Meet Léo Dester

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Léo Dester. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Léo , so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

My creativity is always alive thanks to the influence of the beautiful place I live in: the trails, the beaches, the stunning views of Rio de Janeiro, and the cities I’ve passed through, such as Belém do Pará in northern Brazil, where my heart is, Recife, São Paulo, and Bahia. These things greatly help me to create, compose, photograph, and improvise in my rhymes.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I was born in the city of São Paulo, grew up in the state of Minas Gerais, and I love the city of Rio de Janeiro. Tourism and Hip Hop are my passions, and through them I’ve been able to evolve by speaking English, getting to know the city, guiding tours, and showing it to people from all over the world.

I work on the Amastour project, where we showcase the Morro da Babilônia Trail and its charms to people. The beautiful viewpoint at Praia Vermelha is a favorite for most. We take people with physical disabilities to do the trail in a special wheelchair, along with the Coletivo Inclusão (Inclusion Collective). This action is very beautiful. We always do activities for the children of our favela, like the Kite Festival, and we take them out because they love everything.
I’m also working with the Aupaba Institute, an NGO that works with regenerative tourism, striving to restore, revive, and regenerate the territory where we live, transforming favelas into spaces of greater empathy and financial prosperity. With the Institute, we take favela residents to visit beautiful places like Sugarloaf Mountain and the Botanical Garden – a very beautiful and important project!

Soon I will be releasing my first Rap album: OZM MC presents Trap Life RJ, the reality of Rio de Janeiro in heavy beats by DJ Samu and the mixing and mastering by the master MG from Reppresent Music!!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The skills I acquired throughout my journey were the study to become a skilled, patient, and kind tour guide, capable of guiding people in the best way possible. This job is much more than just showing the place; it’s about fulfilling dreams, because often these are people who have worked all year to come and spend their holidays in Rio de Janeiro, taking photos, capturing the best angles and smiles, learning English to be able to converse and transmit as much knowledge as possible to people from outside Brazil. I even had the pleasure of guiding the world-famous rapper Central Cee!! An unforgettable day!! My advice is to believe in your dream, study and stay focused, and every day repeat aloud what you desire because words have power!!

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

A great book that helps me a lot is “29 Minutes to Speak in Public” by Brazilian authors Reinaldo Polito and Rachel Polito. It’s a complete book with excellent teachings that I use daily with my clients, and I’m also expressing myself much better in my daily life. I really enjoy reading, and currently I’m reading “Sunday Child,” a musical biography of Chico Science by José Teles. Chico Science, along with Nação Zumbi, are a great musical influence on me. Chico is one of the great names in Brazilian music who left us so early, but he and all the bands from the Northeast greatly represent the Mangue Beat movement.

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Léo Dester , Inclusion Collective

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Léo , so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

Image Credits