Tell us about your journey to Ensign College (previously LDS Business College). How did you discover the college and what factored into your decision to attend?
I was a transfer student from Brazil. My wife and I had just gotten engaged in Sao Paulo and she had plans to come to the U.S. to study English. We decided we would get married and move to Utah to finish our college education. Back then LDS Business College offered a great two-year program focused on Business and Accounting and the transfer process worked out great.
When deciding to attend, I really liked the fact that LDSBC had a cozy environment with smaller class sizes. It was also an affordable option for me as an international student just landing in the U.S. for the first time. And the fact that LDSBC was part of the Church Educational System made me feel at home with a strong sense of community.
Were there any pivotal moments or memorable experiences that shaped you as a student at Ensign College?
There are many memorable experiences from specific classes and great friendships developed throughout my time at Ensign College. However, I think the pivotal moment was when I started a part-time student job in the Academic and Career Advisement Center during my second semester.
In that job I had the opportunity to help hundreds of students as they decided their majors, drafted their class schedule for each semester, and worked on writing their first professional resumes. I was able to get to know many of these people on an individual level, learn about their background and interests, and help them set paths that would lead them to achieve their goals. I was surrounded by great leaders and mentors who helped me help those students and I enjoyed mentoring so many peers in their academic and career journey. That experience along with my mission experience in Mozambique helped me become a better leader focused on serving, listening, and empowering those around me to be their best selves.
I developed such passion in helping mentor young students and professionals that many years later I got together with a group of friends from Brazil and founded a non-profit organization called
Instituto Joule
. The purpose of our non-profit is to change the lives of young Brazilians through inspiring mentorship programs. We created a mentorship methodology and worked with volunteers from 21 different countries in mentoring over 6,000 youth over the last seven years.
Your Ensign Connect profile says you are a Cloud Leader – Helping companies with their Digital Transformation. Can you share an experience that has been especially meaningful to you? What do you love most about your job?
At Google Cloud I lead a sales & go-to-market division focused on supporting small and medium-sized businesses and startups across Latin America in the adoption of our Cloud solutions. It's rewarding to see the power of digital transformation in these companies as they grow, adopt new technologies, increase collaboration across their employees, and innovate to better serve their customers and markets. It's a positive domino effect that then impacts and grows sectors and economies in these countries.
In order to properly serve our customers, my main responsibility is to build, develop, lead, and empower my teams. And this is where some of the most meaningful experiences come from. I have had the opportunity to work with amazing professionals with all different levels of experience and groom them to become the next leaders in the organization. Coaching them as first-time managers and later to become leaders of managers to see how they develop their own teams and amplify the impact of our work through people is energizing. Seeing our business grow year after year is rewarding, but seeing people develop and take the next step in their careers is what we all really remember and treasure at the end of the day and that's what I love the most about my job.
You currently work as the Director of Latin America Emerging Business, Google Cloud. How have your life and career experiences shaped you for this current role?
Developing key values in my life has been critical to help me get to where I am today. I am blessed to have grown and learned from good parents living the Gospel at home and developing discipline and work-ethic from a young age which gave me a solid foundation for my career.
At the age of 18 I had the opportunity to spend two years serving as a full-time missionary for the Church in Mozambique, Africa. From that experience I learned that true impact takes place when you use the knowledge you have acquired in your life and apply it to develop those around you. I learned from the amazing people of Mozambique and loved serving them, holding those two years as a very special part of my formative years. During my mission I also developed several important soft skills which would later help me in my career along with the formal education I received from Ensign College and BYU for my undergraduate studies and University of Texas for my master of business administration.
Prior to joining Google 10 years ago I had a diverse range of experiences in different industries and functions across operations, marketing, and procurement which contributed to my overall skill set and ability to adapt to different professional environments. I joined Google as an Account Executive selling to the Brazilian market and I believe that those previous experiences helped me become a well rounded professional who could look at the business from multiple different angles. Over time I was given more opportunities and responsibilities to manage different sales teams.
Today as I lead a larger organization with multiple teams, I feel this diverse range of experiences is even more important in helping me play the role of a general manager of a complex and dynamic business. While I can't be a specialist in every single topic, I feel these experiences have given me the ability to properly navigate every single conversation, ask the right questions, and know how and when to involve the right people with the right knowledge to help us solve business problems, execute with excellence, and deliver the best results while creating a strong culture of trust and empowerment within our teams.
Do you have any advice for our current Ensign College students?
- Learn to plan. Make a plan for yourself over the next 5-10 years. Knowing where you would like to go will help you as you make important decisions in your day-to-day life. You might not end up where you had planned 10 years from now (and that's okay), but having that plan will help you ensure you are progressing, building the right skillset, and hitting key milestones to become a better version of yourself over time.
- Develop a learning mindset for life. Take advantage of this moment to go deep in your studies and master how to learn effectively. We live in a dynamic world where more and more technologies are being introduced each day and we need to keep reinventing ourselves as professionals. This is the time for you to build that foundation and wire yourself to become a constant learner in order to adapt to the needs of the world.
- Surround yourself with the best people. Take this opportunity at Ensign College to network with colleagues and instructors. Learn as much as you can from each one of them and develop relationships for life that will support you in your career and success. Part of this networking means finding ways to help and serve those around you. Always find ways to bring value to those around you to make these relationships really meaningful.
