Diogo Rolo

After an initial academic training in Economics (BSc) and Finance (MSc), I began my professional career in the investment banking unit of BPI, one of Portugal's leading banking institutions. It was during this 7-year period that, in order to deal with the many daily challenges faced in high-pressure, highly results-oriented teams, I began my contemplative training.

Not long after, I started to notice many changes in the way my professional and personal experience was unfolding, as the early signs of a more relaxed, stable and clear mind became manifest. It was as I personaly realized the profoundly transformative impact of these practices, and their potential to improve personal experiences and shape organizational cultures, that I changed my professional path, and began exploring how I could support organizations applying these contemplative insights in their cultures.

My work uses contemplative frameworks & practices, coupled with current neuroscientific insights, to:

- Increase resilience levels: stress at work is now ubiquitous, and although no one can reduce the levels of pressure someone else faces, it is however possible to work to develop one's inner resilience levels.

- Implement and sustain change processes: this process depends directly of our understanding of the way our minds work, namely the hidden patterns that help us understand why our change initiatives get frequently blocked. Our natural capacity to become increasingly familiar with these processes is the key for effective, and sustained, change.

- Develop leadership skills: irrespectively of our formal position in an organization, we all need to act as leaders at times, when we make key decisions. Self-awareness is the fundamental skill that allows us to optimize those decisions, and in itself a pre-requisite so that leaders can develop those around them. In fact, this is the feature that distinguishes top leaders, those upon which organizations reach their full potential.