Hello! My name is Eduardo Brigagão Fatio and I was part of the Berkeley Global Access Program’s (BGA) Fall 2023 cohort!
I was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, which is a huge city—it has around 12 million people living there. When I was little, my parents impressed upon me that it is important to learn English, so I studied at bilingual schools that had an English and a Portuguese curriculum. Once I finished high school, I was accepted into Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa, which is a really strong business and economics school in São Paulo.
After I finished my third year of studies, I had the opportunity to do a visiting-student program and decided to apply to BGA because of the name—everybody knows about Berkeley and how great of a university it is. The BGA program offered me the opportunity to learn from some of the best professors in the world and to live in a city that's really different from São Paulo.
My Berkeley Classes
I took International Trade and Advanced Financial Accounting courses from the Haas School of Business. From the College of Engineering, I took Technology Firm Leadership. I also took Asset Pricing and Portfolio Choice from the Department of Economics.
These courses perfectly fit in with my business major as I have a finance concentration for my degree, so I was looking for courses that would complement this and also make me practice my finance skills.
I took the asset pricing course because I wanted to learn more about economics, which is a subject not fully taught in my degree classes. The professor, Stephen Bianchi, is one of the best on this subject. Also, AI was really making headlines during my time in Berkeley so we had a lot of discussions about that emerging technology.
In the international trade class, we discussed the different trade balances around the world. In Brazil, we're having a lot of discussion about this because we have a more protective president, and his ministers have been putting tariffs on different products and on imports.
The quality of the discussions in my Berkeley classes is what I miss the most. Berkeley students are really committed to their classes so the discussions are at a really high level.
Discussions Are Key
There's a different mentality between Brazilian and American students. In Brazil, we're worried about passing the class; our GPA doesn't have a lot of effect on where we end up going to work. This completely changes the dynamics of the course because we are less involved in the classes as compared to Berkeley students.
The quality of the discussions in my Berkeley classes is what I miss the most. Berkeley students are really committed to their classes so the discussions are at a really high level.
In one of my business classes, the professor brought numerous Harvard Business Review case studies, so the class time was mostly devoted to discussing those examples. The course was really dependent on how engaged the students were, and the professor was really good at keeping everybody involved. This class was every Tuesday and Thursday, from 8 to 9:30 am, and those discussions really made the class desirable to go to—especially at 8 am!
This experience is really different because it offers an exchange of cultures and communities, and you start learning new things about different countries and being exposed to different beliefs.
Diverse Community Creates Lifelong Memories
Also, Berkeley is a really diverse university, so I had contact with people from all over the world. This was a huge opportunity for me. I made Brazilian friends with whom I’m still in contact, but I also made friends with students from Bulgaria, Israel, France, Germany—I actually played soccer with a German team, which was really nice. Sometimes our games were at 9:30 pm and it was cold. Whether we won or not, the experience of playing with different people and getting to know them, and then the dinners afterward are things I will always remember.
I made friends with people who I never would have met without BGA and we’ve become really close.
This experience is really different because it offers an exchange of cultures and communities, and you start learning new things about different countries and being exposed to different beliefs.
Here’s an example. One day, my friends from Israel invited me to have dinner at their rabbi’s house. That’s something I had never done before and had never thought of doing. But I went and met a lot of different people with different stories from a different community, a different religion. This is something that I'll remember for years to come.
It’s really different from what I have here in Brazil. I really miss it.
Explore, Explore, Explore!
During my time in Berkeley, I traveled to Napa, went to Lake Tahoe a couple of times and, of course, explored San Francisco, which is beautiful and one of my favorite cities in the U.S.
One of the first things I did when I got to Berkeley was take BART to San Francisco with some friends and we rented bikes and cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge and then into Sausalito, a cute little town.
Tahoe is a really nice place to visit, see the lake and go hiking or skiing.
Napa is only an hour-and-a-half away, and if you’re 21 or older definitely do some wine tasting. The wineries are really beautiful and the people are so welcoming.
Check out one of the Cal football games if you’re studying in Berkeley in the fall. I am an American football fan—I watch it here in Brazil—and it was a lot of fun to go to the stadium and watch the games.
I also recommend visiting Yosemite National Park. It’s so beautiful and was a trip that I really enjoyed.
I actually recommended BGA to my cousin! She came to visit me and liked what she saw, so she decided to apply and is now at Berkeley in the program. My family is in Berkeley right now, visiting my cousin, so I gave a lot of these tips to them!
Lessons Learned Applied to My Internship
I'm in my final year, and in Brazil we have to complete a mandatory internship for a full year, in addition to taking some classes.
I'm working at igc partners, and I work specifically in their agricultural sector. We advise sell-side companies in the middle market—mostly family-owned companies. We don't advise companies that are trying to buy another company. It’s a huge mergers and acquisitions firm in Brazil, and we've actually expanded to the U.S. with a new office in Miami.
What attracted me to this firm is that we have so many different family-owned businesses in Brazil, and each one has their specific story and attachment to their company. So selling the company is not like Nike buying another company, but it’s someone selling the work that their family created. We need to do our best to satisfy what the family has worked so hard for over so many years.
Berkeley definitely helped me gain experience and the knowledge to do this internship. I believe I'm going to be doing this type of work for some years ahead. I believe I have more experience to gain before I decide to maybe do something on my own. If I decide to become an entrepreneur, the experience in Berkeley and the context I got in Berkeley will help me a lot.
My Advice to You: Just Say Yes
Be open to everything because you'll be able to unlock a lot of opportunities that you might not be able to take advantage of anywhere else. You may be tired and want to stay home, but always say, “Yes!”
You won't regret it—they will be stories to tell for years and years to come.
