Reflecting on the first 12 months of The Crossroads Collective Brasil, it is with a sense of satisfaction that I share our story and vision for the future of our impact-focused consulting, facilitation and mentoring company. In the beginning, it was an idea that accompanied me many mornings with a cup of tea. As usual, I pondered the crossroads, the fragile junction in the paths of society, and watched as the environment began to show more cracks. The need for new ways of thinking and solving problems always came to my mind.

Friends and colleagues have encouraged me for years to establish a consulting business. It’s fair to say I learned and saw a few things. A 25-year journey shapes a person after working with thousands of impact-focused projects and leaders – this trajectory includes small community groups, businesses, state and federal governments, and the United Nations. There are things that you cannot ignore and ignore. As a result, I know how to design transformative strategies to address the root cause and effects that lead to meaningful change.

This journey was only possible through the relationships I found along the way. It has been a privilege to meet and collaborate with the most incredible people and experts from around the world, covering the breadth of challenges we face together.

What’s interesting to me is how 2 separate career paths converged to help me understand the world and the work that lay ahead in my life. Firstly, when I finished high school, I became an electrician specializing in integrated infrastructure for communications and electrical systems. Whether in a multi-story corporate building, university campus or multinational organization, I have been trained to design, cost estimate, install and manage projects between $100K-$3M…anything with an electrical current running through it. This means I understand network design and, without a doubt, problem solving.

The second career path in community and economic development was initially shaped by completing a Permaculture Design course, followed by a Masters in Social Ecology, coupled with being mentored by a great master  for 7 years (head of community and economic development Australian state government). Furthermore, during another 7-year mentorship, I was strongly influenced by the wisdom of Indigenous Australian people about ways of life and health. All of this together is to say that I learned a systemic understanding of the world, the socio-environmental situation and my place in it.

When thinking about a consulting company, for me, it cannot be just another consultancy using fancy language, standardized answers and artificial data to disempower and retain clients and increase their profits. I don’t like wasting a client’s time and prefer to work with clients who genuinely want transformative solutions. I also recognize that I cannot meet everything customers need. I like working with other professionals, and I like being focused on my contribution. I concluded that any business model must leverage the power of network intelligence and a systemic understanding of the challenges that need to be solved.

There is always the best time and place for the best things to unfold. It was like this for me in January 2023. At that moment I had decided to discontinue my software company, started about 10 years ago in San Francisco (USA), which provided collaboration infrastructure for groups and projects aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. I was looking at new opportunities and started facilitating intensive immersion workshops. The topics I focused on were primarily sustainability, self-leadership, and communication with a twist. In one of these workshops was Valéria Lapa. Valéria showed some interest in my experience and approached me to discuss her work. As we learned more about each other, she suggested that I offer my services as a consultant. Like a set of dominoes falling, I decided to start.