João Barros, CEO of the global division of Aquinos: “One of the things I ask a lot of my people is not to be afraid of making mistakes”
João Barros graduated in Management, at the same time as he concluded his career at the Porto Conservatory, where he learned to master the clarinet. Along the way, he also acquired sport. He played volleyball from a young age and in the last year he played he was called up to the national team. This intense routine – study, music and sport – is an inheritance from his parents who, from an early age, made him realize the importance of being a complete person and professional, with different sensibilities.
The current CEO of the Global Sofa Division of the Aquinos Group, started his career at Sonae Indústria. A decisive launching pad for João, who believes that “the beginning of a career is remarkable and relevant, therefore our choices must be considered. It is better to reflect carefully, if we have the opportunity, about the place where we started”.
But the awareness of the strength of the leadership of the group founded by Belmiro de Azevedo, made him look to the world in order to grow in his career. “There is a moment when I look at the organization, I see very strong, very good superiors and I think that perhaps it is better to look at the world because the house was built there, it was solid and it would be more difficult to have opportunities”, he recalls.
Europod and Expresso
Cátia Mateus and João Barros, CEO of Grupo Aquinos’ Global Sofa Division, during the live recording of the podcast “O CEO é o Limite” on The Voice Leadership, Nova SBE’s mentoring program for SMEs
José Fonseca Fernandes
Nuno Fox
The opportunity would eventually arise at the ITW Group, where he entered through the door of the finance department, ending up accumulating multiple strategic positions and challenges in an international context. For more than a decade he worked from Paris.
A moment of “fight for survival” in João’s family’s life led him to prioritize what is truly important, his own. He took a break from his career and returned to Portugal. And it was here that, with the battle already won, he decided to return to the job market and start over from scratch. “I had few or no contacts and my name was made abroad,” she recalls, admitting that it took a lot of resilience and focus.
Since 2023, he has led the global division of the Aquinos group and is in charge of the expansion strategy of the company specializing in sofas and mattresses, directly leading 2,500 professionals, in a business segment with annual revenue of close to 300 million euros. This is the journey we talk about in this week’s episode.
Nuno Fox
Cátia Mateus podcast The CEO is the limit
The CEO Is the Limit is Express’s leadership and career podcast. Every week, journalist Cátia Mateus shows who the Portuguese managers who marked the past, those who direct today and those who promise to shape the future are, how they started and what they did to reach the top. Inspiring stories, told in the first person, by those who dare to make things happen. Listen to other episodes:
