On independence, responsibility, and listening
In a few months, I will reach two years as an independent professional, and believe me, it has not been easy. Just over three years ago, I found myself in what anyone would consider a successful moment in their career, during my time working with the Barça Innovation Hub and the Higher Institute of Law and Economics of Barcelona. An experience I hold dearly in my heart and in my career, thanks to the friendships and clients that remain. Everything was absolutely great—this was also my period as a university lecturer, traveling to New York and Zurich with major international institutions.
It was then, during the trip to New York, that I accompanied law students to attend a trial. A person who had been convicted for protecting the life of a child in a criminal context received additional years in their sentence after requesting a review of the case, because they had been unable to access a lawyer during the pandemic due to Covid restrictions. The result was an even harsher sentence, also due to outdated legislation. The students cried: the law is not synonymous with justice.
After that, I was invited to the Mobile World Congress. I believe the number of women invited and/or attending could be counted on the fingers of a few hands. And I had to read the unfortunate news that the city’s prostitution services had been exhausted and that external services had to be brought into Barcelona to meet the high demand during the Mobile World Congress. Drop by drop, day after day: not all men…
I was tired of highly male-dominated sectors or those stuck in unbearable conservatism, such as classical music, the sports world, the legal profession. Since I was 16, I had worked or collaborated with people of many nationalities, ages, and ideologies. I needed a change and also needed to say “enough.” And how do you do that? By starting—because to change, you must begin. Overcoming fears. Especially breaking the expectations of those around you, the ones who will suddenly talk about you and say things they believe they know for certain. But let me tell you a secret: they don’t know, they don’t understand—absolutely anything. 😉
Since I began directly supporting and accompanying professionals and institutions as an independent practitioner, I have come to realize that independence allows for the development of a human depth that is not always possible when there is a CEO behind you, with their own personal, professional, corporate, and investment interests. Independence gives you an autonomy and a perspective that help you avoid becoming complicit with profiles such as those who were utterly irresponsible in managing the DANA, or those senior executives who, without the slightest hesitation in the field of public healthcare, choose to look the other way in order to line their pockets: we cannot gamble with people’s health and lives.
Such a simple statement is completely lost on those who get caught up in the power games of a kind of authority that chooses to be utterly irresponsible. As when you are asked to sign off on a settlement at a company by falsifying figures, knowing that by signing you are choosing to endorse a multi-million-euro fraud. Curiously, it is always the person who will not benefit who is expected to sign. And those people—out of fear, subordinated, in situations of personal vulnerability—end up trapped in a complete deadlock. Were they the problem, or were you? Cowardice always hides behind the imposition of silence.
Every time I sit across from a person or an institutional representative who chooses me to help chart their path, I feel deeply grateful and also deeply prepared—ready even to continue learning as part of a team. And every time someone sits across from me, I end up realizing that many others failed before in something as simple and as complex as listening. Listening and truly seeing are not forged through a diploma, but through knowledge and experience that can only be inhabited at the intersection of lived experiences, perspectives, tools, and forms of understanding. These are matters that do not reside solely in the professional or the academic, but in the human. A dimension not contributed only by those in high positions, but also by ordinary people full of life and stories. Because we should never forget: the embrace of a migrant can express far more than the embrace offered from an office.