Growing up with a father in foreign services, Reneta Bezerra ventured far beyond her home country of Brazil. Now that she has a family of her own, she’s still on the move.
As a kid Bezerra was accustomed to country hopping with her parents every few years—she lived in Mexico, Senegal, Taiwan, and Brazil before settling in the United States for schooling. After Bezerra finished her BS in business management at the Marriott School in 2006 and two years of Trust School with the Canon Financial Institute, changing economic tides prompted her to leave her job in the US banking industry and return home to Brazil in 2010.
Despite plans to return to the United States for an MBA, Bezerra quickly found life had something else in mind. “I met my husband within a few months of my arrival, and the rest is history. Four years later I found myself with a husband, a child, and a fulfilling career,” she says of the unexpected turn.
Her career path took her to Volvo Trucks in Brazil, working with process and risk management. Within a few weeks of being hired in 2011, Bezerra was put in charge not only of the Brazilian market but of all the Latin American markets. Her first year of work entailed even more travel, with seven international business trips that required her to stretch all of her language skills: “Quite often I would get Portuguese, English, and Spanish mixed up!” For about two years, Bezerra did risk management for a portfolio of more than twenty thousand Volvo contract agreements in Brazil before taking maternity leave for the birth of her son. Now she’s back on the job in a new role, coordinating project deliveries for all Latin American markets.
Her new role at home is hard work but very rewarding. “I am thoroughly enjoying being a mom,” she says. “My son has given my life a sense of purpose I never knew it lacked. My favorite part of the day is when I get to come home after a day’s work and make my baby giggle so hard I get worried it may be bad for him!”
Even with the new addition, Bezerra and her husband, Gabriel Pereira, keep travel on the docket. “I have immediate family living on three different continents, so I am quite fond of traveling with my small family,” she says. “At four months old my son already had a passport with a stamped visa on it!” When not abroad, they call Curitiba, Brazil, home.
