Natacha Pereira was involved in Lisbon Digital School foundation and helped transform the project, born from the dream of its founder Virginia Coutinho, into a reference in digital marketing training school.

Lisbon Digital School offers more than 30 courses and trainers with experience in companies from the most diverse areas, who deal daily with the subjects they teach. This was, in fact, one of the businesses that flourished with the pandemic. With confinement and remote work, many companies realized that digital was increasingly important to communicate with their target, which led many professionals to also feel the need to gain skills in this area. But meeting these new needs also implied a quick reinvention for the team led by Natacha Pereira, as the school did not yet have an offer of online courses, something it had to create in a very short time to respond to the market.

This was not the first time that Natacha Pereira had had to reinvent herself. The first was when she ended a 16-year relationship with Grupo Impresa, where she was manager of special projects and B2b marketing, to embrace the still almost embryonic project of a digital training school. What many considered to be a step back in her career, was for this professional a challenge she faced with passion. Graduated in Modern Languages ​​and Literature, she joined Lisbon Digital School almost four years ago as a manager of partnerships and new businesses, reaching the leadership of the school in September 2021, taking the place left vacant by the death of its founder, in April of that year. year.

[Executiva] Graduated in Modern Languages ​​and Literature and started working in project management. What idea of ​​the future did she have when she chose the course and what led her to choose this beginning of her career?

I was another one of those stubborn teenagers who, at 16, firmly believed I knew it all, with the romantic determination to follow her dreams. I’ve always been a storyteller and I was always immersed in books. Modern Languages ​​and Literatures was the pursuit of a dream. No project(s) yet.

Because I couldn’t stand still, but also because I started to be aware that the professional opportunities of my course would not fulfill me, I invested in my training, with a postgraduate degree in Editorial Marketing at the Faculty of Letters. Always working in parallel. A restless search for something, perhaps inspired by Fernando Pessoa’s multiple selves.

It was an experience in a Portuguese-language consulting company, Letrário, and the opportunity they gave me to manage projects, which proved to be decisive in awakening the desire to follow a more oriented path toward project and people management.

In an invitation for an internship, I came across the newspaper Expresso, and here I came across the first big decision of my professional career. The opportunity to grow in a family business, or to join one of the biggest media groups, which would be the materialization of a dream of coming across the world of journalism.

What were the main lessons you learned during your 16 years at Impresa?

The Press was a School! It is a house! Although I feel that I spent a long time in the same place, which could harm my appreciation in the professional market, on the other hand, it was 16 years of enormous growth, both personally and professionally. I met incredible people and professionals from whom I learned a lot, people who still inspire me today.

What I am today, professionally, is undoubtedly a reflection of the baggage I carried over these 16 years. From the experiences I lived and from interpersonal relationships.

I brought with me resilience, determination, the ability to challenge myself, the versatility to take on different projects, the transition from a completely offline content-sharing model, with the distribution of the newspaper Expresso and the magazines Visão, Exame, among others, in points of sale, TV – SIC, for a hybrid model, with digital content, in which we had to be where the new consumer was, on the different platforms consumed. A process marked by some legitimate resistance on the part of all those who saw the birth of the newspaper and magazines on paper.

The greatest learning, to manage conflicts, egos, and frustrations, without ever giving up the values ​​I believe in.

Impresa was in my life while I identified with the project, and even when I managed to contribute to its growth and add value.

What skills do you consider essential to be a good project manager?

A good manager, of projects, people, and processes, first of all, has to believe and inspire everyone involved. The sense of purpose. I believe that who we are in our personal lives is reflected in our professional context. Complete human beings are good professionals.

Determination, the spirit of mission, resilience, organization, versatility, trust are key factors in the success in managing any project. Emotional intelligence, knowing how to delegate, trust the team, give voice to all elements, make mistakes, accept mistakes, with the ability to innovate.

A 100% commitment to everything we are involved in, and a 360° vision, which allows us to know all the processes, from an operational and strategic perspective.

What project are you most proud of having participated in?

