3 days ago
My Swedish Career: 'You can influence the way people behave towards foreigners'
Francisca Leonardo, or Frankie, shares the story of how a major health scare, just a couple of years after arriving in Sweden from Canada, sparked a radical career change: from biotechnology to running her own, unique travel brand in Stockholm.
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Francisca Leonardo, or Frankie, had been in Sweden for two years and was just about to complete her master's in biotechnology and step onto the corporate career ladder.
Then doctors told her that she was going to die.
It turned out to be a misdiagnosis, but fundamentally changed the course of her life.
"I'm fine now, but it was a major health scare. After that, I had some sense that I needed to have some time for myself, almost like a gap year where I could just think about what was a priority for me. Where did my values actually align?" she tells The Local.
"Some of the jobs I was applying to made sense with the career trajectory that I was on, but they didn't make sense to how I aligned with those values. When I realised this, and how disposable I was to those companies, I was like 'what am I doing?'"
She decided that she needed to change her whole idea of the direction her life was going to take, so she took some time off after her studies to think about her core values and which jobs aligned with them, listing them in a spreadsheet and sending some 300 applications.
"I ended up getting so many interviews, but then I would get to the last step, and I would never be picked. But I never questioned my worth – I had so many different work experiences and felt I had so much value, potential and skills to give to the world. So instead of saying 'this is a reflection of me and my skill set' I just thought 'if this perfect job that aligns with my values doesn't exist, then I've got to create it," she says.
She realised that if she were to take that leap, she was in the perfect position to do so.
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"There's so much privilege in saying that, but I had all the right conditions. I had time, I had money because I worked hard all through college and had saved a lot of money, I had family and friends – and the most important one was that I had a lot of passport privilege, because I'm a dual citizen of Portugal and Canada, so my Portuguese passport allowed me to stay in Sweden without having to settle for another job just to get a visa."
That's how Frankie, in her own words, became an entrepreneur by accident.
Frankie at the Vaxholm Fortress in the Stockholm archipelago. Photo: Private
She set up XperienceSthlm, a travel brand and tour operator which introduces tourists and newcomers to the Swedish capital. But they don't take their customers to the usual stops – instead Frankieis keen to show the city from a local's perspective.
The idea came to her on a course in design thinking at OpenLab, located at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where she worked on a project for the City of Stockholm where it became clear that there's often a big information gap between local businesses or social services provided on the ground and the top-level decision-makers who are supposed to decide who should get funding for what.
"Politicians only hear about the problems. They don't hear about what's already working, so they end up defunding things because they think 'oh, this is irrelevant, because I don't hear anything bad about it, so I don't need to add more money to it'. But the only reason why it's working is because there's something working there, right, and they don't hear what that is. They never hear about what's happening and being done well," she argues.
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Similarly, most tourists who come to Stockholm don't know it on a deep level, and end up walking around the city without really engaging with the local activities it has to offer.
At a time when a lot of cities and communities around the world are actively trying to deter visitors to avoid being overrun by tourists, Frankie and her team have spent a lot of time speaking with Stockholmers to find out how they think they could get the most value out of international visitors, making sure that XperienceSthlm is part of the solution.
"The soft power of tourism is that you bring people who are foreign to a new place to understand it more fully. And in doing so, you also need to involve a local perspective. You can influence the way people behave towards each other, and the way they behave towards foreigners, towards people who they consider as 'the other'," she says.
Frankie on one of her XperienceSthlm tours. Photo: Private
"I really do think it's so important to consider yourself not in a vacuum, but how you affect the local environment, because as a small business, you're going to start to have power over how people interact with their environment, the landscape, especially as you grow."
"The other aspect is that when you include locals, you get people to adopt and adapt and feel part of something. Not only do they feel like you're not overstepping, but they feel encouraged, they feel like 'someone actually cares about my opinion, about how my business affects the local community, someone cares to support me as a business."
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Listening to customers is crucial for building loyalty, she argues, and her work speaking with local communities, business owners and decision-makers around Stockholm has led her to the conclusion that so many problems could be fixed by talking to one another.
"I think that is something we need to build in our society, a fabric of connections, of inter-help that facilitates this communication where I get feedback from you, you get feedback from me, we listen, and then we can build from there. Because right now, I believe that a lot of the institutions that have just crumbled have been because one, lack of communication, and two, lack of cooperation. Communication enables cooperation, it informs decision-making and people get to know each other as people," she says.
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XperienceSthlm has now grown from a team of six to a staff of 12, who together speak 15 different languages. They offer sightseeing tours of both the main attractions and hidden gems – but all from a local's perspective – and host community-building events.
Frankie has also co-founded a new non-profit network, HereForHer, between women entrepreneurs across Swedish cities, where they share knowledge and resources to provide a community for those who are about to start their entrepreneurial ventures.
Frankie giving a presentation about XperienceSthlm. Photo: Private
For her, a big draw of entrepreneurship isn't just managing a company, but leading people. She knows from her own personal experience how much of a help a solid social safety net can be when pursuing your dreams, and she wants to create that safety net for others.
"I want to be the cheerleader for everyone, because I think the social contract of saying 'I want to do these things, can you hold me accountable' is one of the main reasons why I've been able to accomplish all I've accomplished. It's to have these relationships with people, and that's why I believe ecosystems and networks of people who are supportive are so important as well. They become your safety net, even if nothing else is present."
