Brazilian professionals who are valued abroad and maybe you didn’t know

“‘Oh, football, samba, carnival!’ is the comment, almost always accompanied by a smile, that many hear abroad when they mention that they are Brazilian.

But, if on the one hand this is a well-known face of Brazil outside its borders, many people may not know that professionals of this nationality are also sought after by the world in other fields.

BBC Brasil gathers here some stories that contradict the “mutt complex” and show areas in which Brazilian professionals are valued for technical excellence and professional efficiency — and in which “typical” characteristics such as spontaneity and passion helped a lot.

Dentists: award-winning technique and human care

Priscila Kolbe, who has been working in London for 15 years, often says that nobody sits in the dentist’s chair because they want to, but that her patients definitely feel relieved to be being treated by a Brazilian dentist.

“The Brazilian dentist doesn’t just work with his hands, he works with his heart. As Brazilians, at least I am from Salvador, we have a different energy. It’s a human being behind a professional”, he says.

In addition to treatment and communication with the patient, Brazilian dentistry is internationally known for its technical excellence.

The USP dentistry course, for example, was considered the best in the world in 2022 in the international classification SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR), an annual ranking that is linked to the Conselho Superior de Investigaçōes Científicas (CSIC), a Spanish State agency dedicated to promoting of scientific and technological research.

Brazil is also an exporter of new dentistry techniques such as Digital Smile Design (DSD), a concept developed in 2007 by Brazilian dentist and ceramist Christian Coachman, which allows the dentist to design treatments and show the patient a preview of the result.

For Priscila, business is going well and expansions are on the way.

“In the UK this is a well-recognised and therefore well-paid profession. I started as a hard-working individual dentist, one day I opened my first clinic, followed by a second and a third. Today we are a team of Brazilian dentists serving in London”, says the professional from Bahia, who is also successful on Instagram with almost 30,000 followers.

Advertisers: diversity in favor of innovation

In 2022, Brazil was again one of the highlights of the Cannes Creativity Festival, the main prize in world advertising. There were 70 Lions brought home and one of them won by Daniel Schiavon’s team, from Ogilvy.

“It’s the third most awarded country in the world overall, which is no small feat. We are competing with the United States and London, which are the top places, which have much larger budgets, where the headquarters of the biggest brands are. people here with much less, I think we can do a lot”, he says.

The secret, for Schiavon, is in the “mixture” characteristic of the country.

“All this Brazilian miscegenation makes it possible for us to talk to people with very different cultural backgrounds and that makes us perform very well in global festivals. Brazilian advertising benefits from the size of the country”, says the advertiser.

For Schiavon, the Brazilian way of being also contributes a lot to success in advertising.

“We actually communicate very well, whatever the language, and we manage to express our opinions without fear of expressing ourselves and taking a stand. This Latin way of knowing how to bring joy, emotion and all these very strong feelings helps us to build good projects because great ideas with a story told without emotion fail to perform”, he says.

With a reputation for innovation, Brazilian advertising has served as an example throughout the world.

“Sometimes we think that innovation will come from a first world country, where technology is more present. But we, here with Lu do Magalu, who was the winner of the Golden Lion at Cannes this year, are a project that Ogilvy China uses to sell Artificial Intelligence in their country”.

Daniel thinks that the engine behind innovation is a passionate way of doing things and a consequent higher-than-average curiosity. The (digital character) Lu do Magalu mentioned by him is today the biggest virtual digital influencer in the world, ahead of names like Barbie and Minnie Mouse, even speaking Portuguese instead of English.

“Lu was already Lu before there was talk of the metaverse, people didn’t even know that the metaverse existed because it lacked a Mark Zuckerberg to coin a term”, says the publicist.

Pedro Alvim, Magalu’s Social Media Manager, reveals that Lu’s success already generates revenue instead of spending: “the cost of 3D technology is very high, it’s not a very democratic technology. It’s nice to say that Lu already pays for the clothes her, it’s more expensive than a Chanel”, she says.

Chefs: unique ingredients and passion

Anyone who smells the tucupi being heated in one of the streets in the London neighborhood of Bethnal Green may be surprised, but there is a kitchen run by Brazilian chef Rafael Cagali.

Always inclined to use Brazilian ingredients in his gastronomic discoveries, the São Paulo native has been successful with the Da Terra restaurant, created just 3 years ago, but already with two Michelin stars.

“It was in January 2021 that we received the second star. It was a feeling that makes me shiver just remembering it”, says the chef.

Rafael’s name is far from being the only one that stands out outside Brazil — where Helena Rizzo has already been elected the best female chef in the world and Alex Atala reached the rank of sixth best global restaurant with the authorial DOM

For Rafael, one of the secrets of this success is “the Brazilian way of being, very hardworking and with a lot of desire to make things happen. This helps to stand out more”, he opines.

The country’s biodiversity, which generates unique flavors in such different biomes, is also seen by him as one of the factors that differentiates the food of Brazilian chefs.

“People really like cumari pepper. Customers want to take it home, they want to know where to buy it. They are excited to try more things from Brazil”, he says.

Mechanics: Brazilian way and improvisation

Another category in which Brazilians accumulate awards abroad may come as a surprise: mechanics. Fernando Henrique Cruz, from São Paulo, for example, was elected the best mechanic in the world in 2019 in the Global TechMasters Truck, a global competition promoted by Mercedes-Benz every two years.

For Marcos Giglioli, who has, since 2019, a successful mechanical workshop in Bournemouth, on the coast of England, one of the differentials in his field is an old acquaintance of Brazilian culture.

“Our famous Brazilian way is not good for many things, but for our branch here, focused on vehicle repair and maintenance, it becomes an advantage, because sometimes we manage to correct the problem without having to change all the parts as usual. to do here,” he says.

Rogério says that changing parts is easier for the mechanic, but that it is not always necessary and makes the service more expensive.

“Sometimes we have a suspension part that if I change a bushing on the lower suspension arm solves the problem, but here they want to change the whole arm”, he explains, adding that this makes customers loyal to Brazilian mechanics when they know.

The ability to improvise is even one of the reasons why, when hiring, Rogério prefers to choose professionals of the same nationality:

“Many professionals don’t like to get out of that ‘I need to do it faster to earn more’ box. For those of us who work according to what we learned there in Brazil, we will always choose to hire the Brazilian because we already work to the same standard”, it says.

Mechanical labor, according to Rogério, is competitive and difficult to find in the United Kingdom, where his workshop’s schedule has no room for any customers for the next few weeks.

According to a study by the Institute of The Moto Industry, the UK economy could face a deficit of 2.6 million workers in this sector by 2030.

The shortage of professionals combined with the efficiency of the Brazilian way form a positive scenario for Brazilian mechanics abroad.

“If I go to Japan without speaking a single word of Japanese, I can find a good job and earn an amount that will guarantee me a good life, it is a workforce that is always in demand”, he says.

This text was originally published here.