The Revolution is Female: How Luiza Trajano Has Been Transforming the World with Disruptive Technology, Civic Engagement and Community Logic — An Interview with Renata Frade
/“Feminist politics aims to end domination, to free us to be who we are - to live lives where we love justice, where we can live in peace. Feminism is for everybody.”
One of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to Time magazine in 2021—and the only Brazilian citizen on the list. Businesswoman on the select Forbes magazine list of billionaires. Founder of Mulheres do Brasil (Women of Brazil), a disruptive social, economic, political and educational movement which directly impacts more than 115,000 women in Brazil and abroad. Luiza Trajano is 75 years old and has been working in Magazine Luiza since she was 18.
Credit: Luiza Trajano´s PR agency.
She started on her own initiative in her family's small business, which was created by her aunt in the interior of São Paulo, during school holidays. Studying and working incessantly, she turned it into a business conglomerate that now includes more than 20 companies, from the cosmetics and sporting goods trades to KaBum, the largest technology and games e-commerce concern in Latin America, and Jovem Nerd, a Brazilian humor and news blog acquired by Magazine Luiza in 2021, which addresses topics on entertainment such as cinema, television series, science fiction, comics, role-playing games and travel.
Also a great communicator, Luiza Trajano is a frequent visitor to Magazine Luiza stores and is always interested in talking to customers and employees. Participating in corporate and government events as a speaker, she leads the effort to access COVID-19 vaccines for the Brazilian population.
In recent years Luiza Trajano has seen the Magazine Luiza, or Magalu (as the company is known) brand repositioned to point to a future that has already arrived. The company is guided by technological innovations developed by Luiza Labs, a technology and innovation laboratory with digital solutions for customers, created with a start-up DNA. One of the entrepreneur's goals is for the stores to become technology centers and to maximize the customer experience. The company developed a new sales application and a tool to optimize store inventory. Stores now offer credit checks, free Wi-Fi and the ability to pick up online purchases in person. To further support offline operations, 30% of each store's physical space became a small distribution center, helping Magalu's online operations.
You can understand the company’s success through its relationships. Digital engagement is a priority that is mirrored in the development of technologies that bring the virtual and real world closer together, based on projects such as the creation of Lu do Magalu, a digital avatar that won the hearts of customers and social media, becoming the most followed virtual influencer in the world.
In recent years, Luiza Trajano has dedicated herself to numerous social causes aimed at social and racial equality, such as the creation of a trainee program tailored only to black people, a business investment fund for women, and a mobile platform for female candidates for political office. Luiza Trajano’s career is ripe for an academic case study, but she is also an exemplar for businesspeople, communicators, and activists.
Credit: Luiza Trajano´s PR agency.
Renata - You are an example of an empowered, courageous, successful woman, and this is reflected in the realization of projects that are really changing the reality of millions of people, especially women. How should a woman mobilize today to become empowered and go in search of her dreams, in the midst of so many adversities for her studies, her business, even just for her as a person?
What are Luiza Trajano's challenges and dreams in 2023, after the pandemic and amidst the scenes of war around the world? What inspires and moves a great executive and great woman to accomplish so much? What do you still want to accomplish?
Luiza - We lived a very heavy thing. The whole world had been put indoors, and we had to live with two great challenges: health and employment, especially in Brazil. In Brazil we lost seven hundred thousand people in the pandemic, many people we loved. There were several effects of the pandemic, including emotional ones. Our fifteen hundred stores were closed. There were also some positive effects among the many negative ones.
Something that was accelerated was the type of management, which had been completely mechanical in companies. I already preached organic management, where people could be themselves. In the pandemic, I couldn't stand still just watching people die. So we got together for the vaccine since no one else was doing anything to resolve it. We took over more than five-thousand municipalities in Brazil. We monitored the best health system in the world, the Brazilian public system SUS, where we went to distant places, took our own refrigerators for the vaccines, cool boxes, tents, everything, just driving to be able to vaccinate. The first thing we, together with the Mulheres do Brasil group, did was to invite men to the cause as well and establish a target of seventy-five percent of the population vaccinated (almost 210 million citizens). We managed to vaccinate the population thanks also to the union of the population.
Today, together with the Mulheres do Brasil group, I now think that we must heal people; they are very destabilized. Social inequality was wide open during the pandemic, as well as violence against women worldwide. I have my personal goal, I talk about it with everyone, even with the US ambassador, Mandela's wife: in four years there will be no violence against women. That's my big dream.
