Flavia Ballve

Care taker, Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Connector, Entrepreneur, Event planner, Foodie, Job-seeker, Marketer, Parent, Project manager, Writer/Editor

Brazilian-French marketing professional, I worked in several industries and great companies - Reader's Digest, French Red Cross, Club Med, Embraer, the private subway company in Rio de Janeiro, Groupon, and a few others. I'm today at The Consumer Goods Forum, a not-for-profit association from the retail industry aiming to drive positive change on a global level. I've learned and accomplished a lot, leading or contributing to several projects such as the subway as the main transportation system for the FIFA soccer World Cup in Rio; urgent fundraising for tragedies in India and Irak; relaunching the Reader's Digest magazine after 25 years of absence from Brazil; launching the Groupon editorial services in Brazil; etc... I'm also (or most importantly!) a mom of 2 daughters - 3, if you count the dog! - and we've lived near Paris for 3 years, after living in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo for the 10 years before that.

Reading, discussing multiculturalism, seeing different sides to a story, fundraising economics, enhancing the customer experience to perfection, cooking, raising nice kids.

"Leaning in" is an important concept to be reinforced for girls and boys (and for the adults that care for them): to remind society that both girls and boys are equally capable of amazing accomplishments, but that we should all take care of sharing visible and invisible tasks to allow girls and women to fully develop to their potential.

anthropology of consumption, communications, customer experience, marketing, raising kids

I've admired TED for many many years, and have always dreamed of one day being there - "there", the "real" TED, "the one". TED has always been such an inspiration for me - the way we can watch videos from completely different subjects, and then connecting these seemingly isolated ideas one to the other. How each and every one has a story worth telling. So, I've always wanted to go to TED but it seemed unattainable, until this year. I work today for an association that gathers together retailers and manufacturers from around the world to work around sustainability, health & wellness and food safety issues, and I market the events where they meet to discuss and share knowledge. And I managed to show them how important it'd be for us to send me there, to learn how to connect ideas, how to have so many interesting people attending, and how TED can generously share all video presentations whereas still selling tickets. And here I am, looking so much forward to my first TED, I'm sure it's going to be one of the highlights of my life!

Calculating the exact right volume of food to fill each tupperware, haha! And also connecting people and ideas. And writing, I write pretty well, at least in my native language, Portuguese.