Dive In | Blueprints for Change: Architecture and Tech with Veronica Celis Vergara

Dive into a captivating conversation with Veronica Celis Vergara, the visionary CEO of Valumia, a TEDx speaker, and MIT top innovator under 35. We explore her journey in architecture and sustainable development, discussing the interplay of technology and creativity in architecture, the challenges and opportunities of being a female founder, and her international experiences. Our discussion also takes a look at the architectural academic rigors of Chile, drawing parallels and contrasts with contemporary educational practices, further enriching our understanding of the resilience it demands. Veronica offers a unique perspective, not just as an architect but as a female entrepreneur navigating the tumultuous waters of startup culture. Her insights into establishing Valumia and learning to rise from failure are lessons in tenacity and detachment that every aspiring founder can take to heart.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, stem enthusiasts, welcome back to Cameron's Lab. Dive in the GoTo podcast for STEM students. Craft it with passion by one of your own. I'm Cameron, your enthusiastic and ever curious host. Buckle up for today's insightful episode, ready to dive in? Hello everyone, welcome back to Cameron's Lab. Today I am joined by Veronica Chaliz-Fordegatta. She is the CEO at Volumia and, just to give you a little bit of an insight into her and why I'm really excited to have her today, I'll just give you a quick introduction. So one of the things is going to sound quite similar to her LinkedIn bio, if you've seen it, but she is one. She is, like I said, the CEO at Volumia, mit top innovator under 30. She's a TEDx speaker, a lead GA accredited architect, and she works in architecture and sustainable development and she's a founder as well. Just pretty exciting. So well, Brett, I'm super excited to have you. Thank you for joining me.

Speaker 2: 0:54

No, thank you so much for the invite. It's a true honor.

Speaker 1: 0:58

I guess the first thing I wanted to ask you is what really inspired you to pursue a career in architecture and sustainable development. Was there any early interest?

Speaker 2: 1:07

I'm not, maybe too sure, but I'd say like the biggest threat of her for architecture was fear of boredom. I was actually like right before going to university, until like two months before or so, I was flying and studying like dentistry, because I was really good inside out, you know, and I'm good people in general, and I thought, okay, this would be a good path. But then I realized that I would be doing the same my entire life also hanging out with very little people, and for some reason, architecture popped into my head and I thought of this idea of every project is going to be a new challenge. Every new challenge I'm going to learn something new, so I will never bored and I will always make new people. So that is very naive, very, very naive.

Speaker 1: 2:02

I think it's similar almost to like how I kind of fell into what I want to do. So it's really like my grandpa kind of just showed me things and then I realized that it was developing so quickly. I don't want to be left behind, so just this need to be not bored and be just doing something new all the time. So I love that. So, moving on to your academic journey, so I thought that you have a masters in landscape and territorial design. So I wanted to ask, like why go for a master's? I think a lot of people stop at the bachelor's degree because they're thinking that's enough, which is true. You know it's up to you, but I'm really excited that you actually went further. I wanted to pursue that master's. So what, I guess, inspired you to pursue a master's? And then how do you think that's affected your career path?

Speaker 2: 2:42

now. So since I was very little, I always wanted to have a PhD actually. So masters is, like you know, the pre path to the PhD, which I still don't have, by the way. A second masters but no PhD, like I really wanted to be, which hasn't really worked out just yet, and the masters was kind of like the path to the PhD. So I got part of a scholarship to do the PhD if I wanted to Sorry the master if I wanted to do it.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I like the topic. So I like this concept of working with something bigger than just like the object, which is like the architectural building, you know, to think about more what that building would mean in a city, with that building, or if no building at all, like if paths and zones, how they interact with nature, thought this was really interesting and I think that I wanted to differentiate myself, also because there are so many architects in my country, and I thought, okay, I need, you know, I need that extra edge. So I want to keep studying and I actually did my master's fully while being a full time student, so full time employee, sorry if I was working at the same time of doing the masters, which was insane. I still don't know how I survived, but it was a very nice experience, yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:13

Wow, I don't know if I could do that doing my doing a job, but also masters at the same time. That felt very stressful. It was it does sound very stressful. I wanted to ask because you mentioned that you were still interested in science and technology before you went into architecture. So how did I do these things? How do you integrate tech with your architecture, and what future, I guess, do you see it going with that tech and architecture future? What do you see it going?

Speaker 2: 4:42

So I must say that it's going to sound very weird to like the younger people listening to this, to this podcast, but like I was very lucky in the sense that I got very young computer, so that is a tech obsessed for it, I would say.

