São Paulo – Students that are part of the Guide-U Program visited the headquarters of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) on Wednesday (26). The program helps senior high school students choose their college career and has partners that can show them the practice of different professions. The young people are interested in the International Relations career and were welcomed by executives from departments related to the area. They also learned about the work of the institution with the 22 Arab League states.
Gustavo Monteiro Ferraresi, Lorenzo Palmer, Maria Julia Mussolin and Nakshatra Manthiram study at the St. Francis College in São Paulo. The group had a meeting with ABCC president Osmar Chohfi, Institutional Relations director Fernanda Baltazar, Institutional Relations analysts Elaine Prates, International Consultancy and ABCC Lab head Karen Mizuta, Senior International Business analyst Leonardo Machado, as well as Market Intelligence manager Marcus Vinicius.
Chohfi told the group about his career as a diplomat. “It’s a career of permanent dialogue. For me, it was greatly fulfilling,” he pointed out. The ABCC’s president joined the Brazilian diplomatic service in 1967 and served as an ambassador in countries like Spain and as Brazil’s consul-general in New York, in addition to performing several other roles.
For students like Mussolin, who have studied more about the profession, the ambassador’s speech was still another encouragement. “It was amazing to learn more about diplomacy, it made my eyes sparkle,” she said.
In the Institutional Relations department, the executives talked about their careers and pointed out some practices in the area. “For me, it’s about knowing how to deal with different people and cultures,” Baltazar pointed out. The scope of the work includes activities like advocacy, a practice that aims to influence decisions within political, economic and social institutions, Prates explained.
The ABCC International Consulting staff talked about the daily tasks of the department and the ABCC Lab, the innovation lab focused on startups. “You cannot stop staying up to date,” Mizuta pondered. “We give the support across different stages of the internationalization,” Machado completes. Finally, the Market Intelligence department researches and gathers the key information that will be used in the international processes of the organization,” Marcus Vinicius said. “We focus on streamlining the content to supply it to the Chamber’s other departments,” the manager said.
For the students, the meeting helped understand even more about the department. “It was very enlightening,” Ferraresi pointed out. The array of possibilities under the umbrella of International Relations also impressed Palmer. “Something that really impressed me is that there are thousands of ways to get to the same point,” he said. “It was all thoroughly explained, it made me understand there are a lot of career options,” Manthiram agred.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
