YOLANDA POUSADA
FISH AUCTION MARKET MANAGER AT OPROMAR. Bueu, Pontevedra.
The Producer Organizations, entities that represent the fisheries sector in Europe, perform different tasks for their member shipowner companies. Yolanda is part of the OPROMAR team and her work is related to the marketing of fish.
With her kind eyes, anyone who speaks to her for a few minutes will understand how she found a place for herself in a male-dominated sector. Her kindness opened the doors for her and her perseverance and dedication did the rest.
When she talks about her story, her family deserves a special mention as she comes from a traditionally seafaring family, where fisheries were always present. This planted a seed in her that bore fruit: after she pursued her studies in the food sector she ended up devoting her life to working in the unloading and marketing of fish products.
This Brave Woman of the Sea feels completely fulfilled at work. There she finds no monotony, particularly because part of her work involves being at the fish auction market, in contact with many people and in a microcosm like no other.
She spends the rest of her workday at the office, doing more administrative work, but she feels just as valued by supervisors and shipowner companies. She also has to be in contact with part of the administration as she supports them by providing recommendations for the Electronic On-Board Log and verifying that sales notes have been delivered to the corresponding person. As if this was not enough, she spends the other half of her time participating in OPROMAR’s innovative and promotional projects for fisheries, another of her great passions.
She recognizes that the worst part is having to get up early to perform some of her duties, which makes balancing her work and family lives a bit difficult.
She is certain that women’s perspectives in marketing have always been taken into account, as they have historically been present in this part of the sector.
She is a firm believer in teamwork, emphasizing that each team member contributes their own abilities and effort, which are essential for everything to work properly.
The confidence she exudes when she speaks about her profession is a clear indicator that she is comfortable with the work she does, where the necessity to constantly keep abreast of new information seems to be another incentive for her.
She says that she has not taken any risks in her professional life, but the simple trust that the sector has in her work seems to indicate that, in this case, taking risks is not necessary for recognizing a successful career.
She says that the greatest challenge she has faced at work was implementing new technologies with a group of workers who had not received any training on how to use them. But she believes that the future of the sector involves including those technologies in all the stages of the fish production and marketing chain. She firmly believes that any evolution and improvement in the sector must go hand in hand with technology, so the sector has to adapt accordingly.