I grew up in a village that sits amongst hills and vineyards and still today live in the farmhouse where my brothers and cousins and I would play hide-and-seek. I was so good at hiding that nobody could ever find me! Nowadays, at MULTI, it’s me trying to find the hidden clients.
The MULTI style is all about performance with method, which was what immediately won me over: I remember the first phone call, my first impressions and then the feeling of certainty on my way home – finally, I knew what I wanted to do “when I grew up”!
Leading up to that decision, there were some key formative experiences, some ‘moments of enlightenment’. There was the Camino de Santiago (“el camino es la meta”), where I learnt that we are all people with the same needs and requirements. In Paris, where I studied for six months at a major university – realizing an ambition of mine – there was the time I had a discussion with my fellow students at the workshop. I remember thinking to myself afterwards “I had an argument in French today!” and realizing that the language wasn’t going to be a problem after all. In London, I took part in a public performance by Marina Abramović (the subject of one of my degree dissertations was the Abramović method), during which I was blindfolded and earplugged. I remember the sudden ‘synergic’ realization of being in contact with others – despite being separate from them – of ‘feeling’ a person without being able to hear or see them. Which is essentially what happens every day on the phone or by email.
At MULTI, my job is developing foreign markets, which involves making phone calls and creating contacts between companies, people, fairs and markets from different countries, that speak different languages. I love to travel and with MULTI you could say I “travel” every day: today it’s France, tomorrow it might be Switzerland, Germany or Holland. I think training is important but, just like with travelling, the real learning takes place in the field.