The executive director shows how she combined knowledge to bridge the gap between engineers and strategic planning
Today she helps develop technologies, including the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence, for large companies, the size of Nestlé, Itaú and Raia Drogasil. Renata Mello Feltrin , executive director of the technology company CI&T for Latin America, works to understand companies’ problems in times of digital transformation and translates these issues for the many engineers who surround her. “CI&T is a company of engineers. What engineers generally want is to build things. I learned to build a bridge between them and companies, to translate business problems into technology. We learned a lot from this exchange.”
Not bad for someone who started out correcting the essays of prep school students while still in high school. After that, Feltrin studied communication in Belém do Pará, his hometown, at the same time that Netscape, the first browser, appeared. And soon he started working in advertising. “I realized that agencies weren’t looking at technology and I decided I would do it my way.”
He then opened a small company to develop websites and “get companies out of the yellow pages” [large catalogs with names and telephone numbers of people and pre-internet companies]. She went to São Paulo to study, learned code and worked at a record company until, in 2004, she was interviewed by one of the founders of CI & T, Bruno Guicardi, for a job as a web designer.
But her expansive personality and ability to communicate and strengthen relationships soon took her to the business area, where her career took off. “My communication background and my ability to create bonds were very important because I discovered that leaders don’t want to understand technology in depth, they want to trust whoever is doing it. I bring that trust to them when I translate what we are creating.”
Support for women and the Global Compact
In November last year, Feltrin went to Geneva for the World Business and Human Rights Forum . In principle, the objective was to present the results of the Mentorela program , in which prominent executives mentor other professionals, in conjunction with UN Women and Global Compact . Her work was focused on the area of innovation and digital strategy.
Acceleration of women’s careers
The trip brought up one of the most important issues for Renata Feltrin at the moment, which is investing in the training of female leaders. “It was a few years ago that I realized how different it was to be a woman, that things were more difficult and I asked myself how I had never bothered with that.”
After this realization, however, his focus changed. “We started measuring the career speed of women in the company and realized that it takes them three times longer to become leaders,” she says. She also noticed that colleagues who had started with her were already in higher positions before she arrived at the board.
And that was the push for her to get involved in CI&T’s women’s career acceleration program. “An important part is understanding how men look at this female leadership agenda”, says the woman from Pará, who then helped to map women whose careers were stagnating and help them rise faster with the help of mentoring. of directors.
The program also includes inverted consultancy, in which these women also show executives what is important to them. “Today, our career indicators are automated and this allows us to accelerate diversity in general.”
Renata Feltrin’s journey
Who supports me
“Not to fall into a cliché, but if my husband [musician Rogério Feltrin] had not taken on an important role in our family arrangement and parental responsibility for my daughters, over the years I would not have been able to pursue an executive career with so much growth. . In addition to him, I can mention two professionals who have been important throughout my history. Solange Sobral, who gave me my first executive management opportunity with Itaú’s digital transformation; and Aminadab Nunes, who is the most intelligent and generous leader I have met. I learned a lot from him – and it was through his hands that I sat in the executive director’s chair.”
Career turning point
“The moment when I chose to face a journey of profound self-knowledge. I spent more than a year investing in mentoring that took me to my more feminine side, to the ability to actively listen and seek happiness beyond work. This transformed me in many aspects and made me capable of carrying out big projects with different people.”
Causes I embrace
“Without a doubt, gender equality, especially at senior leadership tables, and opening up space for more women in technology. Today I am a mentor in three different mentoring programs for women (Mentorela, Pulse, from B2Mamy, and MCIO) and I am an angel investor in [women’s business accelerator] B2Mamy.”
What do I still want to do
“I would really like to develop something that enhances the development of women in the Amazon, as a way of giving back what I have. And a next step that I have already started to prepare for: acting as an innovation and technology advisor for companies that have the challenge of evolving their businesses through these levers.”
