Fernando Valero
Fernando Valero grew up in “two worlds”: He lived with his family in a slum in Ecuador, but attended a private school until the sixth grade – until the end of primary school – thanks to his mother’s connections. She placed great importance on providing a good education for her five children. After completing his schooling, Fernando Valero pursued various academic goals and training: In accordance with his father’s wishes, he initially studied medicine, simultaneously began training to become a pastor, and undertook a technical apprenticeship. He always had to work in different jobs to earn money; he had little free time. During this busy period, his younger sister studied engineering in Germany. When Fernando Valero turned 30, she convinced him to move to Germany to study as well. So, in 1988, he went to Hamburg to stay with his sister. However, his goal was to attend the university in Bremerhaven, where he studied food technology starting in 1988. Life as a student in the seaside city presented several challenges for Fernando Valero. Not only did he have to learn the German language, but he also found the way of communication and lifestyle unfamiliar. “I am from the south and came to northern Germany. What was shocking at first, I have learned to love, for example, the very direct but also very honest way of the people here.” The changing seasons and snow were also new to him. Even as a student in Bremerhaven, Fernando Valero needed to earn money. For instance, he worked as a student assistant at the Bremerhaven Institute for Food Technology and Bioprocess Engineering. Through a classmate’s story, he learned in 1989 that the Alfred Wegener Institute was looking for a student assistant for the ice laboratories of the glaciology department. “There were many people who didn’t want to do this job – ice core measurements at minus twenty degrees. But I thought, wow, that’s something I would love to do!” Since then, Fernando Valero has been working as a technical employee with the glaciologists, and has been permanently employed there since 1996. During this time, Fernando Valero participated in ten polar expeditions lasting several months: four times he went to the Arctic – including on the “Polarstern” – four times to Greenland; two expeditions took place in Antarctica. As the first Ecuadorian, the then 38-year-old reached the North Pole in 1996. Under the leadership of geophysicist Heinrich Miller, Valero and the glaciology working group at the AWI won the “Communicator Award – Science Prize of the Stifterverband” in 2007 for outstanding communication work on climate development, which the family man is still particularly proud of today. In his free time, he uses different ways to convey knowledge about climate change to the public, such as teaching at children’s universities and through exhibitions. Additionally, he writes and illustrates the children’s book series “Paul and Napoleon,” creates short films and codes animations, produces artworks from thin ice sheets, or composes “Bremerhaven – 4 Seasons” by transforming different weather frequencies into music. Valero refers to his children and his wife Anna as his “greatest gifts.” The native South American loves Bremerhaven, “the small town by the sea,” as he affectionately calls the seaside city in his children’s books, and describes himself: “I have lived longer in Bremerhaven than in any other city – I am Bremerhavenian!” A portrait of Fernando Valero is one of the faces visible on the facade of the new German Emigration Center since June 2021.
