In the beginning I would like to show you a work of art,
reminiscent of a crystal underwater or abstract art.
But it is a photo
of a polio virus – also called polio virus.
Until 1988 there were no worldwide measures
to completely eliminate the virus.
In 1988, 350 000 cases were known in 125 countries.
That was not long ago.
Last year, the total number of cases dropped to 416
in only three endemic countries.
That’s very encouraging.
But if we can not do it in the next ten years,
We will be able to completely destroy the virus thanks to globalization
come back to 200 000 cases a year and a possible pandemic.
Worse than Ebola.
But there is another virus,
more dangerous and more deadly than poliovirus,
the big European cities invades,
as well as small settlements and camps in Africa and Asia.
He does not take limits and ages into account
infects children and adults at the same time.
He is global and unrestricted.
I mean the virus of prejudice.
Prejudices are currently contributing to annihilation,
make the lives of many people hell
due to different skin colors,
because of religious beliefs or the lack of it,
because of alternative ways of life or sexual preferences,
due to geographical origin or other subjective factors,
which are often incredibly unimportant
in human interaction with each other.
Prejudices that do not kill leave worse wounds,
as that of polio.
I want to use the moment …
It is said that stories are data with soul.
I would like to tell you my personal story
and how I defeated the four apocalyptic riders:
Pestilence, death, hunger and war, in my thoughts
with polio, paternity,
Poverty and prejudice.
I suffered from polio – my first apocalyptic rider.
One day I woke up completely paralyzed on the right.
Blind and motionless.
I was ten months old.
We did not celebrate my first birthday,
but I got two wonderful gifts: one was my life,
the other was a pair of boots that I had during my childhood
wore to the beginning of puberty.
With them I could lead a seemingly normal life –
as I stand here –
and integrate me step by step into society:
go to school for example.
But the school also challenged me.
Imagine a thin, rickety boy with a big head.
With the two boots, I looked like an astronaut or alien,
who ran weirdly through the school.
My friends – both at school and in the neighborhood –
reacted immediately.
That was very hard for me.
Covert or open prejudices
made me a pioneer of the famous “Bullying”,
These wounds have healed in the meantime.
At that time, you did not know what “bullying” is.
I then went to physiotherapy for years.
Thanks to my grandmother, my mother and five aunts
I was treated in clinics for many years.
Every day I spent an hour or two there.
At home I continued the treatment
and thus was able to restore my movement,
as well the motor skills of the hand and the arm and my eyesight.
Sport was not for me, neither at school nor in the neighborhood,
because I was clearly at a disadvantage there. Like football, for example.
So, what did I do?
My own sports developed.
I invented sports with letters. How did I love this mental exercise?
I’ve always liked mental exercise and that only helped my interest.
Since I could not really play, I played an imaginary game.
And I played with myself. I also invented my teammates.
At this time at the end of childhood
I recognized other differences in me.
I had no father.
We were the kind of family,
in which a fundamental, third member was missing.
The absence of the father and the entry “Father unknown” in the birth certificate,
Where others had the name of a person bothered me.
That was really my second apocalyptic rider:
Death took my biological father, whom I never met,
and my two stepfathers, who died too early
and I really liked that.
They left only my dear brothers
who stand by my side today.
My relationship to death was reinforced by a third rider.
The rider of hunger and poverty.
Everyone in front of us came from a poor family.
My grandmother moved to Recife as a young widow
and had seven children to raise and feed.
In fact, there were seven teenagers.
My single mother was one of them.
When I was born she was 17 and worked already,
since she was eight,
to pay bills and maintain the house.
I have remembered a few defining moments:
for example, the so-called “dog porridge”,
who, in spite of his name, was in truth a soup,
garlic, manioc flour, oil – if available – or margarine,
and the stronger.
I thought she was wonderful.
But we did not talk that often, because it was a very traumatic condition
and if, then secretly, so that the neighbors did not know
that we were in a difficult situation.
In the spare time we had little choice.
I remember listening to radio was part of my free time
as well as the books my older aunt brought.
So my connections looked like this:
I was fed by garlic and alphabet soup.
The radio gave me the first interesting experiences of life.
I was a boy who liked to dream
Three dreams never left my head:
A dream was to get to know the world,
to go abroad to study and learn new languages.
To live in a preferably English-speaking country,
because I always had that in my head.
I wanted to contribute to saving humanity,
work at the UN or a related organization.
And tell stories and write down. I always liked to tell.
But I could not learn English,
since we had no money and I was at the public school.
I could only learn what they offered.
Then I discovered a radio program that was a pioneer of distance learning.
It was “Voz da América”, which always ran on Sundays.
TV channels and shows did not exist.
So I heard on the radio
the program “Voz da América”, which taught English.
The program inspired me so much
that one day my mother lost patience,
because I described everything in the whole house in English.
The table became “table”, the floor became “floor”.
I really wrote it.
I stuck things with notes like a madman.
But one day she decided
to put an end to my Paulo-Freire method of learning English.
I had to clean the whole house.
But I had lessons.
My mother was and is a determined person.
One day she came and said to me:
“I have a suggestion, because you like writing so much.”
At that time she worked for the “Matarazzo” group.
She was the secretary of one of the subsidiaries.
