Carlota Pi: "I became an entrepreneur so I could be a mother"

Carlota Pi, an engineer and businesswoman, grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. "Since we had a business, at home we talked about sales, clients, and whether they were happy. And this has influenced me a great deal," she explains in statements to'CompaniesWith the idea that the ultimate purpose of any company should be to make the world a better place, Pi co-founded Holaluz in 2010, the energy company that promotes the democratization of green energy.

The engineer's first job was at age 14, teaching mathematics. Pi was an excellent student; she loved reading and writing as much as numbers and physics: "I knew I would get into any degree program I wanted, so I flipped a coin to decide, and it landed on industrial engineering in Barcelona." "I enjoyed my degree, but I also suffered a lot." And, in fact, if she had to choose again now, she says she might be a doctor, a teacher, or a writer.

After several years of experience in the sector, the engineer met the future co-founders of Holaluz during her master's program: "Oriol and Ferran had wanted to start a business for some time, and one day we met." The engineer had been thinking for a few weeks about setting up a technology company to produce green, easy and cheap energy for end customers: "I had already done a businessplan And around the third beer, I went to grab my backpack and said to them, "We can do this." It was a document of about forty or fifty pages. They read it faster than anyone could ever read it. Ten minutes later, they said, "Let's take a look." And that's how we started. We didn't overthink it; we had a good idea and were really eager to work," she explains. She adds, "Where others see risk, we saw opportunities."

When she started the company, Pi already had two daughters: "I became an entrepreneur so I could be a mother. Because when you work for yourself, you work so much more. You work all the hours, every day, but you have incredible flexibility and freedom with your time." "I have three teenagers, and I've picked them up from school 90% of the days of their entire lives." However, on the other hand, she hasn't slept much.

Mother and professional

And she couldn't do that in any other system: "I clearly saw that it was impossible for me to be both my mother and the professional I wanted to be within that structure. It was like trying to fit a small ball into a square hole." "That only worked if the ball was smaller. And I wasn't willing to make myself smaller," she explains.

"The world is made by men, white, heterosexual, from the First World," and every time you don't fit within these standards, "you're considered worse," the businesswoman points out. That's why she supports quotas and regulations that mandate women on boards of directors: "Either you introduce positive bias to change the system that promotes new individuals, or it's impossible."

"I've been overwhelmed, because what we do is uncomfortable for thestatus quo"The Holaluz executive states. She asserts that, in high-level meetings, some men have used their voice and position to exert a clear sense of superiority: "They've shouted at me and booed me, they've belittled me, banging their fists on the table. I know that if I had been a man, they wouldn't have had the nerve to do it."

She became fully aware that this situation wasn't normal when a newly hired executive told her that such behavior wasn't appropriate in a corporate governance setting. "Being a Catalan woman driving transformative change, for some..."

The biggest lesson learned during these years is choosing the right people to surround yourself with: "The only thing that matters is who you're with. Why, where you go, why you go, how you go makes a big difference. And in the end, what determines all of this is the people you're with."

The company's effort

As far as personal finances are concerned, she doesn't consider herself a thrifty person. She doesn't skimp on her daughters' education, buying good food, or taking nice family trips. "On the other hand, the best clothes I own have always been gifts from my husband. I don't buy anything without a sale," she points out. Furthermore, her best investment was buying the house: "It was practically in ruins, and it was incredibly difficult to fix it up. But three teenagers can live comfortably in our house." It was a huge effort, but she insists it was a great investment in her life.

Pi wants to continue growing professionally: "To continue our revolution of transforming rooftops into next-generation electrical systems, democratizing energy and giving people access to operating in more countries."