Speaker 2: 5:01

So we got our first computer when I was five or six so I started, you know, I was like using like Windows, greenpoint something and MS-DOS to figure out games, like way before I knew how to read, which was crazy, you know, and like this sparked like a bit of a curiosity. So I was always, or like very early on, like playing and exploring computers day before my peers. So I was always I don't know it was always super easy to learn something new behind the screen. It is, it still is, I would say, compared to my generation. I'm always finding that new software or that new piece of thick that is exciting, that I could integrate into my workflow. So I first started more or less as a user, you know, like bringing it through my workflow, like with 3D software, like finnability analytics software as well, and then eventually I started creating tech as well.

Speaker 1: 6:11

And where do you see that going? I suppose, like for people that are like yourself and really enjoying bringing in new tools into their workflow, how do you see that, I guess, changing the way that I guess you do for architecture? I don't really have, like I said, too much of a background in architecture, but it sounds like very, I guess, technically, a lot of drawings that you would have to do. Do you think the technology will help with that at all, or how do you see it changing?

Speaker 2: 6:36

I think it's for sure a double-edged sword. So I went through the leap between AutoCAD, which was 2D drawings, and then the changes to 3D, like building information modeling, which is like not just 3D, but 3D is our intelligence, where the model has data in it. And what is so in the beginning, because I was fortunate enough to learn AutoCAD and then to learn 3D software and like the duration I came right after me that just skipped AutoCAD and learned just Revit, which was like the software that we were using at that time, and Revit at that time had a lot of problems because it could only deal with straight elements. It did curves really, really poorly. So even though it is super useful and it was super useful back then, it's way better now, you know so many years after.

Speaker 2: 7:35

But I saw, like how the limitations of the tool also affected the capacity of sign from those students, because they couldn't reproduce curves and things that sometimes maybe they had in their heads but they just couldn't reproduce them in the software, so they just went back to what the software could do. So it's definitely a double-edged sword and I see it now same with AI. You know there's a lot of AI's work for architecture as well, a lot of things that you would normally consider boring that you can now try and test on with AI, which is great, but on the other hand, you lose that sense of you know the feeling for things because you're not using them all the time, and I think that's a very interesting challenge of our time how the tools that we use limit the kind of creativity that we can have, and vice versa.

Speaker 1: 8:39

I like that the tools that we use can sometimes limit that creativity. That's definitely a quote that I'll be writing down for later, but I think that's a little bit into my next question. I wanted to ask you about your time. So I saw in your profile that you had taught lessons at the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, chile, about. I wanted to ask you about what you noticed in terms of the next generation of architects, like you mentioned already that they were limited sometimes by the technology. They had to just defer to what it could do. But was there anything else that you noticed while teaching them things that maybe they liked or didn't really want to try? This little high level, I suppose, of that experience?

Speaker 2: 9:20

So I had a very small experience with a professor because I was a teacher's advisor professor of a partnership that I co-created between my university and the company that I was working for at the time. It was a very, you know, squared project, I would say very defined by the limits of the project, so I didn't have, like you know, a ton of students, so it was basically one big project that we're working on. But I'm fortunate enough to have still a lot of friends and including my thesis advisor, who is still a professor in my university. So like he's basically, like you know, three years ahead and we talk about it then, like about how the generations are changing.

Speaker 2: 10:07

And there's one thing about architecture in Chile and I've noticed that it's Chile more than anywhere else so architecture when I was a student was brutal. So you would go every Monday. Every Monday we had, you know, like project day Every Monday you would basically go to fail at University. You would go to be told that you're not good, that your project is stupid and that you need to rethink the whole thing, which was, you know, hard breaking. But I would say I learned to not fall in love with my own work and that, I think is very important.

Speaker 2: 10:49

I see, like you know, the critiques have become a lot softer. They have become a lot more dynamic too, like less personal, like you know, less visible. So sometimes the comments were like you're like really, there's like one semester I went home crying every day, you know. I was standing in class and I got my model and I cried all the way back home. You know I'm like home that picked up myself and they went back to class, you know. But this it did taught me a lot of resilience, because you have to show up, you have to keep showing up and sometimes your project will stop. And, like the comments from my professor, is that the new generation? Sure, they are nicer, they are a lot nicer, they are a lot more like, sometimes they are more constructive as well, but they don't know how to fail. I'm like right that we were. We were failing miserably so often.

Speaker 1: 11:59

It sounds like a lot of like learning by doing almost like trial by fire Having to go in there, see what happens and if it doesn't work you have to do it all over again. It sounds very stressful, Very upsetting, heartbreaking.

