Employee Spotlight: Vicente Robles
March 1, 2023
Welcome to our series of Employee Spotlight articles where we highlight the contributions and career backgrounds of Anuvu employees around the world. These are the people who help dream and deliver innovation that moves our customers forward.
Vicente Robles earned dual degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, and chose to focus on the latter after university, intent on becoming a successful technology entrepreneur running his own small software business in Caracas, Venezuela, his hometown.
Then politics intervened. Venezuela’s economy cratered, with inflation rising to 800% in 2016. Violence rose in tandem with shortages of food and other basic staples.
“Since the situation in Venezuela started to worsen, there was no way to keep my business there and keep living there so I had to emigrate,” said Robles, who moved to Spain in late 2017 because his family has Spanish nationality.
Vicente recently celebrated his fifth anniversary with Anuvu, which he joined in January 2018. At the time, Anuvu’s predecessor company, Global Eagle, was seeking a software architect to create an innovative replacement for software the company was using in maritime connectivity.
“They wanted to develop the license in-house to have more control” of the system, he said. After working for himself, Vicente says he wasn’t sure how he’d adjust to a corporate environment. He thought he might work on the project and then find himself ready to move along.
That wasn’t the case.
Software projects Vicente has been assigned are among those opportunities. One of his products oversees how Anuvu collects usage data on our connected cruise ships and uploads that information efficiently to the cloud for analysis. In theory, he says, the process “sounds like something simple,” but it’s rather difficult because vessels move into areas out of satellite coverage. This task also involves huge amounts of data that must be packaged and sent, and this data must also be preserved securely during periods when it can’t be transmitted.
The complexities of these technical reporting tasks are far from trivial and Anuvu is “lucky to have Vicente on the team,” says Claudio Vignali, Senior Director of Product Development, to whom Vicente reports.
“Vicente consistently demonstrates a high level of commitment and responsibility in his work,” Claudio says. “His technical skills are excellent, and he has a natural ability to find creative solutions to problems.”
When he’s not working, Vicente is a devoted fan of Formula 1 racing and the Bavarian football club Bayern München, an affiliation he’s maintained since childhood. “I don’t miss a Bayern München game,” he said.
Vicente’s preferred Anuvu value is “agile” because of the nature of the work we do. “Every day we have changing requirements, issues or deadlines that require Anuvu teams to communicate and act quickly across multiple departments and time zones,” he notes. This process, amid critical deadlines, makes agility paramount to moving Anuvu and our customers forward.