Susana Garrett Pinto, Senior Business Developer at HiPay | Social Entrepreneur — Founder at TEACH How to Fish

Early years and where you came from?

I was born in the fall of 1979. I am the middle daughter, with a difference of 5 years for my older sister and only 13 months for my brother. This very short age difference allowed me to live most of the time in my childhood at the home of my maternal grandparents. My parents are both from humble families and lived very disturbing first-person stories for me. My maternal grandparents: my grandmother was a housewife, my grandfather was a carpenter in Lisnave. I made wonderful little wooden boats to earn extra money and drew with me to learn. With them, I learned among so many things the beauty of humility, of true and disinterested love, of attention to the most fragile and disadvantaged in the many stories that I was lucky enough to share with me and for other things that I myself saw happen. The parents: both worked in the fields, in a very small village near Vila Nova de Foz Côa. With them I got to know the aromas and flavors of the countryside, I experienced washing clothes in the community stone tank (and I saw my grandmother carrying a pitcher of blue water over her head) or a warning that someone was on the phone and it was for her, at the supermarket 700 meters from home. I picked fruits from the trees to eat, harvested them and ate delicious soup cooked in the fireplace in the cast iron pots. I was always very attentive, a sponge absorbing the stories and trying to understand in me what it would be like for my parents to have experienced all those difficulties and emotions so young. Nothing for them was easy. My father, for example, came to Lisbon when he was only 11 years old to work and not weigh in the family budget, after all the boys were the oldest and were 5 children. He worked as a bellboy at the hotel where he returned 24 years later as general manager, and where he is still 70 years old. My mother as the eldest daughter, “oh if something was missing”, I would soon get a line to make berets until a child’s eyes were closed so that a neighbor could take her to sell in Lisbon. I know so many stories. And let me say, whoever with 2 fingers of forehead hears and keeps stories saves a lot of problems and still gets a lot of bonuses in the so-called “intuition”. I lived in Almada and every time my mother or grandmother announced to me that we were going to Lisbon, I gathered all the coins I had kept in the purse to distribute on Rua Augusta to the many people who sat there sharing their needs in vulnerability. in Advertising but had a passion for fashion design. Fortunately (I believe now) I couldn’t get in and I opted for Advertising because I believed it would give me some important notions of business management, etc., things that design never allows. Always self-taught, I learned to work with all the necessary programs at the time, and I even worked as an Advertising Designer with recognized brands such as Delta, etc., but always maintaining the (strange in this role) connection to customers as “Account” or “ bridge “between the client and the agency. I learned here not only to do many things that allow me to be autonomous in this area but also to nurture the taste for contact with people, to achieve more than attract clients, to help solve challenges with partners. At 23 I sensibly decided that I was going to do a volunteer experience and in India, a country that has always captivated me immensely. I started looking for solutions, I changed my job to Account in a hotel, and I elaborated a study and socioeconomic framework in the chosen area and in the beginning of 2006 I presented to Fundação Oriente. I won a small scholarship, said goodbye and went. This experience went “very poorly”, from departure to return, which had to be anticipated but would repeat everything again. Then, in 2012, I came back to know India, and from Portugal, I was making the “bridge” for an NGO in Goa. In 2015 I asked for a kind of unpaid leave and went, for 10 days, as a volunteer to Cambodia. There I visited several schools, villages, I saw hundreds of children, I played with them, I filled balloons, I sang, but the truth is that I arrived in Portugal and I was on track. I really felt that I had not changed the life of a single child, nor of the girl who had touched me so much by his sad and dull look in one of the villages visited. In a conversation with a Buddhist monk, I asked him how he could help his people, and he asked me to “stop” giving them the fish and teach them how to fish. Hence the name of the project that I created on my return, 100% voluntary, Teach How to Fish, with which I intend to create a community made up of people from different backgrounds, whose objective is to transform the dependence of charity into self-sufficiency. I started the project with the family of this girl and 9 more from the same village, and we are currently working with 4 more families. I started the Project in Cambodia for a very simple matter: being able to travel alone safely. But now that the Project has gained momentum, I really want to reach all other countries.

How were you introduced to the world of the Portuguese tech industry?

Joana Feliciano :)

Walk me through your work and what you are doing now in the tech industry.

I’m an entrepreneur, a bridge maker. Whether at the Project, at work, or in my life in general. I am a fan of partnerships and I believe in leadership only with a group vision and sense, and that solitude will never guarantee sustainability and lasting success to a leader.
At Hipay as a business developer, I aim to make online payments solutions and tools the first choice for our customers, as it’s the best way to increase their business and achieve other markets reducing costs.
During to TEACH How to Fish we must ensure the permanent use of tech to stay connected, from “here” to everywhere”, but also and much important to create educational sharing and easily upgraded tools that allow to teach everywhere and support teachers, for example.

What part of what you do, you love the most?

For sure is to make bridges, to give life to active cooperation (what I call CooperAtive by Teach How to Fish), partnerships for development. And it’s so much easier to do it using technology.

How do you think that your background and knowledge impact the way you approach your work in the Portuguese tech industry?

I have always been self-taught, I learned to work with all the necessary technology programs during my professional life, but always maintaining the connection with the clients as a bridge “between the client and the companies”, thus the technology always connected with the human relationship. I am emotional. For me, it is essential to keep technology at the service of sensitivity with pragmatism.
For example, now I am working on a project to create travel experiences for volunteers that want to join the project, and I intend that all will be managed online, and this will make me work to turn the project self-sustainable.

What advice do you have for young women that want to get into tech and don’t know where to start?

My advice will always be that they feel within themselves what their dreams and projects are and that they always start from the principle that technology is always at our side, digital tools are huge catalysts, brings us very good things and that it can contribute to bring people together and improve the world.

Walk me through a day in your life as a Portuguese women in tech.

I always start my day checking Facebook to check if I have any news from Cambodia and the families/team related to Teach How to Fish, as it is our main used tool to contact. Also, I check my personal email, as Project TEACH How to Fish email, that is connected.
Then I start working with access to email, now only using TEAMS, ZOOM, or HANGOUTS to have all the meetings with customers and prospects.
Almost all at HiPay can be done in front of the computer: from emails, to add customers details and manage emails in Salesforce, make proposals, check the main solution Enterprise Backoffice to present to a customer, Talk with teammates at Slack, use Business Intelligence to analyze data and report to customers, assist to workshops online, etc.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

“We can be decent and gifted at the same time”.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Gmail/ Fb+Messenger / Linkedin / Hangouts / Zoom / Teams / MBway / Google photos

Any links that you want to share? In what are you working on…

O Futuro dos pagamentos online: encoraje os seus clientes a comprar mais!
Revista Pontos de Vista Edição 91
“Fazer o bem sem olhar a quem” — Planeta Mulher 239
Susana Garrett Pinto, quem ensina sobre a cana antes do peixe no Teach How to Fish
HiPay

Anything else you would like to share?

I am honored to be part of the group of mentors for Entrepreneurship at HeForShe.

👉Find Susana on LinkedIn