Pedro is a passionate foodie, a romantic intellectual, super friendly host, an expert on his home town Lisbon, and a storyteller. If you ever hear him say: „This might take two minutes“, be prepared. It will be longer – and so entertaining.
When I came to Lisbon on a quiet Thursday night, I was able to see the Alfama still void of tourists. While we were chatting along, having dinner in the shade of the massive historic city wall, the neighbours took turns singing fado on the street, obviously enjoying to have the city center to themselves. Beautiful proud voices, what a treat.
Pedro can be fully attentive and present in the moment. He can magically let clouds disappear. And still, he is an analytical mind with a wide strategic perspective. Years back, he started as an IT consultant for PWC and Deloitte, and was the innovation director at Novabase, where he merged Design Thinking and agile methods at a very early stage, already in 2011. Dubai – Amsterdam – Moscow: Pedro used to work abroad quite a bit pre COVID. And he managed to offer a completely new perspective on Russia to my prejudiced mind. Not only did I learn how business is done in the post Soviet society, he vividly described style and glamour of social life in Moscow, too. Classic: his description of a visit to the beautiful Grand Café Dr. Zhivago right next to the Kremlin walls with Katja.
We talked business strategies and pricing on the street till 1.30 at night, and it all comes in the form of anecdotes („This might take two minutes“). We went to the south bank of the Tejo for Sunday lunch, discovered the beautiful emerald coloured coast at Portinho/Setubal peninsula. Work, creativity, live in a grown-up family, sushi, digitality, dreams and style – it’s all part of the same Lusitanian soul.
His latest hobby might serve to change the very traditional Portuguese political system: Pedro was among the first 500 members of the newly founded Liberal Party (Nov. 2017), which caught its first parliamentary seat in the 2019 elections, already.