I was 24 years old, eleven months into my first engineering role, and the only person left in the building who could recalculate a satellite migration. My mentor was on vacation. The project had just been moved up. And a salesperson I'd never worked closely with was trying to get me replaced.
This is a story about what happened next. But more than that, it's about what I learned — about bias, about trust, and about giving people a minute.
I started my career at Claro Satélites in Brazil. Spectrum engineering. Our team was responsible for calculating the power that ground equipment needed to maintain proper communications through our satellites. Get the numbers wrong, and a client's link doesn't work. Get them right, and nobody notices — which is exactly how satellite communications should feel.
The team I joined had been together for decades. Thirty-plus years, some of them, at the same company. They knew every system, every quirk, every undocumented workaround that lived in someone's head and nowhere else. They had a bond built over years of shared problems and shared solutions.
I walked in with a degree and a lot of theory.
I didn't want to wait thirty years to earn my place. So I did the only thing I knew how to do — I learned. I listened carefully to every explanation I was given, wrote everything down, then went back to my desk and tried to run the calculations myself. I'd push as far as I could before asking for help. When I got stuck, I'd ask one precise question, get the answer, and go back to pushing.
Eleven months of that.
Then my mentor left for a month-long vacation. And right around the same time, we were about to decommission one of our satellites. Every client on that satellite needed to be migrated — their links recalculated, reassigned, and tested on new birds. It was a significant project. And I was the only spectrum engineer available to run it.
That's when a salesperson in the company got nervous.
He didn't come to me. He went to Antonio, a senior engineer on my team, and raised his concern directly. His argument was simple: how could someone with less than a year on the job be the sole person responsible for a satellite migration?
He wanted someone else assigned to the project.
Here's what matters about that moment. The salesperson didn't understand what I had to do. He hadn't seen my work. He didn't know what I'd delivered over the previous eleven months or how I'd spent every one of those days. His concern wasn't based on evidence. It was based on three facts: my age, my time at the company, and my gender.
He looked at me and saw risk.
Antonio looked at me and saw something else.
He'd been in the room for those eleven months. He'd watched me push through calculations on my own. He'd seen the quality of my work. He knew what the migration required, and he knew what I was capable of delivering.
So when the salesperson asked to have me replaced, Antonio gave him a direct answer: "Luiza is capable of managing this project, and she is your main point of contact."
That was it. No long defense. No caveats. Just a clear statement from someone who had the context to make it.
The ball was back in my court.
Every day, I received three to four new activation requests to calculate. On a normal week, we might get two in a day. Each set of calculations needed to be sent to operations within two days. The usual turnaround was five.
I didn't complain about the pace. I didn't stop to think about whether it was fair. I didn't have time to question my abilities. I just did the calculations.
For three weeks, the salesperson came to me every day with at least one urgent request. And I delivered every single one. Not a single activation was delayed. Every link was tested by operations. Every one worked.
The migration that was planned for two months — I finished it in three weeks.
Here's the part of this story that I think about the most.
After it was done, the salesperson thanked me. Not reluctantly, not through gritted teeth — genuinely. And after that project, he was completely comfortable working with me. We had a good professional relationship from that point on.
He wasn't a villain. He was someone making a judgment call without enough information, filtered through assumptions he probably didn't even realize he was making. When the evidence caught up — when he saw what I actually delivered — he adjusted. He gave me that minute.
And that's the thing about bias in technical environments. It's rarely someone standing in your way with intention. More often, it's someone making a fast assessment based on pattern matching — age, tenure, gender — instead of evidence. It's not malice. It's a shortcut. And shortcuts get things wrong.
Two things made the difference for me in that story.
The first was Antonio. He had the context, and he used it. He didn't hedge. He didn't say "let's see how she does." He stated a fact: she's capable, she's your point of contact. That kind of clarity — from someone who's actually seen the work — is worth more than any mentorship program or diversity initiative. It costs nothing and it changes everything.
The second was something I learned about myself. When the pressure came, I didn't freeze. I didn't spiral into self-doubt. I didn't fight the unfairness of the timeline. I just worked. And when I came out the other side, I had something no one could take away — proof, to myself and to everyone watching, that I belonged in that room.
I learned to trust myself. And I learned that sometimes, other people just need a minute to trust me too.
That experience shaped everything that came after. It gave me a quiet confidence that I've carried through every new environment, every unfamiliar room, every moment where someone looked at me and made a fast assumption.
I've been the youngest person in the room many times since Claro. I've been the only woman in technical conversations more times than I can count. And every time, the approach is the same: listen carefully, learn fast, deliver undeniably, and give people a minute.
Most of them come around. The ones worth working with always do.
Luiza is the founder of VeriAura, an AI consultancy that builds custom tools for businesses that have outgrown their SaaS stack. Before that, she was a satellite engineer, a hotel sales strategist, and — for three very intense weeks — the only person standing between a decommissioned satellite and a lot of disconnected clients.
She speaks about women in technical leadership, early-career confidence, and the quiet power of domain expertise. For speaking inquiries, reach out at hello@veriaura.com.