The frontier of our dreams

Maria João Villas-Boas has been close to the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) since its early days. “I was fascinated, truly fascinated,” she told me as I asked when she had first heard about it. She had been following Leonor Beleza's work in the press, and the clarity of her clear vision for the CF made a lasting impression.

Because of Maria João’s extensive experience in communication and event organisation, particularly at the Belém Tower, where the CF initially hoped to host the first Vision Award ceremony in March 2007, she was invited to collaborate. Upon learning that around 300 guests were expected, and knowing that the Belém Tower could only accommodate about 70 guests, she replied, in her characteristically direct way: “We wouldn't even fit in the dungeons!” She proposed holding the ceremony at the Jerónimos Monastery instead, a space that embodied the spirit of discovery and unknown that had been part of the CF’s identity from the beginning.

The event was a success and, later that same year, Maria João was invited to join the CF team. She recalls those early days, still in the offices at Praça Duque de Saldanha, spent among just seven people “with such humour, such joy and such desire for the future.” “They had something very special,” she told me, “something that felt written in stone and that was very unusual in Portugal at the time: you never say no to anything. You analyse and then decide”. It was in this spirit that Leonor Beleza responded when Maria João asked what, exactly, she wanted her to do, which Maria João remembers vividly: “She looked at me, with her eyes wide open, and said: everything!” Maria João laughed and told me, when I interviewed her: “Doing everything takes a bit of madness, don’t you think?,” to which I replied with another question, “And some passion too?!” Maria João answered back to me immediately: “Well, yes, but passion is a kind of madness too!” And we both laughed.

Since the beginning of her journey at the CF in the Centre for the Unknown, as Coordinator of Institutional and Public Relations, Maria João has accompanied approximately 17,000 visitors, an extraordinary number that reflects the Foundation’s visibility and reputation. These visits, she explained, are part of fulfilling the CF's social mission, and she is delighted whenever former visitors, students, event participants, or even current members of the CF her years later still remember how the experience impacted them.

The vision of having "doctors and researchers working side-by-side" has become a reality. For Maria João, who has contributed to the CF's trajectory, this stands as one of the greatest changes she has seen. Today, this integration is a reality and one of the CF’s defining characteristics and a key reason for its international reputation, which she follows with great pride. 

I asked her what makes the CF so special and what she would miss most if she ever left. Her response was immediate: “It’s so special that I can’t imagine leaving. It was a leap forward. The future came to me.” She remembers the “camaraderie of a small team of courageous, magnetic people, the informality, the casual atmosphere, and the laughter”. She thinks of the many remarkable moments along the way, created by people she describes as “uniquely brilliant”. “There are so many memories that choosing just one is difficult, but I will. I got to meet Simone Veil, one of the Curators of the FC and former Minister of Health in France, who greatly impressed me with the clarity of her intelligence and courage in life.” Now, as we near the end of this collection of 20 stories, it’s impossible not to notice the same thread running through all of them: a world of episodes starring extraordinary people, forming the living history of the CF.

Looking ahead to the next twenty years, Maria João hopes “that the Foundation continues to think about the future in an almost obsessive way”. She wishes that this future, if within reach, will continue to leave everything open to creativity, as it always has, allowing us to push ever closer to the frontier of our dreams with perseverance.
 

Maria João Villas-Boas, Institutional and Public Relations Coordinator, Champalimaud Foundation.

Text by Diana Cadete, Digital & Events Manager of the Champalimaud Foundation's Communication, Events & Outreach Team

Full 20 Years, 20 Stories Collection here.