Pedro Santa Clara

February brought us an inspiring talk in an inspiring location. 42 Lisboa, housed in a former industrial printworks, is now a coding school with a difference. The space is vast and well-designed: stylishly minimalist while remaining warm and welcoming. The February theme was ‘Monumental’, and our speaker was Pedro Santa Clara, the director of 42 Lisboa. An entertaining speaker, he led us through the story of how he ended up in his current position after a career change. A Finance PHD in France was followed by 10 years in the US, where he worked his way up to professor status at UCLA. He then returned to NOVA, his alma mater in Lisbon, this time in a teaching capacity. Pedro was instrumental in getting a new campus built in 2018, for which he needed to leverage partnerships with companies and the municipality. He joked about his predilection for doing difficult projects with little money, as he went on to do the same thing multiple times. In 2020, 42 was launched in Lisbon, in response to a huge lack of software engineers in the country. Pedro fell in love with its pedagogical concept: learning is collaborative and there are no teachers or books, and the school has no requirements in terms of academic background or experience. However, with high demand and currently only 400 places available, it’s naturally very hard to get in. Candidates must complete online tasks and a four-week bootcamp to be considered for selection. The learning is problem-based and students’ work is evaluated by their peers. In the fast-moving world of technology, everything is going to become obsolete, therefore Pedro stated that the most important skill is to learn how to learn. He talked about the importance of failure and how it frees you to be creative (an idea which also came up in Liz Melchor’s talk last month). As well as learning about coding, the students develop their soft skills such as resilience, communication and self-evaluation. Pedro likened the collaborative process to a pool full of novice swimmers dealing with a set of challenges: it just takes one person to try and the rest will follow, helping one another to solve each problem. The Q&A at the end brought up some interesting facts, such as the different life paths which have led people to 42 Lisboa - among them an airline pilot, a musician and a pastry chef. Pedro himself changed careers at the age of 45, and he’s really happy to have this second act.