When you meet Felipe Salvador, the words that come to mind are energy and perseverance. When he was nine years old, his family got devastating news. Salvador was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor that caused epilepsy. His illness made him tired and interfered with his daily activities, yet he was determined to be like the other kids. He rallied to get back to his old self and took up futsal—a high-exertion indoor soccer game played on a hard floor—and soon became a leading player.
“I had seizures at night, so I was extra tired when I woke up and went to school,” Salvador says. “My parents encouraged me to face my difficulties, so I showed my strength, faced my problems, and overcame them. It was important for shaping my character, and now hardly anything shakes me.”
Salvador, who grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, demonstrated he was a hard worker even off the futsal court. At age 14, he got his first job selling perfume at a neighborhood store. At 15, he worked as a camp counselor and, at 19, was recruited by an Argentine team to play professional futsal. But his career was cut short when he broke his leg only a month into the season. It was heart-breaking. Yet now, he sees it as good fortune; it allowed him to continue his education.
He enrolled at Mackenzie Presbyterian University to study advertising and completed post-graduate work in digital marketing at Brazil’s Higher School of Advertising and Marketing (ESPM).
“I was creative, imaginative, and ambitious my whole life,” Salvador says. “When I was young, my favorite film was Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory because it showed creativity and innovation. I guess that was inspiration for my future.”
Since the start of his career, Salvador has focused on digital marketing. Today, he’s head of innovation and digital marketing for Ricoy Supermercados Association, a supermarket chain with six brands and 71 stores. He joined in 2017 and built the digital marketing program, proudly stating he’s consistently driven 600 percent customer engagement growth per month.
He says his biggest professional accomplishment was creating digital marketing strategies and innovation programs for two of his employers. Another high point was in 2021 when he won a POPAI Brasil Award, a prominent retail award in Brazil. The awards were designed to recognize excellence and innovation across the industry and celebrate the most original and effective projects in visual merchandising, displays, retail communication materials, commercial architecture, and visual communication. Salvador’s submission was designed to assist blind shoppers with braille on shelving and tactile flooring.
In addition to his passion for his current work, he’s committed to lifelong learning.
“I continue to take several courses a year at different universities around the world, but it was always my dream to study at Harvard,” Salvador says. “When I started to deepen professionally, I knew I needed a foundation in business, particularly strategy and negotiation. When I found HBS Online, I quickly decided to take Disruptive Strategy because I knew the course would enhance and expand my business vision and improve my work, knowledge, and networking.”
Salvador adds, “I loved the Cold Calls, access to my classmates’ answers, and, most importantly, the content always accompanied by examples. The jobs to be done theory is the best because it combines strategy and innovation."
Salvador describes his three main strengths as energy, hard work, and creativity. He says he’s been successful because he follows emerging trends and keeps his employer at the forefront.
“I read various websites and do my own studies to predict people’s and companies’ behaviors and what new types of services and products they’ll want to buy and sell,” Salvador says. “Because of my creativity, I can come up with millions of ideas from a simple sentence in a book or a trend published on a blog. Someday, I’d like to operate my own innovation, strategy, and digital marketing consultancy and have my name linked to some of the biggest companies in the world.”
Salvador has three other major passions beyond his career: raising awareness about living with a brain tumor and epilepsy, playing football with his friends, and spending time with his wife, parents, and their beloved child.
Through raising awareness, he hopes to honor his best friend Juliana, who felt like his sister. She died from a brain tumor in 2021, which motivated Salvador to share his story to shed light on the disease and the possibility of leading a full life.
“I had always kept my illness a secret, but I felt it was an extremely important step to make this public,” Salvador says. “I decided to start talking about my brain tumor in the hope I could help people with similar problems. By sharing my success professionally, and getting married and becoming a father, I believe I can be a source of inspiration for many children and a source of tranquility and faith for parents who fear for the future of their children.”
Salvador lights up when he talks about his one-year-old daughter and says she’s his biggest inspiration.
“My life has changed a lot since the arrival of my daughter,” Salvador says. “I seek daily to become and maintain an example for her academically, professionally, and as a human being. I want to aspire to be an example of creativity, of the effort of someone who loves to work and works hard daily with a lot of positivity and is fully dedicated to my family. I also want her to know that knowledge and learning must be continuous and for life.”
If you’re interested in continuing your education and want to make innovation a reality, explore our six-week Disruptive Strategy course.
