What is Grupo Festina
What is Grupo Festina
Grupo Festina brings together different brands under one purpose: connecting business, people and the issues shaping the current moment.
The name comes from the Latin motto festina lente — "make haste slowly." The logo features two hummingbirds, two of Brazil's most common species, which capture that spirit well: speed that never gives up calm.
The group's brands
Today, Grupo Festina is made up of three brands:
- People & Growth — consulting, courses and content on leadership and personal development.
- Ponto de Réplica — independent coverage of politics, economy and society.
- Mea Sententia — our opinion column.
The rest of this page tells the story of how it all started — the journey behind the first of these brands, People & Growth.
How it all started
Every company comes from somewhere. People & Growth was born from a path of learning, experimentation and, above all, the desire to turn knowledge into development.
It all began in 2020, when I started my Marketing degree. It was during that period that I discovered my interest in the field went far beyond marketing strategy: I also enjoyed creation, communication and graphic design.
That's when I started the Graphic Design for Social Media course, by Viana Patrício, where I deepened my knowledge of Photoshop, design and best practices for communication on social networks.
The degree and the courses were only the beginning. In parallel, I was building professional experience and also working as a freelancer, putting into practice what I was learning.
The first attempt
In 2022, with my Marketing degree completed, already working formally in the field and with a few years of freelance experience, I decided to create my first brand: Thiago Leal — Graphic Design.
The idea was to turn what I already did into a business of my own.
But the experience taught me something important: that model would require a lot of operational work for a return that didn't match what I wanted to build.
Rather than insist on something that no longer made sense, I decided to stop, look at the path I was on and think about new possibilities.
From a personal brand to a greater purpose
In 2023, I realized something that would completely change the direction of my journey.
I didn't just want to have something of my own. I also had a growing need to share the knowledge I was acquiring and help as many people as possible.
At that point, I was already working as a Marketing specialist and wanted to turn what I was learning into content, reflection and knowledge accessible to other people.
That's how Thiago Leal Marketing was born.
The new project was much more aligned with the professional I had become. I started producing and sharing research, analysis and content about marketing, following the trends and events that were transforming the market.
But, once again, I was growing.
While developing the project, I was also doing my MBA in Business Intelligence, Digital Marketing and Data Driven and my postgraduate degree in People and Business Management.
It was precisely during this education that I realized the brand no longer represented everything I was becoming.
Marketing remained an important part of my journey, but I was already interested in something much bigger: people, businesses, data, behavior, leadership, development and transformation.
People & Growth is born
That's the context in which People & Growth emerged.
The change wasn't only about the name. It represented a change of vision.
The idea was to build a brand capable of connecting people and businesses, understanding that the development of one directly influences the development of the other.
People & Growth took shape little by little. I came to better understand what the brand could represent, which problems it could help solve and, above all, how it could turn knowledge into something that truly generated value for people and for the market.
Throughout this period, the brand kept growing, just as I kept growing professionally.
And then we arrive at 2026.
When the idea became bigger
In 2026, a friend, Raul Salustiano, invited me to talk about building something together.
We already had different experiences, and we saw that we could combine knowledge, perspectives and skills to create something bigger.
I accepted the challenge and presented People & Growth to him.
But I already had another professional in mind: Gustavo Monken.
Gustavo had knowledge and experience that could complement what we were building.
From then on, the three of us started working together.
We defined plans, set goals, discussed possibilities and, above all, began to answer a fundamental question:
What should People & Growth actually be for people, for companies and for the market?
The answer was built from everything we had lived up to that point.
We realized we didn't want to create just a marketing company. Nor did we want to be only a consultancy, an education company or a content producer.
We wanted to build something that would connect these different dimensions.
That's how People & Growth came to embrace its true essence as a hybrid company, formed by the union of knowledge, development, strategy, data, technology and people.
Today, People & Growth is made up of Thiago Leal, Gustavo Monken and Raul Salustiano, professionals with complementary experience in Marketing, Growth, data and Artificial Intelligence, who also believe in the importance of understanding the social, economic and environmental issues that shape people and companies.
And this story explains a lot about who we are today.
People & Growth wasn't born ready.
It was born from an evolution.
And it keeps evolving.
It was from this path that our way of seeing development came about.
For us, developing people and businesses doesn't mean looking at just one part of the problem. People influence teams, teams influence leaders, leaders impact businesses — and businesses also transform the people who are part of them.
That's why we structured People & Growth around four levels of development: Person, Leadership, Team and Business.
When it became Grupo Festina
But we realized, once again, that People & Growth wasn't going to hold the size the group was reaching.
Between consulting, courses and content on leadership and development, coverage of politics, economy and society, and the opinion column Mea Sententia, each front already had its own identity and audience — and keeping everything under a name built for a different scale stopped making sense.
That's when People & Growth became one brand — among others — inside a larger group: Grupo Festina.
4 levels of development: Person, Leadership, Team and Business
People & Growth starts from the understanding that development doesn't happen in isolation. People, relationships, teams and businesses are connected, and understanding that relationship is essential to building real possibilities for development.
