09 February 2024

Hubert Da Costa, CRO, Celerway

Which law would you most like to change?
I’d like to make it easier for people to access any country they want. It’d give people better opportunities to take their lives in the direction they choose, whether that’s working, living, or studying abroad. We live in a global world, so it makes sense to have that flexibility.

What was your big career break?
My big break came when I joined Symbol Technologies as Global Alliances Director back in 1999. It was about more than just the sales and relationship-building skills that I learned while I was there, my whole perspective changed. I went in as a do-er and came out as an enabler. I’ve been building on those leadership skills ever since and being in the position I am now, where I can inspire others, is something I highly value. There’s so much more to business than the metrics you’re accountable for. The real value comes with the outcomes you enable for your customers and the difference you make to their lives with the solutions you create for them. These values are at the heart of how I see my role as Chief Revenue Officer at Celerway.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Coming from an Indian heritage family, if you’d asked my traditionalist parents, they’d have said I should pursue a career in medicine or law. But I knew from an early age that I was interested in tech, and I spent many happy days as a boy playing with Pentium computers, which were cutting edge at the time. I was fascinated by how they worked and the things you could do with them, and from that point my direction for a career in tech was set. Having said that, I’m also a people-person, so working in sales has always come naturally to me. I’m so lucky to have found a career where I can bring these two passions together and I get real enjoyment from the work I do.

If you could dine with any famous person, past or present, who would you choose?
Ah, that’s an easy one, it’d be Tim Peake. I admire people who have that adventurous spirit and the courage to break new ground. I’m always challenging myself to push my limits because that’s how you grow as a person. Tech is a great enabler in astronomy, and I’d love to find out what it’s really like to brush your teeth in zero gravity.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
When I was just starting out in my career, someone once said, “be true to yourself”. The wisdom of these words didn’t truly resonate with me until I was a few years older, and I realised that if you do what you enjoy rather than what someone else thinks you should be doing, you’ll always find happiness. I can hand-on-heart say that I enjoy every day at Celerway because I’m working with talented people to deliver transformational technology into the hands of our customers.

If you had to work in a different industry, which would you choose?
Working at NASA would be incredible. I can imagine there’s an amazing vibe in a company that exists to take humans into new and previously undiscovered spaces. It’d be great fun to brainstorm around new space missions or how to embed the latest tech into rockets. It’d feed my innate curiosity as well as my drive to find new and exciting ways of doing things.

The Rolling Stones or the Beatles?
That’s a tough one because they were both such pioneering bands, but if I have to choose, it’s the Beatles. I admire the way they brought different musical genres together and paved the way for future artists, they’re even influencing songwriters now. Listening to Paul McCartney on the piano always takes me to a happy place.

What would you do with £1 million?
Beyond taking care of my family and making our lives financially secure, I’d set up an educational trust fund for people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to learn. Education is the single most powerful hope for our society because it advances our ways of thinking so we can meet today’s challenges and be ready for tomorrow’s. As a dedicated fan, I might also treat myself to a Liverpool FC season ticket.

What’s the greatest technological advancement in your lifetime?
The internet. I remember Tony Blair labelling it as the “information superhighway” and that was a great metaphor, although now we could maybe even take that into an intergalactic sphere too. The internet is still revolutionising everything in the world, from the ways we work to how we communicate and even interact with everyday objects. It’s mind boggling. We’ve come so far from the early days of popping into the library to use a computer to where we are now with smartphones in our pockets and wearables on our bodies. Now we have entire generations of digital natives who have never known life before the internet. Even my four-year-old niece is a tech whizz – I guess it must be in the genes.