Ana Addobbati

I'm Brazilian - Portuguese, graduated in Journalism at the Federal University of Pernambuco and attended the Executive Master's Degree in Digital Marketing and Corporate Communication at IE. I am a former Human Rights reporter (nominated for national awards) who migrated to the corporate sector, having worked in some of the largest organizations in Latin America. However, I highlight my international experience, having worked on projects in more than 40 countries and having lived in Wuhan (2007, before covid), Shanghai, Seoul, Dubai, which gave me a good global view of how unfair the world is to the women who want more, who fight to occupy whatever space we desire. Today, I am a social entrepreneur who has reached 200,000 people with my business that serves organizations that want to prevent harassment in the workplace and was awarded a relevant recognition for supporting gender equality in Latin America as one of the initiatives with the greatest impact (Impact Innovation Hub Award 2020). I was a pioneer in implementing the anti-harassment protocol in 2017, similar to the one we just saw in Barcelona, ​​No Callen, to support victims of sexual abuse. I am now supporting legislators to apply the same mechanisms in Brazil. I am also a member of the board of Civicus Global Alliance, an NGO that supports Human Rights around the world, and of Fair Share, a German initiative that discusses inclusive feminist governance. Because of my work, I have also been a speaker at relevant corporate and Human Rights Events in Portugal, Mexico, Serbia, USA. I am proud to share that I was responsible for leading or co-leading initiatives that were based in innovation and tech for good to impact Brazil in scale. Besides having led the local chapter of the global movement Data for Good, I was one of the leaders that, I developed a campaign to support victims of abuse during carnival and collect data to show authorities the risks women come across when celebrating the national party. During COVID, I was the CEO responsible for integrating technology in an NGO that provides anti-racist education for kids across the country having impacted 180k people in 2 years. I had partnered with organizations in national campaigns for provoking change in our society, such as Melia Hotels, where I created the first protocol in hotels in Brazil to prevent abuse and discrimination between guests and staff, becoming a benchmark for the touristic segment in Latin America. Most recently, my organization became the official partner of Bumble, the dating app, to provide safe spaces for women to date with no risk of fraud or abuse. In May, my story will be spotted in a book translated in 3 languages.

How did IE help you get to where you are today?

IE was a key to help me to initiate my organization from scratch. From the moment when I had the creative insight, to create the business plan, craft the deliverables, and how I would add value to my stakeholders. I can say that the sense of entrepreneurship was always around, but IE provided me the right tools and consequently, I decided to jump into the unknown with confidence and resilience.

How are you impacting the lives of women?

Since 2017, I am working with scalable and transformative campaigns and mechanisms to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination at workplace and leisure spots. I educate men and women to identify behaviours which are abusive or risky and to react with safety to protect themselves and others. I integrate technology and monitoring mechanisms, so we can ensure accountability and fast response actions to people in risk. Organizations from masculine segments such as mining companies, food and beverage industries, telecom, civil engineering use my services, so we can make these spaces safer for any women to occupy the position they wish.

In your opinion, what institutional or societal changes need to be made to keep women at the forefront of business and society?

We need systemic change. It means from a regulatory point of view to education at schools, civil society raising awareness about the constraints for equality, we need to work together to ensure the same chances for everyone. And as I have learnt at IE, not on the surface, but from the inside, making organizations inclusive by design. Every institution must be held accountable for the spaces they are granting for us.