November 12th, 2021
The Humans Behind the AI: Pedro Araujo
Pedro De Araujo
At Rasa, our team is building the standard infrastructure for conversational AI. Behind the scenes, the people of Rasa come together from diverse backgrounds to solve today’s most interesting challenges in NLP and dialogue management. We’re pulling back the curtain to highlight a few of the humans behind the conversational assistant.
1. Hi, Pedro. Tell us about yourself! What was your path to joining Rasa?
Hi folks! I’m a Sales Development Representative who lived in Brazil before moving to Cambridge, UK. I’ve worked as a small businesses’ consultant for years and shifted my career to inside sales almost 4 years ago. I’ve been an SDR, an Account Manager, and my last position was as an SDR Manager.
What drove me to sales - and Rasa, in the end - is my passion for talking to people, understanding their needs and helping them to solve their problems.
2. Take us through a typical day as a Sales Development Representative. What types of projects do you work on?
Our approach to sales is a really consultative one. We want to talk with people and companies who have problems we can support them to solve. Even further, we aim to understand their challenges and goals and be part of their success.
My job is to understand which companies are in a self-actualization moment, implementing conversational AI initiatives and finding a way to make them talk to us. One example is a customer who works in the banking industry. The Business Analysts team for the company attended a conversational AI conference. I researched the company, the motion on conversational AI, reached out to them and got them talking to us in a really prolific meeting!
3. Which areas of your work are you most passionate about?
Supporting people in their path to success. A well-structured sales process shines light on problems people had no idea they had before. I love discussing ideas to solve complex challenges!
4. What's an important problem you're solving at Rasa?
Every company needs clients, right? My job is to make sure we’re still having new customers coming through the door and helping them to solve their issues through us. This supports the company growth but, more importantly, addresses the very crucial challenges the customers are facing.
5. How would you describe Rasa in three words?
Passionate. Innovative. Inclusive.
6. How do you collaborate with other teams at Rasa?
The Sales Development team has a strong connection with both the Marketing and Sales teams. Marketing is essential to support our communication, create collateral, and discuss the best approach on a number of initiatives. There’s a time zone difference--most people from Marketing are in the US and I’m based in Cambridge, UK, but as a global remote-first company, we are used to dealing with this kind of thing. Shared documents, slack channels, and asynchronous communication are key to make it work.
We are directly responsible for supporting the sales motion, so having a great relationship with the Account Executives is key. As we’re assigned to regions, time zones are not a problem and we use softwares to make sure all the intel we have is centralized in a single source of truth.
7. What does a culture of diversity mean for you at Rasa?
Our team is made by people from different backgrounds, nationalities and experiences. We respect everyone and each one based on their individuality, and through this diversity of lenses, our understanding of the world growths.
For me, it means that you can come to work and be yourself. You feel comfortable in who you are, how you feel, what you do. We assume the best of people because we respect each other and mean no harm.
8. How has working at Rasa helped your professional development?
I love working with smart people who challenge my ideas. Having regular discussions on how and what we can do better, listening to different perspectives and being able to achieve greater results together made me the professional I am today.
9. What's the most interesting thing you've learned lately?
A few weeks ago I was at the National Space Centre in Leicester, UK, and learned a lot about Cold War space and the moon landing. It was awesome!
10. What's the best career advice you've received?
Challenge yourself to be your best version. It doesn’t mean putting in a lot of extra hours, but to make a conscious effort on being your best self.
Thanks Pedro!
Want to team up with Rasa? You can find Pedro on LinkedIn
We're hiring! Find open positions as Sales Development Representative and other roles on our Jobs Board.