Shape your future.
"The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows."
- Sydney J. Harris
Founder.
Anabela Possidónio is married and lives in Lisbon with her husband and two daughters, aged 11 and 16. She loves traveling, walking, reading, learning and being near the sea!
"All the experiences and changes I have lived through have been driven by passion. Passion for learning new businesses, developing new skills, leading new projects and teams."
What we do.
The mission of Shape Your Future is to help young people and adults to make the best academic and professional decisions, based on their skills and preferences, in order to feel more motivated, fulfilled and happy people.
When you live lives with purpose, you create virtuous cycles that have a positive impact around you.
Our story.
Anabela’s experience in the academic context, coupled with the corporate experience, and the coaching practice, made her the ideal person to reach out and ask for advice. One of the recurrent requests from her friends was to talk to their teenage children (and the children of their friends) when they had to take academic choices. Over the past 8 years, she has had numerous conversations and developed her own methodologies to guide them through the decision-making process.
At the end of 2020 Anabela started to experience the feeling of uncertainty and distress in her own home. With a 14-year-old daughter, she realised that both she and her friends felt lost in the process of choosing their area of study. She also realised that young people had a low level of self-awareness and had not been exposed to topics such as the Future of Work or the Sustainable Development Goals. And that all this had been aggravated by the pandemic. This was the source of inspiration to run a programme with 8th and 9th graders during lockdown. It went so well that after the first group, and without making any effort to spread the word, requests to enrol teenagers in the next group were coming in.
Anabela is a people person, and believes that great projects are developed by great teams. When she decided to launch Shape Your Future challenged professionals with a passion for education and personal development to join the team. Curiously, all of them mothers of teenagers, ended up conceiving Shape Your Future from their children's bedroom!
Team work makes the dream work.
Shape Your Future is made up of people with extensive experience in psychology, education and business. Our corporate experience in national and international environments, knowledge of the university world and its admissions process, experience in psychology and coaching, and involvement in the creation of development programmes, give us the ideal platform to bridge the gap between education, employment and the individual, ensuring a focused approach to what makes us unique.
Anabela Possidónio
Founder & Coach
Anabela Possidónio has a degree in Management by ISEG, an MBA by Católica-Lisbon SBE, a coaching certification by New Ventures West (USA) and Team Coaching by Impact Coaching (Canada). She is an Associated Accredited Coach (ACC) by the ICF and a certified MBTI Step I and II analyst.
She has a corporate career of over 25 years, in several countries (UK, Mexico, Spain and Portugal) in various sectors, which she combines with Coaching practice since 2013. She was Executive Director of The Lisbon MBA Católica|Nova between 2013 and 2018, before joining CUF to assume the leadership of CUF Academic Center, which she left to launch Shape Your Future.
Executive and Team Coach, Trainer and Guest Teacher
in The Lisbon MBA Católica|Nova and
Nova SBE Executive Education.
Débora Martins
Psychologist & Clinical Director
Débora Martins has a degree in Clinical Psychology and a Masters in Pregnancy and Parenthood, both from ISPA. She is currently a PhD student in Gender Studies at ISCSP.
She has an extensive career as a specialist in Clinical and Health Psychology and is currently Clinical Director, Psychologist and Psychotherapist for children, young people and adults at Emotionally, Clinic of the Hours and Shape Your Future.
President of AMAS, a non-profit association supporting vulnerable young women.
Marta Andaluz
Education Consultant
Marta Andaluz has a degree in International Relations from UAL and a post-graduate degree in International Development from Aalborg University.
She found her vocation in the Education sector in 2008 when she joined The Lisbon MBA Católica|Nova, a joint project of Nova SBE and Católica-Lisbon SBE, with the collaboration of MIT Sloan School of Management. For over 11 years, and as part of her duties in the Admissions department, she supported countless potential students and interviewed hundreds of candidates, and was responsible for the area from 2014 to 2020.
Education Consultant.
Sara Midões
Associate
Sara Midões has a Law degree from UL and a Masters in Marketing from ISCTE. More recently she studied Well-Being Science at Yale University (online) and took a Post-Graduation in Applied Positive Psychology at ISCSP.
With a professional background linked to Communication and Marketing, he has more than 15 years of executive experience and training in a corporate context.
Consultant, trainer and Positive Psychology Practitioner. Guest lecturer at ISCSP. Contributor for Thrive Global and columnist for SaberViver magazine.
Create a safe space for sharing.
Work with each client on an individual basis.
To guide the decision-making process, without conditioning it.
Listening to and respecting each person's choices, without judgement.
Sharing up-to-date and ongoing knowledge from the world of work and academia.