Credit: Mulheres do Brasil
Renata - A study conducted by the World Wide Web Foundation and the Alliance for Affordable Internet confirmed men are 50% more likely to be online in 32 countries. This gender gap is a challenge for women in tech inclusion activism. Your company has been investing a lot in technology and in social inclusion projects. When we talk, sometimes about giving access to applications or artificial intelligence, we forget the very basic things like access to the Internet.
Historically, women have really engaged with technology, not only in the production but in the consumption of computational devices and programming. Also, there are female tech communities that emerged in America, Brazil, and all over the world. There was already a project of yours with one of these communities. So, I would like you to talk a little about how you think it would be possible for your company, in addition to what you've already done, to reach a vision of the inclusion of women in this field, not only in terms of consumption, but above all in terms of access to education or job opportunities. And a little bit about the importance of communities within the context of this aspect of women in technology.
Luiza – The Magazine Luiza company was born as a physical company 45 years ago. When the digital appeared about 20 years ago in Brazil, we were gradually able to digitize the business, and today our stores coexist with online sales via websites and apps. We are carrying out tours all over Brazil with mentorships to teach women and small entrepreneurs how to digitize their businesses, how to use applications based on the ones we develop, and putting an end to limiting beliefs such as “women are uninterested in mathematics” or “women are not good at technology.” We also launched courses for 400 people, only women, who we then inserted into the job market.
Renata - In a lecture at the Brasil Digital Forum, you said that “digital is not software, it is a culture.” This perception is unusual among big businessmen, who often disregard the meaning that the term culture can represent beyond the corporate. There is no neutrality in technology—this is a historical fact that even kept women out of the job market in IT for many decades. Thinking that beyond the algorithm there is, in addition to intelligence, a human component resulting from a history that continues into today, their way of relating to the world can make a difference in companies like yours.
Professor Henry Jenkins (2016) stated something similar in Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: “I do not think technologies are participatory; cultures are. Technologies may be interactive in their design; they may facilitate many-to-many communications; they may be accessible and adaptable to multiple kinds of users; and they may encode certain values through their terms of use and through their interfaces. But ultimately, those technologies get embraced and deployed by people who are operating in cultural contexts that may be more or less participatory. I do not think of platforms like Facebook or YouTube as participatory cultures. Rather, they are tools which participatory communities sometimes use as means of maintaining social contact or sharing their cultural productions with each other.”
How should companies think of the digital in cultural terms? What are the challenges of the digital in the midst of an overwhelming technological advance for businessmen and consumers? What is it like to promote the company's DNA to key influencers, consumers and employees among intense competition?
Luiza - Brazil is very prepared for this digital world; we are innovative, more creative, more opened, what is really lacking is greater access. The digital is a culture. It is not software or an application; it is a way of life. It's a way to help businesses. One of the things that the pandemic brought was people's willingness to work things out. People often don't know how to use cell phones and social media for their own benefit. What we try to do is help them to use this so that we can do more. In the pandemic, we managed to adapt much more easily to the migration to digital.
Luiza Trajano at the Brazil President Lula economic, social, sustainable and development new council inaugural session (2023).
Credit: Luiza Trajano´s PR agency.
Renata - Regarding engagement, one of the main and happiest projects of the company seems to me to be Lu do Magalu. Created in 2003 to help with the consumer's shopping experience in digital retail, at a time when few companies knew how to develop online projects, it is an avatar that relates to customers throughout their purchase and relationship journey.
In 2022, Lu do Magalu had 6 million followers on Instagram, 15 million on Facebook, and 1.3 million on Twitter, in addition to followers on YouTube, TikTok and other networks—all told more than 31 million followers in 2022. According to The Most-Followed Virtual Influencers of 2022, she is ahead of Barbie and Minnie Mouse.
Another interesting aspect, which reflects the company's culture, is how Lu do Magalu mobilizes people about women's empowerment, anti-racism and pro-LGBTQIAP+ via activities like dancing and participating in TikTok trends, playing games while serving customers, and being present at special dates like birthdays or Christmas by sending individual messages.
What does Lu do Magalu have in common with Luiza? What are the upcoming avatar-related projects? What were the main challenges and achievements of this project to date?
