Ever imagined being part of the Communications and Policy team at Facebook and collaborating with some of the most creative teams across the company? Meet Cesar Bianconi, Policy Communication Manager and Eduardo Lopes, Public Policy Manager at Facebook Latin America as they share their day-to-day lives at the company and the exciting projects they have been working on.
Cesar Bianconi, Policy Communications Manager:
Tell me about Communications and Policy at Facebook
Comms plays a very strategic role at Facebook, bringing our company closer to the press, opinion makers, and consumers. We work across the board to tell the stories of how our apps are empowering people in Latin America.
We believe diversity of backgrounds and skillsets makes us a stronger team. And so our global organization includes people from different walks of life, from former presidential strategists, to corporate specialists, and journalists, among other professionals.
In my case, I’m a former financial journalist and editor.
What is like to be a Communications professional at Facebook?
At Comms we help shape the public conversations around Facebook. It is a fast-pace, fascinating job.
One of the things I like the most about this job is that we help connect different internal teams and build high impact projects together. As Policy Comms manager, for instance, I work hand in hand with the Public Policy team to build strategies around issues from privacy, to safety, and regulation.
What surprised you the most when you joined Facebook?
I come from the newsroom, where people rely on collaboration and team work to produce high quality journalism. Now at Facebook we take those cultural values to a whole new level – Everybody’s opinion counts, and people are empowered to share their ideas. That makes our teams stronger, and helps us build amazing things.
Talking about collaboration across teams. What was the role of the comms team in the launch of Estação Hack innovation hub?
The innovation hub we recently opened in Sao Paulo was a project led by our Public Policy team in Brazil, but in which Comms played a key strategic role from day one.
Estacao Hack is about empowering people and creating opportunities through technology. And our job was to tell the stories of those young people that are going to code a better future for themselves and their communities. It was beautiful and powerful story to tell, and one of the most fascinating projects I’ve been involved in.
Eduardo Lopes - Public Policy Manager, Special Projects:
You come from an unconventional background, How was the transition like?
I've always admired tech companies not just because they develop disruptive products, but also for their ability to create innovative business models in areas such as recruiting and people management.
And the minute I started my conversations with Facebook’s recruiting team, I knew it was exactly what I wanted for my career - Coming from the government, I wanted to shift from a world where the organizational culture was very centered around hierarchy, to a business model built on values I could personally relate to.
As for the transition, having worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs I’m used to moving around a lot, learn fast, and adapt to new environments. And while joining Facebook represented a new kind of challenge, the support of the people I work with made the transition smooth and exciting.
Tell me about the kind of work you do at Facebook as Special Projects Manager?
I work primarily on Estacao Hack, an innovation hub in Sao Paulo where we are providing coding, digital marketing and business management training to young people from local underserved communities in Latin America’s largest city. As the project manager, I led the cross-functional team that designed, developed and implemented the initiative. Getting Facebook’s first brick and mortar investment in Latin America off the ground has been a huge challenge, but one that is hugely rewarding. Going forward, my focus will be to make sure Estacao Hack has a real, tangible impact empowering people and a dozen startups of high social impact that we are going to accelerate at the hub.
Tell me something most people don't know about your team.
While most people may not know this, the Public Policy team at Facebook is extremely diverse and handles projects that stretch beyond the traditional government relations space. And Estacao Hack is a good example of that.
What surprised you the most when you joined Facebook?
Even though I've heard that Facebook has a horizontal organizational structure, I was positively surprised to see how this openness works “in real life”. I never imagined I'd get to work at place where the leadership host weekly Q&A to communicate openly with the entire organization.