The project I’m most proud to have participated in, which I feel like mine, is the Lisbon Digital School, without a doubt. It’s the project of my life! What challenged me the most and made me step out of my comfort zone? Where I had the opportunity to find myself in all my fullness, as a professional and human being. A project with the values ​​I believe in, and thought and conceived by a person I greatly admire. With a mission to combat digital illiteracy in our country, and to empower a new generation with digital skills that allow them to become more competitive and contribute to the digital transformation of our country. A transformation that begins in each of us.

As an Impresa, I cannot think of a specific project, that would reduce what I felt was my contribution to this large editorial group. In everything I have done, in the different areas, I am proud to have always contributed in some way to the purpose of this great editorial group: sharing information and news with rigor and impartiality.

The Expresso newspaper, because it has always been a reference for me since I was a teenager, is what I am most proud of from my 16 years at Impresa. The reference to Portuguese journalism.

As a challenge, the digitization process of all the group’s brands, to which everyone contributed, showed the ability to adapt to consumers with other requirements.

What led you to move to Lisbon Digital School and what changes did this imply in your career?

The entire sequence of events that led me to Lisbon Digital School is one of gratitude for life and something that I hope will be an inspiring story.

After 16 years, I decided to leave the Impresa group. I was accusing tiredness and a desire to take on a project that would challenge me. In everything in life, I can only be with passion. Otherwise, it makes no sense. It was a risk, huge, but considered. I gave up 16 years of safety, of safe harbor, but life is made of risks, and, essentially, of feeling fulfilled, and happy.

In recent years at Impresa, I was in the Direct Marketing department, where we developed marketing campaigns, in offline and online channels. Marketing was already a passion, and it became clear that digital would be the way to go.

Virgínia Coutinho had crossed paths with me at Impresa, in a digital marketing training. As a great reference, I continued to follow her on social media. Determined to explore digital marketing, Virginia was the person I turned to to guide me with her wisdom.

Little did I know that at that moment Virginia was preparing the launch of what would be the project of my life, for which she would invite me to explore the corporate channel, Lisbon Digital School, a training school dedicated to digital marketing. We were in 2018.

Those were the most impactful, intense three years of my life. Three years that manifested in the experience of a lifetime.

Coming from a group, like Impresa, with hundreds of employees, to a project that was born in the attic of a house in Virginia with three people, in which I not only did new business, but also answered the phone and responded to emails from students when it was needed, and without a guarantee that it would be successful.

I have heard some opinions that in this position of mine I would have taken a step back. There wasn’t a moment I hesitated or questioned whether I had made the right decision. And of course, there were fewer easy days.

Creating a brand, without support, with the difficulties that an entrepreneur faces in our country, was a process that I followed alongside Virginia. We toasted each small achievement, which went through an edition of a course or a masterclass that ended with a quorum, positive feedback from a professional in the area, or a positive response from a brand willing to work with LDS.

I reinvented myself, and challenged myself, without filters.

What is the impact of COVID19 on the formation and activity of LDS, in particular?

March 2020 was a month of many doubts, due to the silence of our customers and brands. It was embarrassing to make business contacts and on the other side… an uneasy silence. And now? However, in April 2020, the market woke up, and reacted.

And we also reinvented ourselves. Until now, our training offer was exclusively face-to-face. The pandemic accelerated something that was already thought of but was being postponed: training in the live online format.

The pandemic, which was castrating many businesses and sectors, in the case of Lisbon Digital School, reflected the opposite. It was the moment when brands became aware of the importance of digital.

Who didn’t have social media, wanted to be present on Facebook, do lives on Instagram, and recruit on Linkedln. Brands that were already on social networks wanted to optimize their presence, and know how to communicate more effectively with their customers through digital networks; when to communicate, and what. Impact new audiences through campaigns.

We also witnessed a growing movement of professionals who were faced with the need to change areas and the bet on digital was assumed to be safe.

It was a year of great growth, in which Lisbon Digital School assumed itself as the authority in Digital Marketing and ambassador in the mission to increase digital literacy, not only in organizations but also in resources and individuals. It was the year in which our specialized course in Digital Marketing established itself as a bet for all those who wanted to train in this area and reinvent themselves with solidity in a practical program and with recognized professionals. But also a demand in our short courses by professionals in the area who invest in reskill and upskill to enhance themselves.

If there was already a lot of talk about lifelong training, now there’s a lot of talk about reskill and upskill. Has LDS benefited from this market need?

