If you have a dream and you are afraid to make it a reality, the only solution is to overcome your fear. Sandra Lópes was 6 years old when she first saw Flashdance, a dance movie that had her enrolled in classical ballet classes within a week, which would also last for six years. Because of her height, she was selected for the school handball team, “I think it was one of my first steps in terms of willingness to be flexible.” These are just some of the milestones that mark the childhood of the protagonist of this story.
“I was always a child with many curiosities and interests,” she notes. Her career has been far from linear. She studied Biological Engineering, specialized in the Environment, worked 15 years in a Non-Governmental Organization and helped found Fábrica de Arte Cubano.
She started university obsessed with saving the planet and her studies were based on that. Just after graduating, she started working at Deloitte, a multinational company that needed personnel in its Management Solutions department.
Many of her contemporaries likely aspired to a similar job after finishing their university studies. “I think it could be anyone’s dream; but the truth is that in that world you are just a number. Although you learn, it is also a hostile environment where you live to work, you don’t work to live. I wasn’t very happy, I felt stifled.”
Sandra is not currently working as an engineer, nor is she a dancer or an athlete, but each of these skills has given her the tools to be who she is today.
She arrived in Cuba thanks to Deloitte, just as she was making one of the most difficult decisions of her life — to leave the organization. That meant leaving a stable job and being left in a void. “Many thought I was crazy, but I was clear that this was not the path I wanted, and I was really happy.”
Her interest in nature saw her send her resume to Oikos, a Portuguese organization interested in renewable energy projects based in Cuba. She was instantly offered a job. Thus she spent the next fifteen years of her life in the service of humanity.
“It was an important and also very difficult step. I didn’t know anyone here and I left everything behind — my family, my friends. I didn’t know how the country worked. It was the most complicated six months. I started as a volunteer and ended up 15 years later as a global representative of the organization.”
“Sexism is real and women face an additional challenge because of it, although I have tried to go through life confident in my abilities. When you believe in what you do, no machismo can defeat you.” She adds that she has learned about empathy, “You have to know where you are and how to deal with others, you have to touch others’ hands, the earth and the sky.”
By 2012, she again faced emotional upheaval. It could be said that what happened with Deloitte hit again, that sometimes one feels that one can no longer do more. She was so caught up in her professional life that she tended to forget the importance of her personal life. “I have often frozen in the professional sphere, and at that moment, love has revitalized me.”
The Cuban context at that time facilitated the opening of Fábrica de Arte Cubano. She had already dreamed of it, but Cuban musician X Alfonso was clear about the idea. “Fábrica has been a bit like our daughter and it’s so gratifying to see a dream come true.”
Right now, Sandra’s most ambitious project is being a mom to her three-year-old daughter named Mar. She feels it is the project she has learned the most from. “My biggest challenge is for her to become a woman with values, to swim against the tide and to be strong. I am simply happy.”
