The New Zealand Maori people learn, from an early age,
to recognize where it came from.
What is my mountain? What is my river?
Who are my ancestors?
To understand your identity.
And I, when I first arrived in New Zealand four years ago,
I found that incredible.
You must know where I came from, to know who I am.
And I come from a strong family of women.
My great-grandmother crossed my grandmother’s pregnant Atlantic in 1900.
Like many immigrants,
she left her land, her roots,
in search of a better life.
And I imagine the courage she needed to have
to drop everything, to cross an ocean,
and start a new life.
Even more so with a life in your belly.
And that baby that came in your belly, my grandmother, was another strong woman.
When my grandfather died, she was alone with six children to raise.
And the only thing my grandfather left for her was a wooden loom.
And with that loom, she united the family.
The children learned to weave,
to work together
and to take care of each other.
What they do even today.
And that was a very hard life, at that time, of much shortage.
So the brothers worked 24 hours a day,
weaving small barber towels
that my father and my uncle were traveling Brazil, from square to square, selling.
And so they taught me, even before I was born,
that I could build my work and my destiny.
Maybe this story will tell some of you
who, like me, come from immigrant families.
Because immigrants are entrepreneurs by nature.
And when I think of the people who came before me
and who are part of who I am,
I realize that each one of them gave me tools,
each one taught me something to build my way.
And you?
Have you stopped to think about it?
What have you gained from the people who came before you?
My mother, for example, taught me
that it was possible for a woman to be independent,
at a time when it was not common for a woman to live alone and work.
She told me that financial independence would bring me freedom.
So it pays to reflect on these things,
because they help us to understand who we are.
And 105 years after my great-grandmother, it was my turn.
I crossed the five-month-pregnant Atlantic from my second daughter,
when I lived aboard a sailboat.
Unlike my great-grandmother, I returned to my land.
But what I did not know, at that time,
is that this experience would be so transformative
that I too crossed an ocean
towards the unknown.
Towards a new way of life, and work.
It is true that I have always sought the unknown.
The new attracts me, fascinates me.
I founded an internet agency,
at a time when the Internet only existed within the university.
No one understood what I was talking about.
I went in with the people,
gave the gift access, taught to use.
I believed so much in that,
I was so in love with what I did,
that I attract investors,
I sold my company to a large advertising network.
And after the sale,
I lived intensely the corporate world, which was also a new world for me.
I ended up taking care of an operation of 250 people in Latin America,
in five countries.
I was traveling all the way outside the country.
And I felt myself building the future.
I was very happy.
But the truth is that I worked hard.
And I did not have time for anything other than my work.
And that was how, one day,
we had news that would change all our lives.
My husband had a diagnosis of very aggressive cancer
and said that he was going to live for a short time.
Then, at that moment,
we did several consultations and exams
and they all said the same thing.
That he would not have much time to live.
Until one day, many months later,
we discovered that the diagnosis was wrong.
That he did not have cancer.
But in that hour,
surely the change had already happened within us.
So we quit our jobs.
and we lived aboard this sailboat,
with our daughter a year and a month.
They spent six years living aboard,
we cross two oceans, half the planet.
And I learned to be a mother and teacher to our daughters.
And back on dry land,
I discovered that I can work wherever I have access to the internet.
Today I work from New Zealand,
with people and companies from around the world including Brazil.
And since I’m on the other side of the world,
it makes no difference if I work from my house, if I work from the boat,
if I work from a square.
I need good access to the internet, silence and discipline.
And in those hours,
the freedom that I have gained is very palpable.
And I understand why I left my working life in a closed office,
from nine in the morning to nine at night.
Maybe some of you live that way too.
They call us digital nomads.
And it is a movement that grows every day.
But that also has its challenges.
Remote work brings isolation.
I am a person who likes to be with other people.
The atmosphere of exchange of ideas feeds me.
I miss.
So I joined a group of entrepreneurs this year.
And I started working in a different way.
I started networking.
I have connected with people who share the same ideals.
Very talented people, who chose to build their work
and collaborate and do things together.
But not any project.
Projects that have meaning, that have purpose.
This is a network meeting of which I am a member.
Today there are 250 people in the world,
and there were over 15 “startups” created over seven years.
And a meeting there is like that.
People in the same city get together, and the others come together,
wherever they may be.
And what I can say to you,
after having tried so many different ways of working,
is that there is not a single path.
But the future of work is now and it is you who creates.
We are the ones who create.
Without any illusion.
There is no easy or perfect choice.
Everything has both sides.
But I think, when we know the options available
this helps to build the path.
So I wanted to share a little bit of learning
which I have had over all these years, building my future from work.
And I think one of the things,
the first challenges of those who break with the traditional model of work
it is like reconciling freedom with stability.
Because stability allows for freedom.
I could only try out so much because I had a stable financial situation.