Speaker 2: 12:10

Total, total trial by fire. You have no idea, like you, it has like no relationship of how much time you put in to the grade that you're going to get. You know you could sometimes building a model for 24 hours straight. You go one day and then it's like, yeah, you got a one, like the worst grade that you can fucking get. Sometimes you would have you'd be working like you know more nifty and maybe took you seven hours, so it was like nothing, nothing and you'll get a seven. You're like what, how? How did this happen? Which is something that no other, like only in the creative industries, really have this right, like art, design, fashion, that where there's like no relationship, there's no correlation of how much time you spent on something and how good it goes. And like I see, like I saw, like also like how brutal it was in comparison to our exchange students. Like we have students from all over the world. None of them cope with the level of demand that we had. They all failed. Oh, wow, it's pretty much anything, yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:31

Well, it's completely different for me. Like you said, I think that's something you can only experience in the creative industry. I do engineering, so as like, the more work, as like because we're doing our senior projects. It's like the more if they always tell us the more work you put in, the better the grade you'll get. But it sounds like an indicator of institute like the more work you put in. It's like a coin toss you don't know. You don't know what will happen.

Speaker 2: 13:51

Well, you never know. So you may encounter. You may encounter a professor that is going through about time and they will put the worst grades than when they're having through. They're going through good time because obviously they hate every other moment, so your project is no better.

Speaker 1: 14:09

Well, an experience, I guess I wanted to bring that into what it's like for you now. So you've transitioned from being a student, so going through that trial by fire, to now you're a CEO of Volumia, which I need to know if you could explain what that is, but also just if you can give a bit of experience. So what is Volumia? And then what is it like now being a female founder in architecture and sustainable development? So if you could share a little bit about that.

Speaker 2: 14:35

So I would say like I slightly want a little to the side of architecture, like at the full time. So I worked as an architect for about six years time and then I've taken projects along the years, projects that I really want to do, but rest of my first job career has been almost fully intact. I did seven years of my first startup, which also failed miserably after seven years. So we did real time transparency in the use of donations it was called the light aid. It was beautiful but it didn't work, which was also another learning of. You cannot fall in love with your work. You have to be able to let it go, which sometimes is very, very hard.

Speaker 2: 15:26

So now I'm working on this new product is very, very recent.

Speaker 2: 15:32

So Volumia is more in the lines of life sustainability specialization. I've worked in sustainability, which first start only in architecture and eventually it kind of expanded and to write and a lot of other things in business in general value change, carbon analysis, vendor analysis, then all this beautiful thing that makes the life cycle project that does this. So Volumia is this idea of a new product for this, specifically targeting startups and at least to help them do their sustainability reporting and sustainability compliance in a context of there's a lot more new relation that is coming especially to the European region for companies that most of the times don't have the time, their resources, like financial resources, also the knowledge to deal with this. So the concept is that companies create a user as a company and then they answer five basic questions, which curates a list of disclosures are relevant to them, based on their size, their industry, their company goals, their geographic location and their revenue, and that shows them like this is a flux and helps them fulfill each disclosure so they can share them with their stakeholders investors, governments.

Speaker 1: 17:08

It all sounds very exciting and a little bit too much business for me, but they're exciting listening to the tech side of it. If I could bring it back to what it's like for you being a female's founder, so I think it's a little bit more. I think for me at least, for us as students it's harder for us to meet women that are so successful in their careers. I wanted to actually put it more about what it's like being a female founder.

Speaker 2: 17:35

I would say it's beautiful and impure rating altogether. So founding of the women is a challenge in terms of you don't have role models or there are very little role models. There are little role models that you can call or that you can stalk on LinkedIn or something. That's hard, thank you. Funding is really hard. You know there's there's an intrinsic bias. Vcs are very, in general, they're very conservative. Even if they like to think that they're innovative, they're conservative and in my case, it's not only I'm a female, but also a migrant. So that is, you know, it's kind of two things that just one of the two is hard enough. Combining the two sometimes is interesting.

Speaker 1: 18:27

I think that's something that like, for example, for myself, I've also experienced it just being like not just the woman in engineering, but then like a woman of color in engineering. It's like it's two different. It's two different things. Yeah, but I want to try this with. You was MIT, so I mentioned at the beginning that you are an MIT top innovator under 35. So, of course, I want to actually a little bit about what that means for you. How did that happen? Like that sounds really exciting. Can we talk about a bit more?

Speaker 2: 18:57

Um, I was like the minute I would say like the minute I got the mill. I spent like 30 minutes jumping up and down in my apartment. My husband thought that I was insane because I couldn't explain. Like I was crying and smiling and jumping up and down and the dogs were like what, what is going on with our human? We lost our human. Somebody call some sort of doctor because she's insane. But we finally managed. Like she cracked. See, she just cracked.

Speaker 2: 19:23

Um, yeah, it's like it's incredibly humbling, exciting, it's a huge like. It's like the most incredible we could say. And the other people are just so inspiring. You know, I feel I look at, I look at. The other people are like dude, so much going to find out that I don't want to be here. You know, someone is going to find out that they, they made a mistake, like they couldn't have chosen me right. So it's just like this incredible, humbling experience. All I can say was a little bit encyclomatic because I got it during the pandemic. So it is the only generation that couldn't get together, which was very sad. The only generation of top innovators of the 35 is the adult, which is just, you know, like we keep asking, if I see, to please bring, bring this last generation together, because we really want to read each other.