Lisbon Digital School has not only benefited but has been one of the entities promoting this trend.

Digital marketing is constantly changing. Professionals in this area must constantly update themselves. The proof of this is the new social networks that are born and the constant updates to the existing ones, always bringing news and different perspectives for brands and consumers.

We have students and brands that have been following us since 2018, with the permanent need to update their knowledge in digital. And we are constantly expanding our training offer to keep up with this trend. Our programs are revisited by our trainers with the same speed with which things happen in this ecosystem.

This tendency to search for new knowledge, as well as update existing ones, is increasingly supported by organizations, which invest in training actions for their resources, valuing them. It is also a strategy to make your resources ambassadors for the brands they represent.

Women often seem more disinterested in technology. Are there major gender and age disparities in your courses?

Interestingly, our courses are mostly composed of female students. The same happens in the Communication and Marketing courses at universities. However, when we think of big names in Digital Marketing in Portugal, three-quarters are men. When we look at the leadership positions in this area, the vast majority are made up of men. And when we review our panel of trainers, female trainers are significantly in the minority. This a trend that we naturally want to reverse, and that led us to develop the initiative that will mark the 8th of March, International Women’s Day, in which we will give a voice to the Women of Digital in an afternoon of sharing inspiring experiences, on Lisbon’s Instagram Digital School.

We witness an age diversity in our students, from recent graduates, between 21 and 24 years old, who are looking for us to fill the digital gap in marketing and communication courses in Portugal, to professionals with a senior career, between 40 and 46, which effectively seek to update knowledge, upskill and typical reskill in this area.

The pandemic, and the digital boom, also brought a movement led by a new target, older people, with professional paths marked by staying in the same company for years, with some comfort, who questioned themselves when faced with a pandemic, confinements, telecommuting.

At Lisbon Digital School we receive many students whose purpose is to change their professional path, with digital being the light at the end of the tunnel.

What have been your main challenges since taking over the leadership of the Lisbon Digital School in 2021?

A friend told me some time ago a phrase that defines this most recent stage of my life. “Being CEO is a marathon, not a 100-meter sprint.” It’s true! A marathon in which we have with us all those who believe in us and support us and do not want to defraud us, but also those who expect us to stumble and give up.

From an individual perspective, above all, the responsibility of continuing a project born from a visionary and inspiring woman like Virgínia Coutinho is a reference for everyone. This is, without a doubt, the challenge of greatest responsibility, and one that I face every day, with the determination to carry out your mission, which is also mine. As well as inspiring my team and every day motivating them and making it happen, together! And everyone who has been in this project since the beginning, and has always believed. All Lisbon Digital School trainers, and partners. And not to defraud the vote of confidence that WYgroup, Pedro Janela, gave me. Gratitude!

As a School, a business unit, in an area that is constantly changing, we must be able to anticipate changes, and innovate, which requires a very attentive and strategic look, and, at the same time, a very firm position so that the values ​​and purpose of Lisbon Digital School are not compromised. And maintain the level of quality that we have accustomed our students and customers to since the beginning, with a closeness and care that characterizes us. The focus is always on people.

On a personal level, the big challenge is undoubtedly to find the balance between intense days with a demanding project, lived by a workaholic person, and the demands of a family with three children, who need me a lot. This balance is achieved because I have an incredible person by my side who has always encouraged me to pursue what I accomplished, and who supports and motivates me. Both with an intense professional day-to-day, reconciling with family dynamics is art. Sometimes we have to be very creative.

If you went back in time, what advice would you give yourself at 20?

If I went back in time, at the age of 20… In fact, at the age of 20, I was already an “old soul”, who listened to me a lot and struggled daily with existential doubts. The mistakes, insecurities, stubbornness, and weaknesses that accompanied me at age 20 were what allowed me to be the human being that I am today. The human being behind the determined professional, who hopes not to disappoint the expectations of those who accompany me and are by my side.

But I have a piece of advice for everyone who is now 20 years old. Be determined in your life purpose, whatever it may be. Do it with passion and always with your heart on the right side. Try in your life and professional path to touch the lives of other people. Be ambassadors of your brand.

Interview was originally written by Maria Serina, published in Executiva