“I arrived in Mexico when I was 20 years old, I opened my suitcase and there was a note from my mother saying ‘Good luck, now it’s up to you to decide’. That marked me”

“If we don’t change the way large companies work, for the benefit of society and the planet, we won’t last as long as we would like to last. We have to change the paradigm.” The appeal comes from the executive director of Maze, an impact investment organization, which he founded ten years ago. “Maze has a very clear mission that I wake up to every day: to show that investing in social and environmental impact is a huge economic opportunity, perhaps the biggest of our time.”

“10 years ago, talking about business and social impact in the same sentence was a much greater taboo, today Portugal leads the way with very innovative impact projects and funds”, says António Miguel.

Born in 1986, he grew up in Sintra and until he emigrated to London he always played a lot of sport – he played hockey, surfing and bodyboarding. “In Sintra, hockey was very strong, I trained four times a week, I went on trips all over the country, a large part of my childhood was spent on skates, with a stick, and great friendships, which last to this day”.

“I wasn’t a great player, I didn’t have talent, and that was very important in building my character. When you really want something but can’t get it, don’t give up on it. My resilience comes from hockey, it really impacted me.”

With a bachelor’s and master’s degree in management, he decided to pursue the area of ​​social innovation after having spent time in Mexico and Norway while still a student. “When I arrived in Norway I met a professor who told me a lot about microcredit and I ended up going to Kenya, that marked the end of my master’s degree”.

She worked in London for a few years, but returned to Portugal to raise her children with a family support network. At 38 years old, he sees himself as “naive”, but in a positive way: “I consider myself a positively naive person, I’ve never had a business plan and nowadays I manage a venture capital fund, I’m always trying to do things beyond my capabilities and naivety comes from there, from not thinking it is impossible to do something”.

Listen to the conversation with Francisco Pedro Balsemão here.

Free and dreamy, the 80s in Portugal were marked by the consolidation of democracy and an opening to the world driven by membership of the EEC. These were years of great creativity, the impact of which continues today. Despite the mustaches, the wads and the perms, did the 80s give the world the best harvest ever? In this podcast, we give voice to a series of Portuguese people born in that brilliant decade, in a return to the future guided by Francisco Pedro Balsemão, born in 1980.