Presentation Javier Navamuel

Do you know that moment in life when you have your days extremely busy, when you have long days working, even though you are not working, but you still want to do more and more because you want to go further in life? That’s me, starting up this new project called “Sustainable Knowledge”. And the question is: How did I end up here? This is a summary of my life:

I was born in Toledo (Spain) in 1995 and grew up in a small village with around 3.500 inhabitants where I went to school and high school. At that time, I was learning to play the trumpet, the guitar, and like most young boys I played football almost every single day.

After graduating from high school, I got a high grade in the university entrance exams, so I had to decide what I wanted to study and where to study. I chose to study Industrial Engineering at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Taking into account how I’ve changed since that moment, I could say this decision absolutely changed my life. My academic results changed from “How many outstanding grades have you reached this year in high school?” to “Have you passed any course this year in university?”, and that’s tough to get over. After the first two very bad years in university, when I got bad results even though I studied a lot (it was very frustrating), I gave myself an ultimatum: If I didn’t get good results in the third year, I would leave the university. I passed all my courses that year.

This was an inflection point in my life. It took hard work, long hours studying and support from my very close people. On that year I came back to sports, which has become a key point in my life until today (and hope it will be for a long time). I go running, trail-running, cycling, I do CrossFit as well, and play squash, which I think have helped me being used to overpassing obstacles in my life, as well as knowing amazing people. Coming back to my last years at university, I got used to studying long hours, planning ahead and organising myself (I’m the Google Calendar guy), while having and meeting new great people, which made it easier to overpass those last years.

After my bachelor’s degree graduation another challenge came out: Should I continue studying? What to study? Should I start working?... Thanks to my family, and a friend to whom I will always be grateful, I finally chose to study the International Master in Industrial Management. I decided to study a master that takes place in three different universities, with people coming from more than 10 different countries and taught in English, when my English was everything but good. Even so, I don’t know if I was driven for the challenge itself, or just the necessity to improve my soft skills, but finally, I did it. Thanks to this master I’ve been living in 3 different cities (Madrid, Milan, and Edinburgh), I’ve been to seven countries (as of today), I’ve met great people from all over the world, getting to know their cultures and I’ve completely changed my way of thinking, acting and living.

I consider myself a very curious person, always trying and willing to learn something new, and maybe even more than that, very ambitious. I think that’s the reason why I read so many articles and books, I attend as many conferences as possible at the university from people coming along to explain their professional and personal experiences, and I listen to podcasts by people with different backgrounds. I wouldn’t like to underestimate the power of Youtube, which is a great source of knowledge if you look for interesting stuff. Moreover, studying at Heriot-Watt University, we are required to read lots of scientific papers. So, combining all the mentioned above, the idea of creating a website come to my mind. At this point, talking about curiosity and the creation of a website, Miguel was the best colleague to whom I could propose this idea. After having some raw ideas about the website, we asked Juan to join us, that guy with whom is quite difficult to spend more than 5 minutes without smiling, who has a completely different background, which could enrich the content and range of this website. 

My personal purpose when creating this website is not only being able to show which are my interests and my approach to some aspects in life, but creating a platform where we (the three founders of the website, and everyone who would be interested) can express ourselves, sharing knowledge, and trying to create as much impact as possible in society.

WELCOME!