Biography
Joana is the co-founder and COO of Sensei. Founded in 2017, Sensei is the leading European technology scale-up in autonomous retail.
Using its proprietary computer vision and artificial intelligence technology, Sensei pioneered the opening of Europe's first autonomous store in Lisbon in 2021, and in 2025, with SONAE MC, it opened the world's largest autonomous store, Continente Bom Dia in Leiria. It had previously opened the first autonomous supermarket in Latin America in Brazil with the Muffato Group, and in Italy, with the Italian convenience retail brand CONAD, the first autonomous stores in Italy.
Sensei has autonomous points of sale in Portugal, France, Italy, and Brazil and a team of over 80 people. Its shareholders include American, German, Spanish, Latin American, and Portuguese investors (some of whom are funded by major European retail players). The company raised approximately €21 million in venture capital, closing a Series A financing round in 2024 of €15 million.
During her academic career, she worked and studied in Portugal, the USA, Italy, and Germany. She attended Instituto Superior Técnico, where she completed doctoral studies (DFA) in the MIT Portugal program (an IST partnership with MIT), and a postgraduate degree in Management and Sustainability at Harvard University in the USA. She was a founding partner of the software house META before founding Sensei and, since 2019, has been a member of the Executive Committee and Vice President of the Portuguese Industrial Association (AIP-CCI).
She was awarded the Women Entrepreneurship Award by Católica Lisbon Business School/Center for Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 2019 and the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2021 (João Vasconcelos award by Startup Lisboa).