Alien Superstar at Davos: A Black Woman's Journey to the World Economic Forum
- Lys Silva
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
I hate waking up early. At every morning event from Afroswissters, if I meet someone on the way, I always say my body is here, but my mind will come at 9h.
Davos was no different.
I woke up at 4h50 because, not following the private jet memo, I decided to take the 6h SBB train there. As I enter my wagon, all I see is white, from the light illuminating the train to the people.
An older man (is he Swiss?) stares at me as if I were an alien. Nice to meet you, alien superstar. (😉 for all my Beyoncé fans)
The before journey
Oh, the glamour. It's 7h15 and I'm obliged to wake up. The train only has two wagons, and everybody is packed in, standing. Again, I should have followed the private jet thing.
But hey, how did I end up here? Good question. As an unemployed Black Brazilian and Ukrainian refugee in Switzerland, the last place you would think of finding me is Davos on Tuesday. This was my first trip to this legendary gathering, and honestly, I wasn't sure if I belonged there.
Let me back up a bit. My life has taken turns I never could imagined. I'm from Brazil, and I built a career as a journalist there, covering international news, even reporting on Davos from the comfort of a newsroom thousands of kilometers away. Then I moved to Ukraine with my fiancé. I found my home, changed careers, and everything was going fine until February 2022 came. I became a refugee, and suddenly everything I knew, everything I had built, was left behind. Switzerland became my new reality, an orderly, expensive reality where I'm still trying to find my footing.
How I got to Davos
Luckily, Tallulah, Afroswissters founder and friend, doesn't allow me to feel sorry for myself in the victim corner. And when she said, "Hey, I enrolled you in one of the panels," I was like, "Wait, anyone can go?"
Well, not anyone. You have to be in Switzerland, be associated with a company, have the 60 francs for the train ticket, something to wear that's not too fancy but also not too sloppy (women here, we know too well how men dress to these occasions without a second thought), and, most importantly, you need someone who tells you it's possible. That was Tallulah to me.
She didn't just tell me I could go. She told me I should go. She reminded me that my voice matters.
And here I am, standing next to the toilet door in the train heading to Davos. There's a meme on Instagram that shows crazy scenarios, and it reads "your unemployed friend on a random Tuesday." I proudly fit the stereotype.
The conferences: a full circle moment
The first conference reminded me of my past life before Ukraine. As an ex-journalist, seeing the Forbes CEO talk felt like a full-circle moment. I was in international news, I covered Davos from the newsroom, and now I'm in one of the rooms.
Overwhelming is an understatement. The conversations were high-level, fast-paced, filled with acronyms and insider language that reminded me I'm still finding my way in these spaces. But I was there. I was listening, learning, absorbing.
And then came the moment that made me both laugh and cry internally: a panel on diversity. Oh, don't we love to talk about diversity without a Black person on the panel? Without a refugee voice? Without someone who actually embodies the "inclusion" everyone loves to discuss in theory?
I sat there thinking about all the boardrooms, all the conferences, all the decision-making spaces that talk about people like me without ever talking to people like me. It's 2026, we're at the World Economic Forum, and we're still having conversations about the "future of work" without acknowledging that for refugees, for Black women, for people who don't fit the traditional mold, the present of work is already incredibly challenging.
The Ukraine House: where I found home
In a country famous for chocolate, I cried while eating one. But it was not Swiss, it was Ukrainian. A simple Ukrainian chocolate. The taste transported me back to a life I can no longer access, to streets I used to walk, to a version of myself that felt whole and settled. The grief of displacement isn't always loud and dramatic. Sometimes it's quiet and sneaks up on you in the taste of a chocolate, in a familiar word overheard, in the warmth of people who understand what you've lost without you having to explain it.
At the Ukraine House, I didn't have to perform. I had to be neither strong nor resilient nor inspiring. I could just be someone who misses home. Someone who lost a life and is still mourning it while trying to build a new one.
I hadn't realized how much I needed that space until I was in it. How much I needed to be around people who didn't expect me to have moved on or to be grateful for my "opportunity" to start fresh. They just knew. And in that knowing, I found a moment of peace.
The Brazil House: A different kind of displacement
Later, I visited the Brazil House, and I felt like a foreigner in my own culture.
The attendees carried an air of arrogance that felt all too familiar. It was the same uptight, exclusionary energy that made me leave Brazil in the first place. The same social hierarchies, the same unspoken rules about who belongs and who doesn't, the same way of making you feel small if you don't fit into their narrow definition of success.
I stood there, speaking Portuguese but feeling distant. It was a painful reminder that sometimes the people who speak your language, who share your passport, can make you feel more excluded than strangers ever could.
The weight of being there
The physical and mental exhaustion was real. I was hungry and sleepy. Felt like a child that was excited about going to Disneyland, but after a few hours, got too tired to even get in line to see her favourite character.
But I persevere and create moments of connection. Conversations over coffee, a shared meal with a friend I made at my weekly book club, who organized a WhatsApp group with other women who were going to Davos, nodding and smiling to the other black people. Small victories that reminded me why I was there in the first place.
Coming back
As I headed back home on that same crowded train, exhausted but exhilarated, I carried with me the contradictions of the day: the exclusivity and the opportunity, the conversations about diversity happening in the least diverse rooms, the sweetness of that Ukrainian chocolate and the bitterness of feeling foreign in the Brazil House, the reminder that sometimes all we need is one person to tell us "you belong here too."
I put in my earphones and Beyoncé's version of "Blackbird" came on. You know the one, where she reimagines the Beatles classic as a love letter to Black women.
"Take these broken wings and learn to fly... You were only waiting for this moment to arise."
And I thought: that's exactly what this was. This whole messy, uncomfortable, beautiful day. Learning to fly with broken wings. Taking flight in spaces that weren't built for us. Waiting our whole lives for this moment to arise, and then showing up for it, exhausted and uncertain, but showing up nonetheless.
W
e are the blackbirds, aren't we? The ones who were told we couldn't fly, who had our wings clipped by displacement, by discrimination, by systems designed to keep us grounded. But we fly anyway. We sing in the dead of night anyway. We take these broken wings, and we soar.
Keep showing up anyway.
Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
This is your moment to arise.