For years, I prepared my manager’s trips to China and imagined what it would be like to go myself.
I put together folders filled with design boards, product references, fabric specifications and trim samples. I printed our emails to suppliers, including requests for new developments and changes, and organised everything she would need for her meetings.
Then I designed a cover inspired by the places she was going to visit. I wanted the folder to look beautiful. It was a small detail, but I cared about it. I put so much into those preparations that, in a way, I felt I was going too.
I joined C&A in 2004. That was when China became somewhere I wanted to experience for myself. I wanted to meet the suppliers, build relationships and understand what we could make together. I wanted to be there when decisions were made.
Preparing those trips gave me a glimpse of that world. I knew the products, the requests and the conversations leading up to each meeting. But I wanted to follow the work all the way through: take the folder with me, sit at the table and help decide what happened next.
I left C&A before I had that chance. My first opportunity came at Marisa in 2015, eleven years after the dream began.
The company was starting to plan a trip, working out the budget and deciding who would go. By then, I knew I was ready.
I asked my manager to join me for coffee and told her so. If the budget was the obstacle, I said, I would pay for my flight and the company could cover the expenses on the ground.
Looking back, that offer tells me how much the experience meant to me. I wanted it enough to spend my own money on it.
The company didn’t agree to that arrangement. They covered the entire trip, as they should have. I didn’t need to pay for the opportunity. But I believe making my interest so clear helped them consider me for it.
I can’t know how much that conversation influenced the final decision. What I do know is that my manager no longer had to guess whether I wanted to go or felt able to take on the responsibility. I had told her both.
In another essay for A Segunda Porta, I wrote about visits from the regional manager when I was a store management trainee. I stayed on the sales floor, looking after the team and dealing with whatever needed attention. I assumed she would notice my dedication and see what I could contribute.
A colleague did things differently. Before each visit, he studied the store’s figures. Then he walked around with her, discussing results and pointing out opportunities. He helped her understand his work while I waited for mine to speak for itself.
That coffee with my manager was a different moment. I had found a way to say what I wanted next. My performance still mattered, but I was no longer relying on someone else to work out my ambitions from it.
People can know us as capable, committed professionals and still have no idea where we hope to go.
Doing our current job well doesn’t automatically tell themwhich responsibility we want to take on next.
On that first trip, the full meaning of the opportunity hit me before we even arrived in China.
We stopped in Paris.
Paris was the first European city I had chosen to visit, at twenty-four. It had been my biggest dream, and I paid for that first visit with money I earned while working as a product assistant.
Years later, I was back in places I remembered from that trip. This time, I was on my way to China for work.
It was there that I realisedhow far I had come.
On my first visit to Paris, I couldn’t have pictured where my career would take me. Now I was heading to meet suppliers, build relationships and take part in the decisions I had spent years helping someone else prepare for.
Walking through familiar places brought those two moments in my life together. I remembered who I had been when I first saw them, and I could finally recognise everything that had happened since.
I felt an enormous sense of achievement.
I’ve returned to China many times since that first trip. I’ve seen the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Hong Kong. I’ve taken part in negotiations worth millions and learned more about products, suppliers and the possibilities of developing something together. Every visit has given me experiences I could never have imagined from the materials I was organising back in 2004.
Today, travelling to China is part of my professional life. But I still remember when it was something I hoped for while preparing someone else’s folder.
That memory reminds me how much it matters to put ourselves forward. To say we want to take part, that we’re ready for more responsibility, that we would like to be considered.
Speaking up doesn’t remove budget constraints or change every management decision. It doesn’t undo unequal access to opportunities. And we shouldn’t have to offer personal sacrifices to prove our commitment. The company should have paid for my flight, and it did.
But we can say what we want while we’re still afraid. We can try, listen to the answer, learn and try again when another opportunity comes.
Eleven years passed between preparing those first trips and taking my own. During that time, I worked, learned, changed companies and gained the experience I needed. Eventually, I could sit down with my manager over coffee and say: I know I’m ready.
Now I’m on my way to China again, thinking about the young woman who wanted every detail of her manager’s folder to be just right, down to the cover.
She put so much care into it. She still had no idea when her own turn would come.
I wish she could see me now.