Interview with Breno Teixeira, “Construindo o Futuro” founder

While many walk away from LALA with new visions, passions, and ideas for social impact, Breno Teixeira walked away from the first-ever LALA Bootcamp, where he was the youngest student, as a new person with a newfound look on life.

From speaking to someone at a networking dinner that had just become vegetarian after watching Cowspiracy to embracing some of the ideals expressed by those in the camp, Breno walked away with newfound personal motivations. “After the Bootcamp, I became a vegetarian, I started journaling, I started meditating,” Breno said. “These are things that I never expected myself doing before the camp.”

Soon thereafter, Breno lost one of his best friends to depression, and he believes some of these new tools helped him get through it, in addition to his loving relationship with his mother.“She’s always open to the things and ideas I bring to the house, and she always supports me, which is very special to me to have someone by my side who really supports me and is really open to the values I bring to my home,” Breno said.

Breno’s self-reflection only continued from there. “I started reading some articles about personal growth, and that really changed how I looked at my life,” Breno said. “At the beginning of 2017, I began this journey of questioning myself, my beliefs, and everything happening in my life, what I wanted to do in the future and why?”

One of the things he realized was that a lot of the goals he had up until that point were very ego-oriented desires and goals, so he strived to become a more genuine and authentic person as he questioned himself further. Coincidentally one of the books that changed his life the most, Ego is The Enemy, he read during the LALA Bootcamp, so that week was a “whole transformation happening not just in the camp itself but through other influences I was having at that moment as well.”

Breno took his journey of self-realization seriously and kept up with journaling and meditating on Headspace every day, even beginning to read or follow the teachings of stoicism and Buddhism, which he says helped him reorient who he was. “I was this person that talked a lot, a lot, a lot, and sometimes I wasn’t even listening to the person that was talking to me,” Breno said in a striking self-reflection. “I was not having a conversation, I was trying to give a lecture, and that was not cool. Meditating and journaling helped me the most.”

Breno did not stop there, starting his company Construindo o Futuro to help others launch innovative ideas to solve some of the world’s most complex problems.

“I really care a lot about many different issues,” Breno said. “So I was thinking, ‘Maybe I start a project on education or on sustainability, I didn’t know exactly, and I didn’t want to start something too specific, I wanted to start something that could help a lot of issues.”

So Breno started bringing other like-minded students together after school to help them build organizations or projects they were passionate about because he did not believe in the mantra of having to finish school before he could have an impact on the world. “People started coming to school late to create something meaningful to their community, trying to make a change, and for me, that was really priceless,” Breno said.

“I want to help people with my experience creating projects to make their knowledge helpful for society,” Breno said. “I want to keep helping people create projects so they can use their knowledge to help society. In both the short term and long term, what I want my life to be is a person that is helping and managing people to do their best in the causes that they care about.”

Despite Construindo o Futuro reaching more than 4,000 people, what Breno cares most about is the individual people he had impacted, mentioning that it meant the world to him when one person told him that Construindo o Futuro brought meaning into his life.

In terms of long-term goals, Breno strives to accomplish things of personal importance. “How can I be the best version of Breno Teixeira? How can I be a better friend and family member and spend my free time with them and my relationships? This is what I will spend most of the time in my life on, not on seeking awards or superficial things.”