Fernando
Vivanco

I was born in a neighbourhood split in two: on one side, dirt roads; on the other, asphalt. Getting out was not easy. Of the kids I grew up with, only three of us made it.

I did it through study and hard work. I had been working since I was 15, and at 19 I set off to travel on my own, with a ravenous hunger for freedom disguised as curiosity about other cultures. I alternated those journeys with my job and my degree in Systems Engineering, where I felt at home in that blend of Cartesian order and creativity. At 23, with what I had saved, I moved to the city centre.

I travelled across much of Latin America until I understood, as in Hermann Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, that I was no longer an innocent young man, but an adult.

That was when I hung up my backpack and put on a tie. I joined Solvay, a multinational company, and through various international roles I kept discovering countries and customs. I took part in very diverse projects: IT, supply chain, finance, human resources. Each one fascinating in its own way.

But what really drew me was people. The projects followed one another and already blur together in my memory; the faces, the conversations and the stories of everyone who crossed my path, on the other hand, remain intact. I also discovered that two words would take me very far and open almost every door: “please” and “thank you”.

The corporate world gave me that fleeting sense of achievement, power and status. Of accumulating. What I did not see was that, inside, I was still a beggar. Over time I understood that all of it had been a search for recognition, not the expression of an authentic desire. And I decided to change course.

That turning point was a passage: from performance to presence, from force to power, from weakness to the richness of vulnerability, from intellect to silent inner observation.

At the same time, I became the father of three children. They confronted me with my own story, because everything we have not healed is reawakened by parenthood. They gave me a multicultural family and, above all, they taught me to leave hierarchical relationships behind and relate to others more horizontally, with a far broader outlook than the one I was raised with.

Today I accompany people who want to feel better, build a life in which they can fully flourish, and inhabit worlds that make them happy.

Deepening our understanding of our wounds, our anxieties, our “debts”; understanding how we function on the basis of them, and the automatic reactions and patterns that sustain them. (Psychology)

Developing the presence needed to observe them directly, as they arise, without getting caught up in them or identifying completely with what the Ego believes it is. (Awareness)

Understanding without presence can stay in the head, and presence without understanding can avoid what still needs to be worked through.

This approach runs through the whole path we walk together, aiming for you to gain — each time — more autonomy.