I am sitting here with four of the women who help shape the direction of QP Savills. It is International Women’s Day, and around the table are Alison Buechner, Co Owner and Director, Monica Mendes, Chief Revenue Officer, Giselle Pisabarro, Loulé Sales Director, and Amy Kerins, Marketing Director. Their journeys into property, leadership and the Algarve could hardly be more different. Germany, South Africa and Ireland. Careers spanning finance, marketing, trading floors and property sales. Yet as the conversation unfolds, a shared philosophy quickly emerges about leadership, resilience and the importance of lifting others up along the way.
Monica Mendes speaks first. Born in South Africa to Portuguese parents, she joined QP Savills as Sales Director for the Central Algarve and quickly established a strong regional presence before moving into her current role as Chief Revenue Officer, where she now oversees the company’s broader sales strategy. For Monica, leadership is about balance.
“Being a woman in business means leading with both strength and empathy,” she says. “It means understanding that you do not have to choose between being ambitious and being human.”
She believes women often bring a distinctive perspective to leadership, combining emotional intelligence and intuition with commercial clarity. Those qualities, she explains, allow leaders to build strong relationships while still making confident decisions. She also reflects candidly on the challenges many women face when navigating leadership roles. There are still expectations, she says, about how assertive a woman should or should not be.
“There can be assumptions about how assertive a woman should be, or surprise when you are decisive and commercially firm,” she explains. “Clarity and preparation are powerful tools. When you know your market, your numbers and your strategy, confidence follows.” When the conversation turns to advice for younger women starting their careers, Monica’s message is simple and direct. “Do not shrink yourself to make others comfortable. Speak clearly. Ask questions. Challenge respectfully. Leadership requires visibility.” She pauses for a moment before adding something she clearly feels strongly about. “Believe in your capability before you feel ready. Confidence often comes after action, not before it.”
Across the table, Amy Kerins nods in agreement. With nearly two decades of experience in marketing across globally recognised brands, she now leads the marketing team at QP Savills, bringing both strategic vision and creative energy to the company’s growth. Originally from Ireland, Amy moved to the Algarve with her family several years ago. One of the defining chapters in her career was a four year break when the family relocated to Portugal for her husband’s role. At the time, she worried that stepping away might slow her professional momentum. Looking back now, she sees it very differently.
“That time actually did the opposite,” she explains. “It gave me space to reflect and grow personally. I returned to work with more confidence, more conviction and a much stronger ability to manage both upwards and downwards.” The experience reshaped how she thinks about career paths, especially for women. “Careers aren’t always linear,” she says. “Sometimes the moments that feel like pauses or setbacks are actually the periods where you grow the most.”
Amy also speaks warmly about the person who inspired her long before her own career began. “My mum has always been my biggest inspiration,” she says with a smile. “She’s in her eighties now but still has more energy and determination than most people half her age.” Her mother also worked in marketing and built long standing relationships with clients over many years. It is something Amy believes sits at the heart of good business. Today, Amy’s perspective is shaped as much by motherhood as by marketing strategy. Her daughters are eight and ten, and watching their natural confidence reminds her how important it is to protect that sense of possibility.
“They see no limits,” she says. “For me, raising them is about protecting that belief in themselves and helping them grow into strong, kind and confident women who feel they can do anything.”
Giselle Pisabarro brings yet another perspective to the discussion. Before relocating from South Africa to the Algarve in 2022, she spent more than twenty years as a Derivatives Sales Trader on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, a demanding and fast paced environment where women were often the minority. That experience taught her early on how important it was to be assertive and confident.
“I spent twenty years working in a very male dominated environment,” she says. “I often felt like I had to prove myself, that I could do the job just as well, if not better, than my male colleagues.” Those years shaped how she approaches leadership today. For Giselle, being a woman in business is not about competition with other women. It is about support. “It’s about supporting other women without seeing them as competition, and expecting that same support in return,” she explains.
She believes workplaces are strongest when people feel comfortable sharing ideas and speaking openly. Creating that kind of culture, she says, is just as important as achieving strong commercial results. Her advice to younger women entering leadership is refreshingly honest. “Don’t wait until you feel one hundred percent ready, because you probably never will,” she says. “Growth really happens when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone.”
Finally, Alison Buechner reflects on the bigger picture. Born in Germany and educated across Europe and the United States, she first arrived in the Algarve in 1997 and quickly discovered a passion for property. She joined Quinta Properties in 1999 and just two years later took over the company. Together with her sister Kerstin, she has spent the past three decades building one of the most successful property businesses in the region.
Listening to the others speak, Alison nods often. Much of what they describe echoes the values she has tried to embed in the company since the beginning. For her, leadership has always been about fairness, consistency and heart.
“Being a woman in business, to me, means leading with fairness and a lot of heart,” she says. “You can be strong and kind at the same time, and how you treat people truly matters.”
Her advice to the next generation of women is direct. “Don’t wait for things to happen. Don’t expect opportunities to present themselves. Create them. Step forward. Back yourself. Opportunities grow when you do.”
As a mother to three daughters, she hopes they see that leadership does not require fitting into someone else’s mould. “I want them to see that leadership can be both strong and warm,” she says. “That you don’t need to shrink yourself to succeed.”
After three decades of building a business, Alison reflects on the journey with quiet pride:
“Thirty years. Grateful. Proud. And still moving forward.”