding is what allows individuals and organizations to position themselves and stand out. In Arboreall, we are becoming experts in this day after day.
What advice do you have for young women that want to get into tech and don’t know where to start?
My advice is: follow your heart, no matter what, no matter who. It is our own life story and no one has anything to do with that. Make sure you become who you are meant to be. Once the individual is committed to oneself, they will always found what they need to start. Assuming what we are and what we want in life is the only way to overcome all the mind-blockings and external challenges. In other words, it is the moment when we start seeing solutions, not problems and then we are able to go anywhere we want to go.
Walk me through a day in your life as a Portuguese women in tech.
The majority of my daily time is spent finding ways to nourish Arboreall. In other words, this means that I am the responsible one to gather an environment of abundance so we can keep growing. As Nature tells us all the time, a resourceful environment allows trees to grow stronger, and when starting a company this is a very important notion and ability. On the other hand, it is also very difficult since our societies are mostly based on scarcity (rather than abundance). My days are centered on finding creative ways to fulfill Arboreall’s needs.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
“When you see everyone walking in the same direction, run the opposite way” and it is this we are doing through Arboreall.
What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Humm… Google Calendar, WhatsApp, and Spotify… for sure!
Any links that you want to share? In what are you working on…
Anything else you want to share?
Thanks to all Arbelievers, Arbuddies, and Arboosters that allow us to grow day after day. Also thanks to the PWIT for the opportunity to introduce myself and Arboreall.
👉Find Margarida on LinkedIn
