Stories: People

In Europe, palm oil tends to come with opinions before understanding. People speak with certainty, often without ever seeing the product or the supply chain behind it. Roberta carried some of those assumptions too. She didn’t picture herself in agribusiness. What she did carry, though, was curiosity – and that spark opened the door to her career at GAR.

She joined in 2021 without a grand plan. She simply wanted to try something new. Today, that willingness has carried her from Spain to the Netherlands and Italy, through wrong-load incidents to the opportunity to help build GAR Milan office from the ground up. Her story is one of learning through pressure and grounding in a place that gives you room to stumble and rise again.

What she assumed about palm oil – and what she learned on the inside

Before GAR, palm oil mostly existed in Roberta’s world as headlines and conversations. People around her had strong opinions, many of them shaped more by distance than experience. So when she saw an opening in GAR, she applied with a mix of curiosity and uncertainty.

“The fact that its palm oil is what pulled me in,” she said. “In Europe, we often see the industry through a narrow view. I wanted to understand whether that was real.”

Her early days changed that perspective. From plantations, processing plants, tank farms, terminals, to vessels, she witnessed how the supply chain came together to reach customers who relied on palm-derived ingredients every day. She still remembers the surprise of realising how many skincare and household products tap into palm-based components.

“I wasn’t aware how much comes from such a small fruit,” she said. “Seeing everything with my own eyes helped me understand the industry beyond what we usually hear in Europe.”

What she learned didn’t sweep away the industry’s challenges. But it gave her something she didn’t have before: context. And that made all the difference in how she saw the work.

Where learning hits different

Roberta had worked in logistics before. But liquid bulk? That was something else. Here, product didn’t just sit in place. It moved. It flowed. It needed valves opened, pumps running, temperatures checked. And everything had to happen fast, because the clock started ticking the moment it left the tank.

“Liquid bulk behaves differently,” she said. “One wrong valve can change everything.”

Her early days were exhausting in a way she still remembers. She was climbing tanks, reading layouts, memorising SOPs. Everything was new. Everything demanded her full attention. And just when she thought she was catching up, reality stepped in.

The first was a tank truck spill. “It was a moment of panic I didn’t even have time to feel. I just stuck to the SOP, kept steady, and supported the operating team the best I could. Later on, the calm surprised me more than the spill did,” said Roberta.

The second moment arrived quietly but hit just as hard. A truck had been loaded with the wrong product, after the terminal mistakenly drew from a tank meant for something else.

“I almost had a heart attack,” she admitted. “Your brain immediately goes: how did this even happen?”

She moved fast, calling the transporter, informing the client, and stopping the truck before the issue escalated. Later, when everything was under control, she sat with the team to retrace the steps. They looked at the process together, not to blame anyone, but to understand the gap.

“I know it sounds like a cliché, but that moment really shaped me. No one pointed fingers. Everyone just focused on fixing it. Growth happens in those messy, all-eyes-on-you moments. Because you don’t grow by getting everything right — you grow when things go sideways, and you choose to stay steady, speak up, and move forward anyway.”

The places and moments that shaped her

Roberta has worked in Spain, the Netherlands, and now Italy, but she rarely talks about these moves as a list of countries. For her, each place was a step in understanding herself.

“Spain was where it all started for me — the first time I saw GAR up close, the first time I touched anything liquid bulk, and the first time I realised how much I didn’t know. It was a steep curve, but that’s also what gave me the confidence to keep going. The Netherlands had a different rhythm altogether. I had to adjust how I worked, how I communicate. It challenged me not just professionally, but personally,” said Roberta.

But the moment that truly marked her journey came in Italy. GAR assigned her to help open the Milan office – a responsibility she still talks about with quiet pride. “Being trusted to build something new felt special,” she said. “It reflected everything I had been working toward.”

Opening the office pulled together all the lessons she learned the hard way: the spill that tested her composure, the wrong-product loading that made her heart drop, the long nights replaying mistakes until she understood what to fix.

“You stumble a lot in operations. But every time you get up, you realise you’ve grown,” she said.

Leadership, as she learned it

Roberta’s idea of leadership grew with every challenge she faced. “At the start, I thought proving myself meant being fast and flawless,” she said. “Only later I realised growth comes from the moments that shake you.”

Handling spills, wrong loadings, and new systems taught her to stay calm, listen more, and decide with clarity. “Leadership isn’t about knowing everything,” she said. “It’s staying calm, trusting your team, and making decisions even when things feel uncertain.”

“I grew here because I had space to learn, fall, rise, and try again. To me, that’s what true growth looks like – messy, meaningful and real.”

Roberta’s story shows how people grow when they have space to learn and rise again. Follow another colleague’s experience of learning and growing with purpose here.