The Gears of COMODULE: Fabiola - Sharing Project Manager with a Passion for Engineering
Fabiola, an engineer at heart, represents COMODULE for most of the e-scooter sharing clients. When she is not travelling throughout Europe with her camera, she is probably enjoying a good book or a movie.
Who is Fabiola?
Fabiola, a curious little girl, grew up with her parents in Leon, Mexico. Her father, an architect, had a big influence on her from early on. In addition, to playing with barbie dolls, Fabiola also built houses for them. “I probably spent more time on engineering the housing and infrastructure than playing with the dolls” said Fabiola jokingly. Another sign that Fabiola will be an engineer was the fact that one of her favourite subjects in school was math: “I liked math, because everything made sense and explained how stuff works, I have always been interested in how things work” said Fabiola.
Besides engineering, Fabiola has always been interested in history, geography and languages. Her favourite memories from her childhood are the ones where she went on roadtrips with her family. “We went to different places in Mexico - beaches, pyramids and old cities with colonial architecture. I loved it, my dad would explain how the houses were built and drew our attention to little details that otherwise I would have missed” remembered Fabiola.
Another common theme in Fabiola’s life has been travelling. Up until the last year in college, Fabiola hadn't been outside of Mexico. Nevertheless, she had been preparing from an early age by learning english, italian and geography on her own. When it came down to what to study in college, she chose mechatronics engineering. “At that time robotics was very popular and I decided to combine that interest with mechanical engineering” said Fabiola. In spite of being one of the 3 girls out of 20 students, she had a great time and enjoyed projects like building robotic cars and developing a monitoring system for factories.
Fabiola’s life changed when she had an opportunity to study abroad in Prague. “I always knew that I wanted to go to Europe, but at the same time I was a little bit scared, because this was the first time I have been out of Mexico and been completely on my own” said Fabiola. Luckily, her fears didn't come true and the experience was one of the best she ever had. “It is such a beautiful city and local students made sure we had an awesome experience. Weekly trips, movie nights, parties and they also helped us with the local paperwork and transport - AMAZING” said Fabiola.
After finishing school, Fabiola’s plan was simple - get some working experience, save money and return to Europe. At first, she struggled to find work in Mexico, but luckily ended up working as an application manager in a company that makes electric motors for machinery. During her 4 years there, besides engineering, she had a chance to try out different things: some marketing, customer support, general management and translating manuals to english.
Meanwhile, she was thinking of how she could achieve her dream of getting back to Europe. For a Mexican citizen it was not so easy to get a working visa, so she chose another route and decided to apply for a Master’s program in Industrial Management.
“One of the only Universities that offered Industrial Management Master’s program, was TalTech in Estonia. “To be honest, I did not know anything about Estonia, but decided to take a leap of faith and go for it” said Fabiola. Like in Prague, her fears were unjustified and she enjoyed Estonia very much. She especially enjoyed the Tallinn Old Town: “At the same time I took up photography and spent quite a lot of time capturing the details of the medieval architecture” said Fabiola.
She did her Master’s thesis in measuring how green and sustainable offices are. “Sustainability is something I strongly believe in and want to contribute to” said Fabiola.
What does Fabiola do at COMODULE?
Before coming to work at COMODULE, she worked for another Estonian company and was responsible for providing input for procurement. As her job was a little bit repetitive, she grabbed the chance when one of her former classmates said that COMODULE was looking for new people. “I didn’t know much about the company before, but immediately liked all the people interviewing me, especially Juan. Also, I saw that I would have a chance to work in a company that had a lot of different challenges and made products that help with pollution and congestion problems” said Fabiola.
Fabiola is the link between our e-scooter sharing clients and the product team. She makes sure everything is working, products are delivered and if needed, travels to the site to help the client to launch. She is also responsible for making product upgrades and integrating new e-scooters with COMODULE connectivity hardware.
Like other engineers at COMODULE, Fabiola enjoys the problem solving aspect of the job the most. “I get a kick out of troubleshooting and trying to find a reason why something doesn’t work. I am like a detective in some of the novels I like to read. I also enjoy creating something from scratch, for example I enjoy writing instructions manuals for our clients” said Fabiola.
How would you describe the experience of working at COMODULE?
“It’s so nice. Great opportunity to have your voice and ideas heard and taken into account. Also, most people here are very motivated and they work very hard, but at the same time not so uptight - people have fun and you get to laugh a lot” said Fabiola.
In your own words, what is the mission of COMODULE?
“Contribute to finding better ways to move around cities” said Fabiola.
Thoughts about the future of mobility
“Would love to see less cars and more micro-mobility solutions. The trend of sustainable transport will continue, at the moment we are experiencing growing pains of the market” said Fabiola.
