Hi there! My name is Agatha Abreu. I am half Brazilian and half Portuguese, and I currently live in Cork, in the rainy (but lovely) Ireland. I consider myself part of the Y generation: gamer, online since always and constantly taking pictures (my phone is my best friend). During my childhood, I always stood out because of my writing, drawings and talkative manner (heritage from my happy and noisy family I guess). Years later, I put everything in a blender and decided to study Social Communication – Bachelor in Journalism, at the Catholic University of Santos.

 

In Brazil, my experience started during college, when my grades in the discipline of New Technologies brought me an invite to be part of the University's website team; responsible for content and illustration. Next, I integrated the online crew of A Tribuna Journal (the main newspaper/portal of Santos and the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo's coast). After having finished my studies, I also worked as Digital Media Analyst in Itanhaém City Council and as a freelance content writer for a few websites and blogs.

 

In 2011, I passed the selection to work for Giusti Comunicação, a Public Relations company in the capital of São Paulo. There, I was promoted four times in three years, achieving the position of Manager and being responsible for a set of five companies – including Tecnisa (recognized by Google as the company in the Real Estate segment that has the best practices in sponsored links in the world), 3corações Group (the second largest coffee company in Brazil) and SBF Group (holder of Centauro, By Tennis and Nike Store in Brazil).

At this point, my knowledge baggage was heavy and I had learnt a lot during those years, but to go further I knew that English was a must. So I had to make the biggest decision of my life: pack my bags, leave everything behind and go to Ireland searching for new experiences. And that was my best idea of all times, my friends. Learning English and getting to know people from all around the world not only expanded my vision about writing, but also about languages in general. I started to welcome new students in the country, assisted friends with the Portuguese-English transition, helped people with translation and even became an interpreter when needed. My passion for linguistics got bigger and a new path within communication started to be built for me.

 

I began to work as Content Reviewer/Writer, gaining more experience in the area, and then one day... it happened. The opportunity to use my language and tech skills together with my hobbies was finally available, and a whole new journey started when I joined the Video Games Localisation Quality Assurance (LQA) team at Keywords Studios. Remember when I said above that coming to Ireland was my best idea of all times? Well, I was working with video games as my official job, so... make of that what you wish!

After almost 5 years and 40 games later though, it was time to take on new challenges. And here is where my life took a turn that I wasn't expecting but somehow joked about it in the past. See, back in 2011, when I was a Press Officer in Brazil, several of my clients used to mention Apple very often during our briefing meetings. They wanted their PR campaigns to be more like “what Apple would do”, their press kits to imitate Apple’s “unboxing experience”, have focus on "innovation", and so on. After one of those meetings, my boss at the time pointed out how frequently we got those requests, to which I replied “Well, if we can see this as a training, today we work inspired BY Apple so tomorrow we can work FOR Apple”. Back then, it sounded nothing but a humorous comment, though little did I know that my words had been taken as a tiny seed by the universe, growing in the background while my life choices and career path were taking me exactly to where I was supposed to be. And now, so many years later, I made it: I'm part of Apple's team, trying to break Siri every day, as a Localisation QA Engineer :)