On Friday, July 5, 2019, we had the opportunity to talk with Ferdinando Acerbi, host of our first Open Day (a different way we thought of to introduce the company, going beyond the story of what we do and letting people see from the inside what life is like in “Regesta House”).
Ferdinand came to us in his own car and walking-though slowly-with the help of two canes. Superfluous news? In our opinion, no, if we consider that his first diagnosis after the dramatic accident he suffered in 2004 was “very serious spinal cord injury and total paralysis from the waist down.”
A great inner strength and determination not to give up led him to go through a long and strenuous rehabilitation – going so far as to live for 4 months in a rehabilitation center in Belgium, as he told us. His being able to walk today is the result of this great work, physical and psychological.
We invited Ferdinado to let us tell his special story and because we believe that each of us, too, can encounter moments when the paradigm shifts completely. And it is precisely in these moments that the support of our passions is crucial.
And with him we talked precisely about passion, resilience, restarting in sports, work and everyday life.
Ferdinand, tell us about your beginnings as a sportsman? What about your career before the accident?
I was introduced to the world of sports at the age of 7, when I began to practice horseback riding, soon achieving very good results in the discipline of full riding. From that moment, sport became, not only a great passion, but also my job.
After horseback riding I devoted myself to my other great passion, the sea, working in the Middle East and North Africa as a skipper and diving instructor. It was during a diving excursion that I had an accident that forced me into a wheelchair for two years before being able, after many months of rehabilitation, to walk with the help of two canes.
At some point in your life you therefore had to question everything. You apparently lost control over what had always also been a working tool for you: your body. What prompted you to start again? To start again?
When you find yourself in a difficult situation, you don’t have much choice; you have to react. In that critical situation it was the lessons learned from my sports experiences that enabled me to find the strength, both physical and psychological, to overcome the limitations imposed by my condition.
When doctors told me that I wouldn’t be able to do something or that I wasn’t doing it well, it wasn’t much different from what coaches have been telling me all my life during training. So I took it as a sports challenge, and day by day I was able to improve through perseverance and commitment.
You didn’t choose to do anything else. You returned to your passion and chose to measure yourself with the same sport again, going so far as to participate in the Paralympics. Why? What gave you the strength to measure yourself with sports again?
After the incident, I didn’t feel like a different person than I was before, I had/still have the same passions, which I can now pursue through different means. But little changes.
For this reason, immediately after the accident my wife and I founded the association “Ancoramare” with which we organized a tour of Italy in stages by sailing boat. On the boat, the crew consisted of people with various kinds of physical problems who worked together to get to the destination each night. This journey has taught everyone that on a team where you don’t come, someone else comes. And it is not because he is better than you, but simply because he completes you .
After other experiences at sea, including crossing the Atlantic Ocean, I returned to my first passion, horses. Thanks to a friend, almost as a joke, I found myself at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro in the dressage category. Today, I am the technical director of the paradressage team and I founded the Henable.me platform where we try to find digital solutions to the problems that disabled, elderly and people with limited mobility encounter on a daily basis.
What do you feel like suggesting to us and to the young people who are here with us today?
How we face the day depends only on ourselves, and this is true for everyone, not only for people with physical problems. Passion for sports, above all else, is what has helped me the most, and that is why I would recommend this to everyone. Pursue your passions, because only by doing what you enjoy in the best possible way can you create a wealth of experience, a forma mentis, that will allow you to do things effortlessly; and when you have to face other things, as is often the case in life, you will do it more lightly.
We thank Ferdinand for giving us his time and wisdom.
Passion is what we have in common with him and that is what we look for in talents, along with the predisposition and skills of a technical nature in our work you need to have psychological skills, such as listening skills.
Technology transfer in the company has an organizational and cultural impact, and that is why it is necessary to have this dual valence in order to bring home satisfactory results for our customers.
We stand out in the marketplace because we are dynamic people who are passionate about our work, following clients with professionalism and a direct, concrete and transparent approach. The philosophy that guides us is based on the centrality of people and personal talent that is shared. Continuous confrontation allows people to grow, improve and have fun in the process of personal and professional development.