“Why do not you write a letter to the manager of Matarazzo,
Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, who lives in São Paulo? “
So I, who lived in a suburb of Recife,
should write a letter to the manager of Matarazzo?
But since it was my mother who said that
I sat down and wrote the letter.
With a lot of imagination I wrote two pages
and tells of my plans to study physics.
And that I was enthusiastic about English and I wanted to live abroad.
I gave the letter to mother, she folded it,
took him and went to work.
About two weeks later, she came home in the evening and said:
“Tomorrow you come to work.”
“Why?” I asked.
“My boss wants to talk to you.”
And so I went with her.
I was interviewed by the head of the company in Recife.
At that time I was about 15 or 16 years old.
Then I was alone with him in a room and he interrogated me,
almost like in a job interview.
In the end he looked at me …
Right at the beginning he asked, “Did you write this?”
And I said, “Yes.”
He deepened the topics I talked about in the letter.
He said, “I like you, I will fight for you.
I will recommend you for a scholarship
while you study at university. “
I stayed motionless for the first time and then floated out of the room like on cloud nine.
I thought I would dream.
Never in my life would I have dreamed that a letter, written by hand,
land at the CEO and he would then interview me.
But that became true.
At this point, a revolution started in my head.
I believed that ideas and intentions can change our whole lives.
And indeed, this event at Matarazzo was very dramatic.
It has opened many doors in my life.
This year, I was the best student in my vocational school
and in the following too.
I got a scholarship for a graduation course,
for which there was no money.
In physics, I came in second and in first place in philosophy.
I also loved philosophy.
A bank gave a prize to the first place winner.
Later, I was also admitted to engineering and computer science.
I chose engineering.
I became an electrical engineer and worked in many factories
and companies in the electronic field.
But that did not satisfy me. There was something missing.
I had achieved fundamental goals, but not my dreams.
And they were still there.
Until I read a newspaper on a Sunday
and came across an ad
said that the registrations for the program Fulbright
only to be accepted until tomorrow.
I thought about how my mother challenged me to write this letter.
I asked what documents are needed.
The next day, I sought her out.
And was selected from 120 countries and 4 candidates from Brazil.
Among them the boy with the boots of iron.
My name was among the others.
The English course on the radio worked, right?
And now I went to the University of Washington.
I stayed there for some time and also did internships in some companies.
I had the means to enjoy all these possibilities
and got paid – imagine that!
I then received a diploma signed by the President of the USA.
That was all very exciting for me.
Back in Brazil, I changed the industry and the profession.
I became the CEO of a company and that was an overwhelming time.
I think you start to believe that you are capable of anything, right?
But always with the feeling that he does not fulfill his mission.
Something was missing.
I did not want to be a manager. I became that by chance.
I wanted to go out into the world and at the United Nations
or work and help save humanity.
There I saw an announcement about possibilities at the World Bank.
It was a program for knowledge exchange,
that matched my skills perfectly.
I applied, participated in the selection process, conferences and talks
and was selected.
I then worked at the World Bank
10 000 employees and huge structure.
I was there for five years and visited and worked in different countries:
in Russia, Spain, South American countries, Africa
and of course in Brazil.
Many of my projects at work
made me look into my past as a poor child.
The motto of the World Bank was: “Our dream is a world without poverty.”
That’s why I always woke up feeling I was doing my part.
Because the bank was part of the United Nations system,
I thought that I would have fulfilled my second dream.
After that, I returned to my project,
back to my base. The field of electronics.
I am working in electronics again and took stock of my life.
Less than two years ago
I looked back and saw the way I had traveled.
Then I noticed the following:
that the three horsemen who had previously been apocalyptic to me;
Of three, I had felt three myself, interacted with and defeated them, right?
I had the polio behind me,
poverty did not worry me anymore,
I did not have to eat “dog porridge” once a week.
And the third, paternity:
I thought that I had already coped mentally.
The polio taught me to watch.
Thanks to her, I developed my powers of observation
and learned to master challenges.
Overcoming challenges motivates me internally,
to challenge myself too.
And this November
I walked 600 km in the sand.
I love to walk barefoot in the sand between February and November.
For an athlete that may be little, but me, without boots or shoes,
That was very satisfying
and filled with positive emotions.
Thanks to my poverty, I learned a lot about creativity and innovation.
We can achieve more with less and, in particular, look ahead
and realize that where you go is more important than where you come from.
Many have the same background,
but he becomes unimportant when you get up, go and believe in yourself.
And this situation of the three riders, who was constantly bothering me,
was completely fixed when I received a letter from my son,
in the following stood.
In it stood:
° Dad, I’m grateful to have you as a role model.
Do not feel bad because you did not have a father,
because you were like Newton, who could not refer to anything,
when he invented calculus
and it did it the first time.
Greetings, your son. “
That moved me a lot.
And then I buried the three riders forever.
Of the four horsemen who tormented me during childhood,
only one survived: the Voruteil.
I realized this when I said goodbye to a job,
and on that occasion I talked a bit about my background.
The reaction was so great and so positive from some quarters,
that I decided to share my experiences
and to open me,
to shed all my protective layers that covered and protected me,
to face prejudice.
And then I discovered the following: There is no vaccine against prejudice,
but healing is in our hands.
Thank you!
(Applause)
”
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