building a bridge between two worlds
Jaime Acevedo
“I studied Education, first in Madrid and later in England. During my career I realized that I needed to add something to my luggage and I did a Master in Human Resources at the CEU in Madrid.
With this, I started a nearly 15-year long path in the industrial world in Human Resources positions, with a progressively more international orientation.
In 2010, I decided to direct myself more towards Consulting and Coaching and I created Inter Medio. I still keep a strong Training activity, while I promote fascinating empowerment and transformation projects in organizations.
I have a real passion for Art in all its expressions: painting, music, theatre, etc. and I am also an unconditional fan of Nature. In my trips I always look for the moment in which I can enjoy one or the other, or both at the same time…”
My Story
When I was a kid, in the 70s, in Madrid, I used to go to the movies with my grandmother on Sundays.
Going to the movies was an event. There were often long queues, in those large projection rooms, with ushers in uniform, who solemnly accompanied you to your seat and then discreetly extended his white-gloved hand to receive a tip.
From those sessions, I also remember something that now can seem surprising: in the middle of the movie there was a break of about 15 or 20 minutes and people went to the bar to buy drinks and sweets or to the bathroom, the “intermedio” in Spanish.
When I created my company, I thought and rethought in words that defined this work that I do, and also that would speak about the intention, the spirit with which I intended to approach it. I thought about my career and about what could I extract as meaning, as a gesture that defined it.
At the beginning of it, I had a predominantly educational and artistic impulse. I trained as an educator, but with a component that was innovative and creative and at the same time very international.
I trained at the University of Madrid first but then I did a course in England in a pedagogical current that uses artistic expression and creativity as vehicles of teaching: the so-called Waldorf pedagogy.
In the course where I trained, I had the privilege of sharing the classroom with students from all continents and from very diverse cultures.
I had classmates from South Africa, the United States, Japan, India, Austria, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Iceland or Yugoslavia, among others.
It was a pleasure to share and exchange experiences, reflections, ideas, visions of the world.
Along with the pedagogical courses, we did may other artistic courses, such as painting, theater, music, … That phase was characterized by having such a creative and international approach.
But after several years in this environment, I felt that something was missing in me and decided to take a leap into another universe: the corporate one.
I did a Master in Human Resources Management and I quickly dived into this new adventure. The change was radical and in many occasions very difficult to cope with.
I worked in the industry for 15 years in management positions, often in very delicate and complex situations, pushing the limits of my own capacity.
Thanks to this, I have been able to get to know areas and, above all, people, that work under very different life rules.
I have been able to see how and to what extent these two worlds are far apart from each other, looking in very different directions and contradicting each other permanently.
And I have also been able to see how both worlds need each other. Many of the qualities that I have been able to develop and evaluate in education and creativity have been fundamental and unique in the corporate world and, conversely, many aspects of the business world are key to a healthy functioning in the educational, cultural or associative world.
And that is when I understood, after having both experiences, that this is my true DNA: not belonging to any, but being a traveller, a visitor, an expatriate and living forever in the intermediate space.
This is not bad, although it has taken me some time to understand it, and now I consider it as a virtue and not as a burden.
And I have come to understand that this intermediate space is a place that has a very special quality: that of letting the New emerge, the Change.
Without that moment of Silence, in which there is a time of dwelling in it and not brought to an end artificially, at that moment it is when we allow a place for the Surprising, the Novelty, the Unexpected, a place that puts an end to that which turns in circles and will never stop.
Years later I learned this art, the art of listening, when I trained as a coach: to listen unconditionally, without expectations. It is there that we not only hear the unexpected, but also we allow the unspoken to be said.
We need that “intermedio“, that place where we are no taken by the tide, by inertia, but by the desire for change, to find something new.
With this understanding of what is the spirit that has inspired my journey, that of being the intermediary, that of making a bridge between very different worlds, I decided to put this name to my company: Inter Medio.
