lmost four years ago, when she knocked on the company’s doors, the administration proposed two distinct routes for her takeover, in a company that was already entrenched in the higher ranking of the very attended and competitive Portuguese textile sector. Therefore, the task proved itself enormous, and the choice had to be thought out. Between a sort of ‘tour’ taking her to the depths of a gigantic machine – which proved itself necessarily long –, or betting on a collaboration with a company parallel to JF Almeida – Mi Casa Es Tu Casa –, Juliana Almeida only hesitated as long as it took her to envision both sceneries. She chose the latter: after all, her diploma was her credentials.

Wisdom, although, was yet to arrive: “we get out of college not knowing what a company is really about, how it works, how it’s run”, she says – to convey the message that learning didn’t end at university: it actually began at JF Almeida. Judging by the rest of the story, it seems Juliana has learned quickly: less than four years later, she accumulates her collaboration at Mi Casa with the management of the JF’s counterpart for real estate (RMJJ), and she also runs the group’s marketing department – where she develops a house magazine, Loom.

However, despite all the rush with which she learned how to build a company like JF Almeida, and the daily fuss that this learning requires, the process of evolving her career seems to be the least of her concerns. Being the youngest of four children, Juliana is not committed to a race with her older siblings (Rui, Miguel and João, from oldest to youngest) for the succession. “We have a Spanish consulting company currently devising a family protocol, though the family’s option is that the four become equal partners in management, where decisions are made according to the majority” (necessarily 3 to 1, in the worse case scenario) of this electoral college of sorts.

Meanwhile, something had changed: in the midst of the daily responsibilities for three different fronts, Juliana Almeida still found the time to get married – with someone that rushes even more than she does: Miguel Correia, a race car driver and a serious case of success – and, most outstanding of all, to become a mother for the first time. Vasco made himself known during their honeymoon (spent in the Maldives and Dubai), and is dictating his laws since then. It seems that suddenly everything has gained a different perspective, and it doesn’t even cross Juliana Almeida’s mind to become an absent mother.