Growing up as the youngest child of the family can often lead to independence and self-sufficiency, and for Eduardo Mylonas da Silva, that reality continuously rang true. In his home country of Brazil, he taught himself to learn and write in Portuguese before teaching himself English, too. His family couldn't afford to send Eduardo to an English school, but he didn't need school, all he needed was a few of his older siblings' English books and his own determination.
Throughout his life, including during his 20-year career as an IT product expert, pure determination propelled him forward. After graduating from college as an engineer, Eduardo had two options: follow the path he knew or take the one that was lesser known. Eduardo being Eduardo, he chose the latter. Diving his head into books and scouring any materials he could, Eduardo began teaching himself about product management and product development. A friend gave him a book about consumer behavior, and suddenly, Eduardo couldn't stop thinking about how products and human behavior had a critical relationship with one another.
Feeling like his career chose him, Eduardo set out on a mission to take a holistic problem-solving approach at every opportunity. Able to see the big picture, he prides himself on being able to identify a root problem, measure it, and take action accordingly. Continuously open to new angles and perspectives, Eduardo's adaptability has served him well throughout his career.
As one of the leaders of a Center of Competence (COC) at IBM, when Eduardo and his team managed to grow from 6 people to over 65, he learned to adjust how he worked with people, brought in outside perspectives to solve problems, and was sure to build task-oriented processes to find synergies within the COC. His excellent leadership in this role helped him land future leadership opportunities at IBM in product management roles. Managing cross-product roadmaps, streamlining development processes, and increasing user engagement were Eduardo's daily challenges.
While at IBM, Eduardo co-invented a patented technology that is foundational to the data privacy protection strategy in the organization. His technology combs through any data that is transmitted from an enterprise project and determines the necessary security steps for that specific data. As governments around the world begin to tighten data security and privacy measures for their citizens, this technology is crucial for following new laws and regulations, especially at a major technology company like IBM.
In 2022, Eduardo was approached by the leadership team at AE Studio, a technology consulting firm that helps build unique platforms for its customers. Eager to get Eduardo's input on the product management side of the house, the leaders at AE Studio brought him in-house to manage critical programs and products, focusing largely on Blockchain and AI projects and other technological infrastructure initiatives. Armed with experience designing and building platforms from scratch, Eduardo is the perfect fit at AE Studio.
Knowledgeable in data privacy, UX design, and even analytics, Eduardo doesn't design any product in a vacuum. Technical experts often get caught up in their specific vertical; infrastructure designers focus solely on data structure, UI/UX designers only think about how customers will interact with a product, and so on. In practice, to design and create the best products, someone needs to be thinking about how all of those components come together. At AE Studio, that someone is Eduardo.
Perhaps it's because he has always been self-taught, but Eduardo's ability to dissect information, pull the important components from it, and take action has served him well throughout his career. It's the same determination he used to learn a foreign language as a child that continues to result in improved business outcomes for his clients and employers.
His hidden talent has always been learning; Eduardo taught himself not one but two languages as a child, constantly takes on new, challenging projects, and prides himself on creating solutions to new problems that arise. His patented technology was revolutionary for IBM and the greater data security industry, and now, Eduardo helps AE Studio keep up with technological advancements to better serve its customers. He is an innovator and an out-of-the-box thinker, but even further, he knows how to turn a vision into action. That's the difference between Eduardo and the others around him.
