Our team

Vanessa from Portugal

Vanessa works as a Shift Leader and Frontex Tactical Support Officer; this fancy title has a very practical dimension in the daily lives of EU border guards: “The main goal of my work is to provide support to EU and Schengen countries in managing the EU’s external borders and tackling cross-border crime. At the coordination centre, we are responsible for, among other things, making sure that all across our operational area all needs are being catered to, meaning that all the officers deployed have the necessary equipment and conditions to perform their jobs in the best possible way.”

For Vanessa, this means daily contact with EU border guards from the Terra operational area. She gathers and analyses data to transmit them up Frontex’s hierarchical structure. Joint Operation Terra is huge; it involves 808 officers and plenty of technical equipment. The coordination work done by Vanessa and colleagues from her team is crucial for officers in the field who need to remain fully focused on their professional tasks.