She was still a teenager, exactly a quarter of a century ago, when she got her first and only job at Tecidos da Viúva de Carlos da Silva Areias & Cª factory, commonly known as BomDia, the name of the brand it produces.
he year was 1993 and Laura Carvalho, now 42 years old, had just finished her sophomore year and decided that she wouldn’t wait any longer to start making money, leaving behind her dream of becoming a doctor.
It wasn’t an easy decision, especially for her parents, Albertina and Virgilio, who at the time were living in Alsace (where Laura was born and lived until the age of five) and would most certainly like to have the youngest of their two daughters continue with her education.
Laura, who grew up in Santo Tirso, spared no effort and started sending resumes to every company she knew and ended up getting called to Vizela. BomDia needed someone to organize the company’s archives, so she grabbed the opportunity with both hands. “It was great. I made myself available to do anything. I had a huge hunger for learning “, she recalls.
It wasn’t long before she was dealing with the entire factory‘s archive, the first step on a journey that would take her to the top of the mountain in 2016, when she accepted the invitation to take over as the company’s general director.
“BomDia was my university. People believed in me, in particular Carlos Gonçalves (the company’s president and shareholder). And I felt the desire and the obligation to live up to those expectations”, summarizes Laura, an ambitious woman who is perfectly aware of what she wants: “I want to be excellent!”
In the pursuit of excellence, and to quench her hunger for knowledge, she accumulated after-hours courses (English, French, computer science, among others) that helped her build a firm career, one that’s only available for those who set aside the elevator and go up the stairs in a climb to the top. After the archive came the logistics department, followed by the commercial sector and the product development direction – that included design coordination.
“My parents taught me the right values: to honour my commitments, to put my soul into my job, to always improve my abilities and to respect the work of others”, says Laura, inoculated since childhood with the virus of the best of ambitions – the one that collects the fruits of its work and that doesn’t want more than what’s yours.
Accustomed to working with will and heart, giving every day a little more and trying to be always better than the day before, the BomDia’s general director acknowledges that she doesn’t know the name of all 150 company’s workers, but ensures that there’s no day that passes that she doesn’t go down to the factory floor.
“I want people to produce more and more, but I also want them to feel good and happy to work here. It’s a bad sign when someone doesn’t like to enter the company in the morning…”, says this ambitious woman who arrives at the factory before nine o’clock, coming from the gym (where she goes every day, including Saturdays, to complete a one-hour program specifically designed for her by a personal trainer), and never knows when she’ll be able to leave.
Single, Laura confesses to being an incorrigible workaholic: “I’ll never stop being like this. It was my choice. Circumstances led me to this.”
During her 25 years working at BomDia, where she had her first and, until now, only job, she has felt tempted to have a change of scenery. However, after careful consideration, she has always resisted that urge.
“The way the Gonçalves’ family grabbed the factory was a very positive turn. They have a very strong vision of what the future should be. I’m in love with BomDia. I think it’s where I am going to work until I retire”, concludes Laura Carvalho, a woman who already has 22 Heimtextil fairs in the curriculum and whose ambition is as good and resistant as BomDia’s felts.
Family Single Training Highschool diploma, to which she added a series of technical courses House A rented apartment in Vizela, very close to the factory Car Renault Dacia Laptop Acer Mobile phone The company’s Huawei and her personal phone, a Samsung Hobbies She is addicted to gymnastics and enjoys going to the movies with her 23-year-old niece Sara Vacations Last year, she spent a week in Lisbon with her niece and made a trip to the north with her friends. This year she went to Barcelona Golden rule In life, we don’t have time to lose, only time to live!