Podcast Podcast, Season 4, Episode 4: Bianca Senna

Welcome to Season 4 of The Edge, a podcast by TAG Heuer. Our fourth guest this season is Bianca Senna, niece of Ayrton Senna and CEO of the Senna brand which was created by the family to manage the various brands assets that are inspired by the values and achievements of three time world champion and F1 legend. In this episode, Bianca tells us about the Ayrton Senna Institute, its origins, his vision and how his legacy is being carried forward through the Institute. We also get to hear about who he was beyond the helmet, beyond the name. Presented by your host Naomi Schiff, this is The Edge, a podcast by TAG Heuer.

Here are a few snippets to put you on the starting line and get the adrenaline pumping. But don’t forget to subscribe to our Podcast so you can listen to the full, unfiltered episode later. The Edge is a series of conversations with extraordinary people operating at the edge of possibility. It’s about the thin line between taking part and tipping into victory; it’s about what gives us our edge and what we can do to go beyond it.

The institute was a dream that Ayrton had. Before he died, he spoke to my mother, and he wanted to make them feel more professional in terms of how to help children in Brazil. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because the accident happened in Imola, but my mother and our family decided to grant his wishes and open a foundation. We opened the foundation, actually, in 1994. And the way that we did was, you know, bringing all the proceeds that came from the licensing, Ayrton’s image and products to fund the projects that we all have in the foundation.

The best way to actually help children in Brazil is by providing them quality education. Because unfortunately, in Brazil, almost 95% of the children are in public schools. But the public school system is really poor in quality. From 100 people that start, only 50 finish. And from this 50 only 10 and the high school and from this 10, only 5 have proved their right proficiency in Portuguese and one in math. So this is like a big loss for the Brazilian population because as you know, like we need to have education to be able to fully go about in life and so that’s why what we have been doing since 1984 and from the last 30 years, we helped more than 36 million children in Brazil. We formed and trained more than three to 300,000 teachers all over Brazil in more than 3000 municipalities. 

I think that’s the one of the biggest links there is in Ayrton’s history because he started a sponsorship with McLaren back in the day. He wanted to get involved properly. And he was the one getting the interest of making sure that the watch that he would carry would be a watch that had something different. He was involved in the creation of the links, a bracelet that is still today one of the bracelets that we use on our new models. I think the connection started there from the beginning, not only because of the sponsorship but also because of his involvement with the product. And since then, we’ve been together, you know, in the family for 30 years.