A life begins in Rio de Janeiro, when an immigrant from Bahia and an immigrant from Minas Gerais, both with little financial means and with extreme dedication to work, fulfill my birth wish. The rigorous education at a boarding school with French mothers, from childhood to adolescence, the genetic lineage that mixes Portuguese, Indians and Africans, in addition to learning values from my parents, clearly contributed to my biopsychosocial formation – appreciation for diversity, easy transit through different scenarios socioeconomic and cultural, study as a source of improvement and dedication to work, enabling new social levels.
His academic and professional life began in medicine – neurology and child and youth psychiatry, followed by psychotherapy for children and adolescents, and stopped in family therapy. In that pit stop, facilitating dialogue in litigation situations – divorces and family businesses, has become my professional routine for more than 20 years. In these scenarios, the skills to help build consensus in disagreements, based on communication and conflictual relationships, prove to be insufficient and Conflict Mediation has added a more negotiation character to my work. We are in the beginning of the 90s. Perfect combination of knowledge to work with companies of family origin, or not, in their internal dialogues and with stakeholders external – I bring together, for these scenarios, expertise in relationships, communication, negotiation and consensus building, aiming at mutual benefit. Perfect mix, combined with the pleasure of helping business families to mature, preserving interpersonal relationships.
And there goes more than forty years of fascination with the dynamics of family businesses, and more than thirty years of fascination with the mediation and facilitation of dialogues, professional actions of enormous social impact – for the curative effect in present situations and for the preventive character in what concerns future events, naturally inherent in living together.
The invitation to be a monitor in the training of family therapists (in the 80s) helped me to include teaching in my professional portfolio, today expressed in the training of mediators from different professions, or illiterate people. In teaching, one more enchantment: sharing knowledge that improves the professional and personal performance of learners and makes them multipliers of this positive action in society. I have a large caliber vein for social performances.
An enormous curiosity for the themes highlighted by the contemporaneity of each era accompanies me in this trajectory. These themes are motivators of many readings and learning in congresses and courses. Well nourished by these sources of knowledge, and aware of the incompleteness of all knowledge and our limited ability to keep up with its updates, I also started to write – there are many articles, a book, participation in the coordination of two literary works and, since the pandemic, ebooks and non-academic reviews each month, all dedicated to dialogue processes, my greatest enchantment.
Along the way, the founding (1997) and management of three entities dedicated to providing services and teaching Conflict Mediation and Dialogue Facilitation – the MEDIARE System, which celebrates its silver jubilee in 2022. At MEDIARE, the possibility to dedicate myself to good practices in Mediation, covering the theoretical-practical training of mediators from its inception to participation in the Continuing Education Program, with monthly thematic study groups, webinars and a Yearbook that compiles academic articles. Participation in institutional and professional networks dedicated to the subject, contribution to codes of ethics on the subject and to the Brazilian legal framework - Mediation Law, in addition to acting as a mediator in private practice, in public institutions and NGOs as a volunteer, and in organizations international ones – World Bank (Latin America 2010/2020) and Doctors Without Borders pilot project (Brazil), are integrated into my path, here and there.
At the turn of 2022 to 2023, I am celebrating the achievements and partnerships that have begun and will continue what I have accomplished at MEDIARE over the last 25 years. I am distancing myself from the administrative-operational management of the projects and educational programs built, and I remain a mentor and supervisor in all of them.
In recent years, I have focused on studying and practicing dialogue processes in corporate scenes and scenarios. Postgraduate Course – in different instances of governance, including the sometimes tense conversations between its leaders, in the advisory and board of directors, among stakeholders internal and with stakeholders external – from corporate impasses to interfaces with other companies, whenever productive dialogue can make a difference in decision-making, in obtaining consensus and in the healthy continuity of relations.
The coordination of dialogue processes in situations of disagreement (preventive character) and disagreement (installed conflict), its mapping, design and conduction, as well as training in soft skills (socio-emotional skills) – interpersonal communication, negotiation of differences, conflict management and decision-making by consensus -, in addition to mentoring corporate leaders, are a predominant part of my current professional portfolio.