Luiza - One of Magazine Luiza's principles is to do the simple things first, for instance a good website like the one we launched and have evolved since 2000, then invest in more sophisticated technologies. Lu da Magalu was inspired by my aunt Luiza, founder of the company, and was present on our website many years ago, when we didn't even sell much online. Lu evolved and followed the evolution of the world, in a simple but not simplistic way. We have a team that takes care of Lu. She's more human every day: she goes for a walk, apologizes. When we enter the site, it talks about vaccination, about violence against women. Our goal is to make Lu more and more human by bringing the principles of our company, which is a capitalist company that earns money, but which has always defended women, always defended the social. It's amazing how sweet she is; you just know she doesn't exist. People identify with her, and today she is the biggest influencer in the world. She won gold at the Cannes Festival. She is our face, even if we make mistakes, or if we get it right.
Credit: Lu do Magalu as Barbie (2023). Magazine Luiza´s Instagram profile.
Renata - Mulheres do Brasil group is a social organization of extreme relevance in Brazil and inspiring to the world. Created in 2013, in partnership with different spheres of power to encourage the adoption of affirmative policies and eliminate gender, racial and social inequalities, it involves 115,407 women around the world in 155 centers (113 national and 42 international). The American chapters are in Washington DC, Florida, and New York.
There are projects to encourage women's entrepreneurship, raise awareness about racism, and prepare and train black women for the job market, among others. What are the biggest dreams you have in relation to this initiative?
Still regarding the Mulheres do Brasil group, I would like to cite a concept called civic imagination: “the capacity to imagine alternatives to current social, political, or economic institutions or problems. Put bluntly, one cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Too often, our focus on contemporary problems makes it impossible to see beyond immediate constraints and develop a clearer sense of what might be achieved. One also can't change the world until one can imagine oneself as an active political agent.”
I believe that you are an example of a civic imagination activist. What are the dreams that the citizen, entrepreneur, businesswoman, woman, and activist Luiza Trajano intends to bring to Magalu costumers, to Brazil and to the world? What is the world you envision for citizens and new generations?
Luiza - First, I want to make it very clear that we are a political group because we believe that public policies drive the deepest change in society. We are not partisans, and we do not have a party. I am a political person, despite being invited a lot to be president or a senator. I am not affiliated with a political party, but I was invited a lot. I believe that a united civil society can change a country.
We have twenty-two causes. The UN invited us to be a representative; we have very strong international causes, particularly violence against women. We are united in the international community so that in four years, led by the Mulheres do Brasil group in Brazil and in the whole world, we will not have more violence against women in the world. Everyone wants to participate in this.
The other cause and campaign are for the inclusion of more women in politics. The goal is to reach fifty percent of the candidacy vacancies in Brazil. So, we've been working on this for four years in Brazil. We created an application for the dissemination of candidate materials. Many men are with us because they are changing. Any political party can be on our website. Any woman who intends to be in politics can participate in our application by signing a letter of commitment with us with these items: to be in favor of democracy, health, and education for all.
The Mulheres do Brasil group is present in all Brazilian capital cities and on all continents. Each chapter also works within the goals and difficulties of its country. They have a lot of independence and autonomy. We always have global goals, but it's amazing how much work the local chapters do; I can't keep up with everything.
In the group you do not enter as your company but as an individual. One message I'd like to leave is that women can do whatever they want now. I have a slightly different relationship than most women. I'm from the countryside, from Franca, a very enterprising city. Imagine how many years ago when I arrived in São Paulo for work, I was discriminated against because of my accent. I made a pact with myself not to change who I am. I didn't join the male side of the war, I didn't fail to position myself in any way, even when I was a mere unknown.
Credit: Mulheres do Brasil Facebook profile.
Biography
Renata Frade is a tech feminism PhD candidate at the Universidade de Aveiro (DigiMedia/DeCa). Cátedra Oscar Sala/ Instituto de Estudos Avançados/Universidade de São Paulo Artificial Intelligence researcher. Journalist (B.A. in Social Communication from PUC-Rio University) and M.A. in Literature from UERJ. Henry Jenkins´ transmedia alumni and attendee at M.I.T., Rede Globo TV and Nave school events/courses. Speaker, activist, community manager, professor and content producer on women in tech, diversity, inclusion and transmedia since 2010 (such as Gartner international symposium, Girls in Tech Brazil, Mídia Ninja, Digitalks, MobileTime etc). Published in 13 academic and fiction books (poetry and short stories). Renata Frade is interested in Literature, Activism, Feminism, Civic Imagination, Technology, Digital Humanities, Ciberculture, HCI.
