Hey, I’m Fernanda: Strategy & Operations Partner at Perlego
Read my interview 👇 to learn more about me & my role.
Where are you from?
I was born and raised in Brazil. My hometown is Salvador, a coastal capital in Bahia state, well known as the city where the famous Brazilian Carnaval originated. I moved to Sao Paulo with my parents and sister when I was ten and grew up in this crazy metropolis. In 2020, my husband and I decided it was time for a new adventure and moved to Madrid, where we stayed for two years. At the end of last year, a career opportunity appeared for him, so we packed up our life again and moved to London.
What did you do before joining Perlego?
I started my career in Investment Banking, creating financial solutions, using derivatives and strategies to finding better and smarter financing solutions for companies. It was a very interesting job but I soon realised that I was more interested in learning about my clients’ business models and strategies — this realisation is why I shifted my career to work in strategy.
Over the past few years, I have worked in multiple strategic roles at multiple businesses including a consultancy, large Brazilian payments company, a famous Latin American unicorn and a Spanish Real Estate fund. When I moved to London, I still wanted to continue doing strategy but this time at a company/ in an industry that resonated with me deeply. That’s why I joined Perlego.
What were you looking for in a role before joining Perlego?
Firstly, I was looking for a place with a soul and a purpose — a business that I feel makes an impact on society and ultimately makes the world a better place. In a nutshell, I was looking for a mission. I wanted to be able to perform at 100% and I believe that this is only possible when your heart is connected to what you are doing. Secondly, I was looking for a place where everyone is free to bring new ideas and voice their opinions.
I wanted to wake up every day happy and excited about what I was going to do. Perlego is all of that for me — unlike many companies that advertise their ‘great culture’ as a strategy to acquire talent.
How would you describe your role at Perlego to a friend?
My job has two main responsibilities:
01. The Strategy part: I look at the company as a whole, identify improvement areas and find solutions.
02. The operations part: I improve the way a company and its teams work together by creating systems, tools and processes that are necessary to accelerate, grow and execute on strategic goals.
How would you describe your role to your 5-year old self:
I look for puzzles and find a way to solve them.
What does your average week look like?
My weeks are never the same. It changes according to the projects that I’m working on.
Sometimes, I spend the week doing market research and learning about competitors or gathering data for analysis. Other times, I am talking to people at Perlego to understand their perspectives on a challenge or I am designing a solution or system for the company to perform more efficiently.
I may start my Monday building a financial model and end my Friday trying to find the best CRM tool for our sales team.
What part of your job gets you the most excited?
There are no boring days, I never stop learning, growing or challenging myself. I love that I have an extroverted role where I get to talk to everyone at the company, understanding challenges and working collaboratively but at the same time, I have moments where I can work independently and with my thoughts.
It’s a very creative job, I am finding new solutions to problems all the time.
What’s the most challenging part of your role?
I never know the answer to a problem at the beginning. And sometimes, the solution I find is not the right or the best one but I will only know this once I try. So, I need to have a lot of resilience, creativity and curiosity. It is important to never give up, see mistakes as the best way to learn and be patient because sometimes the solutions come to you when you least expect them.
How has your work changed since starting at Perlego?
Even though I only joined Perlego two months ago I have already gained a lot of ownership in my role. Honestly, my job is so versatile that I feel it changes every day. During the first weeks, I had the opportunity to work with our new corporate structure implementation, review our internal communication systems, kick off a strategic project related to our clients and guide an experiment to improve how we do our quarterly planning.
What’s been the biggest learning about yourself since being at Perlego?
That I will never stop learning and that working with a mission is the best way of waking up happy every day!
Want to improve your soft skills and become a Strategist like me? Here are some books that might help you:
🧩 HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy
If you are interested in joining our team, checkout out our job openings 👀