Our approach is organized into four levels:
Person → Leadership → Team → Business
1. Person — understanding yourself
Personal development starts with self-knowledge, but isn't limited to it. We address topics such as values, choices, career, communication, emotional intelligence, decision-making, potential, limits and purpose, always considering the relationship between the individual and their context.
This development can also follow different moments of a professional journey, from entering the job market to processes of transition, repositioning and career growth. In this context, we also address professional posture, workplace relationships, communication and building a more conscious professional practice.
We propose a more critical approach to personal development, one that doesn't reproduce the logic that all responsibility for success or failure lies exclusively with the individual.
Developing also means understanding one's own context: recognizing who we are, our capabilities and limits, but also perceiving how social, economic, cultural and relational conditions influence our possibilities.
The question isn't to think "I can do anything if I try hard enough," nor to assume that "nothing depends on me." It's about understanding what is or isn't within our control and, from there, recognizing our real room for action. Personal development means expanding our awareness of ourselves and our context in order to act more consciously on what we can actually transform.
2. Leadership — understanding relationships
When we move from the individual to leadership, a fundamental question arises: I don't just lead tasks; I relate to people. Leading involves understanding relationships, expectations, interests and different ways of seeing the same situation.
That's why we work with topics such as:
- communication
- trust
- conflict
- negotiation
- decision-making
- responsibility
- influence
- power
- organizational culture
- people development
- using data and information in decision-making
- developing leadership in contexts of change
Leadership stops being understood only as authority or command, and becomes the ability to build relationships and create the conditions for other people to develop and act.
3. Team — understanding the collective
At the team level, the unit of analysis stops being the isolated individual. A team has its own dynamic, shaped by roles, interests, goals, conflicts, power relations, communication, trust, culture and ways of making decisions. That's why not every performance problem is necessarily that person's problem alone — it's necessary to understand the system they're part of.
We work with topics such as:
- onboarding and integration
- communication
- organizational culture
- conflict
- collaboration
- defining goals
- defining roles
- building trust
- sharing and applying knowledge
- using information to support decisions and actions
Developing a team means understanding the relationships that shape it and creating the conditions for the collective to work better.
4. Business — understanding and transforming contexts
At the business level, development doesn't simply mean "selling more." A business exists within a context shaped by the market, people, organizations, relationships, opportunities, competitors, partners and constant change.
Business development can involve:
- strategy
- positioning
- innovation
- relationship-building
- partnerships
- negotiation
- reading scenarios
- identifying opportunities
- using data to support decisions
- creating and interpreting information
- developing solutions from knowledge
- organizational culture
- creating value
- organizational development
The central question stops being just "how do we grow?" and becomes: what context are we in, what possibilities exist, and how can we create value from them?
Information, knowledge and action
We live in a context of information overload. Having access to data doesn't necessarily mean understanding a situation, just as accumulating knowledge doesn't necessarily mean knowing how to apply it.
That's why People & Growth also seeks to develop the ability to select, interpret and use information consciously, turning data into knowledge and knowledge into action.
The question isn't only to have more information, but to understand what is relevant, how to interpret what is available and how to turn that knowledge into decisions and practices that make sense for each context.
Who is it for?
People & Growth is for people and organizations that recognize development as a continuous process of understanding and transformation. We work with people entering the job market, professionals looking for development and new possibilities, leaders who want to improve the way they lead, and teams and organizations that want to develop their people, relationships, culture and businesses.
Where can we help?
Based on these four levels, People & Growth can develop content, talks, workshops and consulting aimed at different audiences.
For people
- Self-knowledge and career
- Entering and developing in the job market
- Professional development
- Professional posture
- Decision-making
- Communication
- Professional relationships
- Personal leadership
- Emotional intelligence
- Developing new possibilities for work
For leaders
- Leadership development
- Communication and conflict
- People management
- Decision-making
- Building trust
- Organizational culture
- Using data and information
- Leadership in times of change
- Developing people
For teams
- Integration
- Communication
- Organizational culture
- Conflict
- Collaboration
- Building trust
- Defining goals and roles
- Sharing and applying knowledge
- Decision-making
For businesses
- Strategy
- Business development
- Positioning
- Innovation
- Organizational culture
- Data and decision-making
- Relationships and partnerships
- Reading scenarios and opportunities
- Organizational development
- Value creation
Our perspective
- Personal development to understand oneself.
- Leadership to understand and mobilize relationships.
- Team development to build collective possibilities.
- Business development to understand and transform contexts.
“People who understand themselves. Leaders who understand relationships. Teams that build together. Knowledge that turns into action. Businesses that understand and transform contexts.
— People & Growth
Vision
To expand the way people and organizations understand development, connecting individual, relationships, teams and businesses to transform contexts.
Mission
To create content, experiences and solutions that develop people, strengthen relationships, empower teams and contribute to the transformation of businesses.
Values
Awareness, Responsibility, Continuous development, Relationships, Critical thinking, Collaboration, Innovation and Value creation.
“Understand to transform.
— People & Growth