Extra than most, Sérgio Maria’s vocation has been about transition and transformation. In a functioning everyday living encouraging classic corporations navigate the upheavals of new technological innovation, he has also rethought his very own route along the way.
For additional than a 10 years, the 48-calendar year-previous senior electronic executive, who lives in São Paulo, has labored with organisations adapting to electronic disruption and innovation, very first at Google and now with Brazilian media and entertainment group Rede Globo. All the even though, establishing the expertise to put himself in others’ sneakers, divine their company requirements and communicate how he can assistance has been at the centre of his vocation.
Through twelve yrs at Google, Maria’s core do the job was creating interactions with publishers, which include newspapers, broadcasters and merchants. “In 2011 in Brazil, the information sector was incredibly averse to Google,” he recalls. “I could not have a dialogue with a newspaper CEO — they would not even answer to my calls.”
The icy reception was comprehensible. At the time, electronic was decimating the classic information sector. Audience had been discovering their information on the net, advertisers had been following them and the print earnings design was battling.
In opposition to this backdrop, the Brazilian was tasked with discovering regions exactly where the competitor could grow to be a collaborator. He joined Google as a strategic lover supervisor and sooner or later rose to grow to be director of world partnerships for Latin The us and Brazil across broadcast, information and commerce.
“Google has the marketing income function that competes with all the other teams for marketing budgets . . . and that is how it is heading to do the job for good,” Maria acknowledges. “But I was in a group that was looking at the other aspect — which is, how can we assistance these associates build them selves, be additional effective in the way they do their company and also make earnings?”
He also labored with journalists, conveying how to mine Google data for investigative do the job he taught publishers how technological innovation could assistance them realize users’ conduct and he assisted optimise cell solutions. The world accumulation of these types of do the job grew into the Google Information Initiative, which supports journalism in the kind of a education centre and an innovation fund, for case in point.
Soon after twelve yrs at Google, Maria was at a crossroads. If he stayed, the subsequent stage would be a go abroad, in a new function and lifestyle. That did not fit with his own options, so he made a decision to take a vocation crack, devote time with his family members — he has 3 sons — and replicate on his subsequent go.
CV
2004-2005 Product or service and services director, Oi Online
2006-2007 Product or service supervisor, Brasil Telecom Online
2007-2011 Strategic lover supervisor, Google
2011-2016 Head of strategic partnerships, Latin The us, Google
2016-2017 Director of world partnerships, Latin The us, Google
2017-2019 Director of world partnerships: broadcast, information and commerce, Google
2019-current Director of new company improvement, Rede Globo
Professions, he claims, are a 3-phase journey. At the starting, professionals’ expertise have a tendency to be additional complex. Then they may possibly grow to be persons supervisors, giving up considerably of the realistic do the job and establishing expertise in foremost groups and creating a vision. The third is the executive stage, looking at companies strategically in the very long term.
Maria was ready to transition to the third phase. So in 2018, even though at Google, he enrolled for the counsellors improvement programme, a corporate governance program, at Fundação Dom Cabral company college in Brazil.
“It was right for that minute in my vocation,” he claims. “It allow me make investments some time to realize the strategic function of boards far better and how to then affect the management crew of the organisation.”
The programme, which he concluded at FDC’s Belo Horizonte campus, prepares future board members. Along with educating the principles of management and governance, it explores how to implement this — for case in point, members get ready for and direct mock meetings of directors.
The return to official finding out was “amazing”, Maria claims. His vocation crack intended he was spared balancing family members, do the job and study during the program, which was taught in two week-very long blocks a handful of months apart. This authorized him to have interaction fully, he provides, something that people considering about executive programs really should be ready to do.
“People really should be prepared to continue to be offline and hook up to the persons on the program and hook up to the program by itself,” he claims. “It is envisioned that you participate a great deal and there is authentic worth in bringing your experience. It enriches the dialogue and the realistic physical exercises.”
This also indicates college students really should share any issues or regions for enhancement with classmates. “Be current, be sincere and be fearless,” Maria claims. “The additional you are open, the additional persons will be in a position to assistance you and you will be in a position to assistance [other] persons.”
One of the advantages was creating a powerful community of like-minded peers, and Maria proceeds to assistance persons continue to be in touch as a course ambassador.
The programme has assisted in his function as director of new company improvement at Globo, which he started off last June. “It’s not the specific complex matters that I use,” he claims, “It is considerably additional of a way of thinking transform on how to look at and solution matters in the very long operate, looking at what is in the minds of executives and the board.”
Globo may possibly be Maria’s greatest problem still. As component of its electronic transformation, the company introduced last calendar year that it was bringing some of its corporations jointly in 1 group, which include broadcast and cable tv companies, its web page and movie on-demand support.
Along with the interior transform, Maria is functioning on creating this new media technological innovation company for advertisers. “The option is how to combine all these mediums,” he claims, so that advertisers can communicate their messages seamlessly across all of Globo’s channels. For case in point, he provides: “Can we look at the journey when persons go out of Television set and go to an app to keep on consuming the material?”
This solution and facts would assistance advertisers realize what message is effective finest exactly where and when. It also advantages individuals, he claims, in that adverts really should sense fewer jarring if selected in these types of a way.
“We even now provide interruption,” he claims. “But we want to make interruption considerably far better in a way that is related to the material and to what is relevant to persons.”
It was the scale of the problem that persuaded Maria to take the function at Globo. When the chief executive offered his vision for the company, 3 features clicked into area: the stage of transformation a realisation that Maria could use his education in electronic and rapid-moving environments and discovering something that he was superior at and excited about.
“I stated, ‘OK, 3 or 5 yrs later on, if I look again and we had been in a position to put into practice the stage of transformation that the vision claims, I’m heading to be incredibly happy of that.’ And that’s a legacy I’m heading to go away. Conversing about a media group, it’s really a legacy that my kids are heading to know about.”
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