For Adília Alves, Product Manager of KLINGER Portugal, water isn’t just a career, it's a state of mind.
Adília Alves is quick to apologize for her perceived lack of fluency in her third language, but her speech is peppered with water puns - a form of humor difficult to master even in one’s native tongue. Much like a rip tide, her punch lines sneak up on the listener, lurking always ready beneath the surface. Endearingly humble and supremely talented, she hand waves away the time intensive process of researching, planning, and pitching fluid control projects: “I need to stay with the current.”
A strong math and computing student, Adília earned a mechanical engineering degree with a specialization in production. After college, her first professional role was an internship at an aluminum foundry. She was then hired at Equifluxo, a water treatment and filtration company that eventually was acquired by KLINGER Portugal. As the company expanded over the years, her back-office role grew to encompass full projects from start to finish: site visits to determine scope, specifications and system planning, and bidding and invoicing. Adília credits that time for her ability to adjust to an ever-changing list of responsibilities, explaining, “It was a great way to learn a little bit about everything, and now it’s not very difficult to adapt. I’m going with the flow.”
Currently another KLINGER Portugal merger, this time with LiberAqua, has Adília again studying to increase her skill set. This newly expanded portfolio brings a fresh catalog of products for her to master, in order to incorporate the many additional options into future bids and designs. Though there is much to learn, she is confident that her core skills will provide a solid foundation to ensure success. As she reasons, “I’ve worked with some products that are different from these new ones, but most of the difference is just changing the context. Basically, my job will be the same.” With this change, her work will expand from mostly pretreatment and filtration of wastewater to also include sludge dewatering and thickening machines and others.
Washing it all away
Though the length of her career speaks for itself, part of Adília’s success is due to mastering the balance of diligently performing meticulous work while also letting troubles roll off her back like... well, water. The nature of public tenders requires her to provide exacting documents with no room for mistakes; these painstaking projects with rigid requirements have served to make obvious her knack for the role. She acknowledges the intensity of these assignments, but simultaneously admits,
“What is more demanding is what I like.”
Navigating the water engineering with a splash of humor and a tide of expertise, Adília Alves effortlessly blends technical prowess with a witty current, always ready to dive deep into the next challenge.
After a day full of deep focus work, she takes to the outdoors to wash away the stress. Hiking or running with her dog are her preferred methods to unwind, allowing her to arrive each day fresh and ready to begin anew. Despite this sure-fire way to decompress, water is never that far from her mind. She laughs as she relates, “I live between the mountain and the sea and the river, so I run from the river to the beach.”
Between the serenity of nature and the rigor of engineering, Adília finds balance. Hiking away the day's stress, she embodies resilience and renewal, just like the water that inspires her.
When it comes to being a woman in an engineering role, Adília is matter of fact about having earned her place. She notes that the climate has improved during her years in the field, though she can recall some difficulties that occurred early in her career. When faced with skepticism from male supervisors, Adília not only defended her prowess but, in true form, made a witty reference: “A guy in a job interview asked me if I have a problem with getting my hands dirty. I said ‘I don’t bite my nails. So no, I don't have a problem.’ After all, the water cleans everything.” While literally true, this mind set also applies in the abstract. Throughout a career defined by constant change, washing away the old in favor of a fresh start has served Adília well.