But I do not think you need to sell a company, like I did,
to take that first step,
because today it is possible to experiment.
Today you can get a new idea, start a parallel activity,
without having to give up his work.
You can pick up a hobby, something that you understand a lot,
start a course on the internet.
In fact, today, there is an ocean of possibilities.
Including, the possibility of talking in your company,
and negotiate a more flexible and mobile journey.
I hate it when I open the newspaper and I see talking about crisis,
that now everyone has to work double
to win half, because that’s just how you live.
This is a lie.
I do not believe that.
I think, yes, there is room to sit and talk.
Outside Brazil, this is very common.
Because if we think,
many companies are no longer able to attract the best talent
or more, they can not attract the best of us.
Because everyone wants a balanced life.
Do not you want to?
Everybody wants.
So do not be afraid.
Go there and talk.
I know people who have changed their country, and continue to work in the same company,
only remotely.
A friend made a slow transition.
She talked to the owners of the company a year in advance,
saying that he wanted to leave because he wanted to spend more time with his children.
And they agreed, it was superb.
They agreed that, at that time,
she would train someone to stay in her place,
and, one day a week, she did not need to work
to be able to play their projects.
At the end of a year,
she had set up a small audiovisual company,
worked as a freelancer, did some projects for a big newspaper
and had closed a contract with a large company
to work one day a week,
doing a project that had everything to do with her
and gave her the financial stability she needed.
So what I realize of all this
is that combining multiple models makes all the difference.
Hardly a single type of work will complete you.
And I know from experience,
because today I know I need to open space
for the various Sandras that are inside me.
For the entrepreneur, executive and citizen of the world,
who loves to travel and work from wherever she is.
Because to undertake, for me,
allows me to develop a long-term project,
that will continue.
And working for a company means having recourse, having structure,
to develop something really innovative, that has impact.
And being able to work wherever I am
allows me to know new cultures,
allows me to learn new things,
allow me to be here today with my family,
and at the same time have quality of life for my daughters.
But this is a model that makes sense to me.
This model helped me stop living for my job.
Stop spending my life to work,
without adjusting the work to my life.
But each of you will have different motivations,
will follow another path.
But one thing is certain.
Today there is an enormous amount of possibilities
and we can combine them in a way that makes sense.
And working in a multiple way requires new skills.
We need flexibility,
adaptability, you need to learn how to collaborate.
But for me, one of the most important is to have rhythm,
because when everything changes all the time,
rhythm is what brings security.
I learned that when my daughters were born.
A very important thing for the little child
is to have time to eat, time to sleep, to play.
Because she knows that it’s going to happen every day and that makes her safe.
And it’s the same with us.
When we live a reality that changes a lot, and we all live,
when it changes much of place,
every hour working with different people
in different projects,
establishing rhythm is critical.
I, for example, when I worked with teams in different places,
I realized the importance of having regular conversations,
to be able to know what each one is doing.
To be able to have some moments to stop, to reflect, to generate learning.
Moments to change course.
And all this I had no difficulty doing remotely.
But there are subjects, themes, that you need to be together in person.
So I learned to enjoy these moments better.
To organize with great care.
Seize the moments in which we are together,
to create something concrete,
to lay the groundwork so that we can then continue remotely.
Things like, the best place for me to do this meeting,
what people need to be,
what we are going to do, there must be a concrete mission,
what each one will eat.
Because we have to take good care of people.
so that they give their best.
And it was working that way,
remotely, with immersive encounters,
that I took care of the operation of an innovation company in Brazil
for two years, even while working on the other side of the world,
and come here every three months.
And there is another type of meeting that I think makes a lot of difference.
It’s the retreats.
In the network that I am part of, we do two retreats a year.
We travel somewhere nice
for a few days,
long enough to know each other,
to establish the relationships that will make the work possible
and possible collaboration.
To be able to deepen in those subjects, that we never have time in the day to day.
And of course, to have fun too, because that’s important.
But, in those moments,
people experience the culture and values that unite us.
Because values are not meant to be in a picture stuck on the wall.
Values are to be experienced.
These are things that made a lot of difference to me.
And finally,
there’s one last thing that I think is fundamental
to be able to build a work that is attuned to our life.
It is self-knowledge,
which is a practice that allows us to know who we really are,
connect with who we are.
This can be done with the help of a guru,
can be meditation, it can be a walk,
it can be a prayer.
It can happen without us having to leave the house.
But the fact is that the more we know each other,
but we find out more
what are our shadows, what are our lights,
what are our real talents, our difficulties,
what we love,
which we do not like at all,
what we want or do not want.
It is not always a flowery path, sometimes it can be even prickly.
But it’s worth it,
because only when we truly know who we are
we have the freedom and the courage to build the life that we want,
taking into account our purpose,
knowing why we are making these choices.
And I wanted to ask you guys.
What future would you like to create for you?
Thanks.
(Applause)
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