Meet your Community Manager: Gabi
If you’re one of the members of our community lucky enough to be managed by Gabi, you’ll know that she brings her unparalleled enthusiasm and energy to everything she does. The first time I met her, on my first day at Unbabel, was no different: she greeted me in the way I would normally greet close friends or family members. I’d had a lot of nice interactions with future colleagues that day, but few were as genuinely warm and welcoming as hers. It’s my hope that I can capture a fraction of her brightness in this article so that you can get to know her as well as I have.
“She brings her unparalleled enthusiasm and energy to everything she does.”
Gabi has been part of Unbabel since March 2019 and currently manages probably the most disparate set of languages of any Community Manager: Japanese, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Polish, European and Brazilian Portuguese. That’s quite a geographical area she’s got to cover, but Gabi takes it all in her stride.
One of them is always going to be particularly close to her heart, since Gabi’s a proud Carioca — a native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I’m laughing as we talk about this (I’ve been known to call Gabi the most Brazilian person I’ve ever met), but it’s interesting to hear what makes her passionate about Rio: “first, it’s the people. It’s a very alive city; you find people partying and laughing everywhere. The music scene is amazing, but the nature is too — it’s all so beautiful.”
“I’ve been known to call Gabi the most Brazilian person I’ve ever met.”
Gabi speaks English and Portuguese, but she’s also got Spanish and Italian under her belt. “I learned Spanish on my own, and I always loved it. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I used to watch Mexican telenovelas like ‘Rebelde’ when I was a teenager and I got a bit obsessed with them.” At the other end of the cultural spectrum, Gabi got better really fast by turning to literature, in particular the works of Gabriel García Márquez.
For Italian, the story was rather more personal. Gabi is half Italian, and in her journey to get dual citizenship she had to search for a document of her great grandfather’s from 1897. It was a fruitless endeavour for a long time, but she finally found it two years after beginning the search. She ended up moving to Italy for three months to get her passport, where her Italian improved exponentially. Her long journey complete, Gabi then moved to Lisbon as a proud Italian citizen and started to work with Unbabel.
There are four Community Managers at Unbabel, all of whom manage certain language pairs and look after a certain number of editors each — but we also have specialist areas that we tend to look after more than the other four. Gabi used to be a sports journalist back in Brazil and achieved a MSc in Digital Marketing from Trinity College Dublin a few years ago, so it’s only natural that she should look after our blog — and if you’re an editor that answered that survey of ours a few months ago, it’s Gabi that will be looking at the results to see how we can improve editors’ experiences.
“Gabi then moved to Lisbon as a proud Italian citizen and started to work with Unbabel.”
So what’s a typical day for Gabi? “The first thing I do when I start in the morning is check the language pairs I manage to make sure everything’s under control,” she tells me. “If there’s a problem, I’ll spend a lot of my day fixing that — talking to other teams, trying to find a solution.” The rest of it depends on the week — on any one day she could be writing a blog article, working on new strategies… or of course, a big part of our jobs, replying to editors’ concerns and doing her best to help them.
2020’s been a bit of a tough year for all of us, but Gabi got stuck in Brazil after carnival in March (she actually wrote an article about digital nomads in similar situations earlier this year). She made her triumphant return to Europe in May, but with the summer now a distant memory and the second wave upon us, I asked her what her thoughts were about the year we’ve had. “Well, obviously I think we should cancel 2020,” she laughs. “But I’ve always lived far away from a lot of my friends, and I think those that were not used to it have had to adapt, and I’ve become closer with a lot of people as a result. I think what I’ve learned is to always take time for your friends and family, just 5 or 10 minutes a day, to check on them, talk rubbish, send memes, do whatever.”
But the one thing she’s learned more than anything is to be kind to herself. “At the start of this madness, I set so many goals for myself, and at some point I only ended up watching Netflix — but that’s fine! You don’t have to be productive all the time.” Well, I think we can all get on board with that.
“But the one thing she’s learned more than anything is to be kind to herself.”
And finally, as part of this series, we’re asking each of our Community Managers to recommend a book, a film, and a song — and ask them what they’d like to say to our community if they could say only one thing. Here’s what Gabi said:
Book: Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
“I’ve been really struggling to read recently, but then I found Elena Ferrante. She’s an Italian author, and this story series is set in Naples. It’s incredible — I’ve just finished the series and it’s a beautiful story.”
Song: Chega de Saudade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlp8iY4g--4
Gabi’s chosen a Bossa Nova classic by Tom Jobim.
Film: Les Intouchables
“This is a French film that I love so much — it’s amazing!”
If you could say one thing to everyone in our community, what would it be?
“I would want them to know that we are working hard to build a better experience at the platform and to provide the content and resources they expect from us! We want them to feel part of Unbabel’s family. I think we’re getting there!”