Speaker 1: 20:22

That's really sad. So you guys are the only ones that haven't yet met MIT. Please, so we can get them all together. I think that'd be really nice for you.

Speaker 2: 20:28

We would be so happy and so incredibly happy because, like everybody has, like this huge party, you know, and the meet everybody and they get together and it's like it's so exciting. And we were like we made a little call on Zoom and we got it, and we got up to the end with our, you know, with our certificate, and it was like so sad.

Speaker 1: 20:54

Wow, sad but still super cool at the same time. It's like a, it's a paradox it's super cool at the same time.

Speaker 2: 21:05

Sometimes I see it and I still can't believe it. They got like wow.

Speaker 1: 21:12

Well, leaving on from MIT. So not only have you done you know architecture degree, going into tech and now you know MIT, top innovator but you also have a lot of international experience, like, for example, where I met you, it was in Munich. So, like you have all this international experience, what advice would you give to students that are looking to get more international exposure?

Speaker 2: 21:35

I would say like endless curiosity help and also saying yes sometimes to things that you're not so convinced that you want to do. Like I started a professional career when going to like. I did some other stuff before, but I went to Canada to work at a project with a company that I was working for, which was incredible. It was exactly what I needed at the right time. But when they offered it to me, I said no because I had just got married. I was like married for like four months or something like that. And they offered they offered it to me and I said I can't go. I just got married, like I can't, you know, and I called my husband and he says to me if you don't go, you will never forgive yourself. You have to go.

Speaker 2: 22:31

I wasn't convinced about going. I was scared. I wasn't convinced about the project either. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But, like this little much, this little push, held me tremendously. I would have never done half of the things I've done so are in my book Junker if it wasn't for that trip, if it wasn't for I met my co-founder for my first startup. In that trip I also was for the first time on my own. And that book, which was lovely. I had this beautiful thing for the end. Please Somebody can read it for them, because that time was lovely. It was just crazy.

Speaker 2: 23:19

I got so much more confidence in myself. I realized that if I spoke, people want to listen sometimes that wasn't stupid, that I could do things. Also, I learned that passion wasn't taken for granted. I thought that all people are passionate, that you always try to do your best, but I realized that it's not the case. If you're saying no, that's the biggest takeaway. If you're saying no for fear, fog, fear, just go. Just take it even if you're not sure. Just go anywhere, even if the place doesn't sound so exciting. I've been also to places that I worked for a while in one of the most disastrous mining facilities in the world. I isolated, I was living on cam, but I learned so much. That was difficult, led me to other things. People would take me seriously because I worked at that project. I was able to serve that project. I would say just try to not listen to fear. I love that.

Speaker 1: 24:43

Thank you very much. My last question was going to be about, I think what you said already was one of the challenges was just learning to say yes to things and not limiting yourself for fear. Were there any other challenges that you might have faced, and how did you overcome them?

Speaker 2: 25:01

I think that's a good question for today. That could be a whole hour. Yeah, I faced each other in my life. It sounds cheesy, but in a way I don't know how to blame people I am.

Speaker 2: 25:16

I faced my parents losing everything when I was still in university. That way, very naively, I learned that education is not a right. I became obsessed with education, with waxed skating, which led to my first startup, even though it failed. My first startup led to MIT Topic in the 35. It led me to athletics. It led me to dance. It led me to awards. It led me to go to Malta to meet rabbis that I had never expected to meet before because I'm Catholic by tradition.

Speaker 2: 25:56

So, even though it was outside my parents' bankruptcy was the hardest time of my life, and then failing with my first startup was the second toughest time of my life. Both of those have made me who I am and have made me realize that I can get out of my own head, that I can stand again, that you can live with hunger. You can even learn with hunger. You can be a student and not know if you're going to have a place to live next month, but you know it's all somehow if you have faith in yourself and you work hard, things kind of solve themselves and eventually when you look back, you know what world Thank you. I didn't know that at the time, but it was, in a way, the thing I needed.

Speaker 1: 27:00

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. It sounds like a very difficult time, but it definitely has made you who you are now, so I'm glad that you're able to get through it all and now here we are. Thank you again for sharing. You're welcome. So that's what I would like to finish our episode today. So thank you so much again, veronica, for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation. There were lots of advice. I hope you guys were writing it down. I know I was writing it down, taking all the notes that I could. But again, so what's that? I hope I never get to see you.

Speaker 2: 27:29

You're welcome.

Speaker 1: 28:00

I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, stay curious and keep it warm.