Serendipity strikes again! Meet Hanai's new COO.
Nice to meet you all. I'm Viviane Lazard Sobral, the newest addition to the Hanai team.
When I first heard about Hanai, my eyes instantly brightened. I was so eager to know more that my reaction was to check out this same blog, where I came across Shamala's article "Serendipity in a Team." It was the signal I needed to be convinced that I would fit right into the team. Serendipity also worked to bring me here.
Before I share my story with Hanai and Sham, let's go back a few chapters. I first learned about Business with Impact during my Bachelor's back in Brazil almost ten years ago. I will never forget the lecture based on C.K. Prahalad's book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit" or my feeling that day: I knew that I would dedicate my career to doing business while helping people.
I started my professional life learning that empathy is the key for any business to succeed. Being a marketing manager for many health and wellness brands conditioned me to be curious and put myself in my consumer's shoes. As a result, I delivered solutions targeted at end-users from all social-economic levels - including at the Bottom of the Pyramid! Serendipity? -a range of Health Care Professionals and local communities who were the stars of the supply chain for my product's manufacturing. Every time I saw a positive impact in their lives or surroundings, I knew I was right on my path.
Viviane with Oralia and Amparo, from Trama Textiles a cooperative of female Mayan backstrap loom weavers. - Guatemala, 2019
But my calling was somewhere else... and at that time, I was not quite sure where! So, for a marketeer at heart, the best way to discover the next big thing is through connecting with people. And that is what I did when I grabbed my backpack and went on a one-year journey to discover the world - and my new self! My desire to roll up my sleeves and learn how different organizations were fostering gender equality led me to two of the most life-changing experiences: working with refugees in Jordan and indigenous women in Guatemala. Serendipity or not, refugees and indigenous communities are the two targets Hanai is currently working on!
After that, I joined the INSEAD MBA program in France in the pre-COVID world with some fresh insights from the ground. I was willing to bring technology and scalability to impact, so during the program, I helped entrepreneurs and social businesses worldwide go to market, expand, and grow market share. I had never thought about becoming an entrepreneur myself, but serendipitously, a friend of mine invited me to join him at a Venture Competition. More than winning one of the prizes, I gained the confidence that building an early-stage venture was the choice that excited me the most and that was the most aligned with my purpose.
Arriving at the INSEAD Campus in Singapore, after a 14-day quarantine in a hotel room, still not knowing that I would start my entrepreneurial journey in this city! - Singapore, 2021
The objective of this article is not to highlight the hardships of being a woman entrepreneur, starting a new life from scratch on a new continent during a world pandemic, or wanting to break into the women's health space with a social impact approach. We all know that it is required a lot of courage and resilience to make your dreams come true. For a brief moment, I thought it was impossible to make it all work. And then serendipity struck again! I opened my e-mail box, and I got my answer. It was not another spam, but Shamala's interview, explaining her motivation to create the company and all the fantastic work that the Hanai team had already put together. The rest is history.
I'm very proud and extremely excited to help build the following chapters of Hanai's story. While the current team is passionately working to guarantee our product-market fit, I joined as COO to design Hanai’s growth strategy, ensure the traceability of the impact in the whole operation and lead the company for the first investment round. So please do reach out to me if you want to connect or be part of our journey - as partners, investors, connectors, or advocates!