When they were selected to leave Amsterdam to be our ambassadors in Lisbon for six months, Patricia Ghiraldelli and Ákos Szokodi were tasked with introducing the company culture and ways of working at Reaktor’s new Portuguese community. We caught up with the pair to look back at their Lisbon experience, which proved to be an exciting adventure with its fair share of challenges, surprises, and life-affirming moments.
How did you end up becoming ambassadors?
Patricia: We’ve both been actively engaged in the community at the Amsterdam office, including career-building activities like training, the Team Builder Academy, and Personal Growth facilitators, as well as hobbies and clubs for the Reaktor community. I think that experience gave me the confidence to volunteer for the ambassador role and the belief I would succeed in it.
Ákos: I was personally hesitant to sign up at first, but I was seeking a fresh perspective on life at the time so as soon as I was invited to consider the opportunity, I chose to take it up.
What was the goal for your time in Lisbon?
With new people joining the team from around the world, our main task was to make it feel like a Reaktor office – that means instilling a sense of community, sharing knowledge, building trust between colleagues, and bringing Agile principles into our client projects to make them efficient.
Ákos: I’d say that building trust is really Reaktor’s secret sauce – and for that to happen we need to feel comfortable being vulnerable with our colleagues, as that closeness allows us to bring healthy conflict to the table when needed. Forming a high-performance team requires a high-trust environment, and a side benefit of that is the close friendships that emerge.
How did you help the new Reaktorians settle?
Patricia: We wanted everyone to feel happy in both their work and personal lives, so we went out of our way to help them make friends, taking them out at the weekend and showing them around the city – just like the treatment we received when we joined the company.
Ákos: As some of our new colleagues had just arrived in Lisbon, we also involved their partners in the activities to help them feel settled. It was more than a full-time job at times, but it never felt that way because we enjoyed it so much!
How did you make the office feel like Reaktor?
Ákos: When we arrived we were given a blank canvas. By the time we left, it had become a true home for Reaktorians – not your everyday office but a cozy space with lots of plants, laughter, and positive people.
Patricia: We had to find our own ways to do things in the new environment and with the people we had there, so it wasn’t just a carbon copy of Amsterdam. For example, we always have a Thursday dinner at the office here, but as there were fewer of us in Lisbon we decided it was easier to just go to a restaurant together. Seeing the office culture develop right before our eyes was one of the most rewarding parts of the experience.
What were your main day-to-day responsibilities?
Ákos: Nothing was clearly defined; it was more about coming up with our own ways of introducing the Reaktor culture to the newbies and just getting on with it. We organized various events, including Thanksgiving and a winter party, and we were also responsible for arranging Lisbon’s participation in the company trip to Florence. Patricia and Otto Siikasmaa – the other Lisbon ambassador who came over from the Helsinki office – incorporated Lisbonites who were on the bench into their teams and showed them how Reaktor projects work. I didn’t do that myself as I wasn’t on any projects at the time, but between the three of us we really had a complementary blend of characters and angles on how best to fulfill the ambassador role.
Patricia: Part of our job was simply to be there for our new colleagues when they needed us, and there was plenty of work-related stuff alongside the fun activities too. Before heading to Italy, we organized our own half-day “Lisbonding” event along with the wonderful Otto, where we talked about how we build trust and work together. That was the first time we’d all discussed how we do our jobs and the approach when things aren’t working so well, and it’s one of my favorite memories. We were given a lot of license to develop cultural aspects like that, so we weren’t just following a strict rulebook.
What did your colleagues gain from your time there?
Ákos: It was really about planting the seeds – we took our hands off the wheel a bit towards the end and I definitely saw the Reaktor way of life starting to sink in.
Patricia: It was beautiful, I really felt like a mom whose kids were growing up! Ákos has this vibrant energy and one of the biggest things I think he showed was that yes, this is a business, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun along the way.
And what did you get out of it?
Ákos: The biggest thing I gained was a new best friend in Patricia – we already got on well before moving to Lisbon, but having to rely on each other through the good and the hard times really brought us closer.
Patricia: Being away from family in a new environment isn’t always easy, but Ákos was always super supportive and helped me see that I’m stronger than I thought. Not only did he quickly become my best friend, but I also became closer with the other people in Lisbon than I expected in such a short time – I still speak with some of them daily and we’re already making plans to meet up soon!
Ákos: My favorite day was the last one, when our colleagues organized a surprise party for us – it was so heartwarming but also bittersweet, knowing we had to say goodbye to these people who’d become like family so quickly. The whole experience of being an ambassador was life-changing for me – I’d do again in a heartbeat, and I’d recommend it to anyone.
