Roberto Mayor is Professor of Developmental and Cellular Neurobiology at University College London. Elected an EMBO member in 2019 and a former International Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, his lab works on the development of the neural crest, in particular its induction and migration. We met Roberto in Buenos Aires at the tenth biennial meeting of the Latin American Society for Developmental Biology (LASDB, the society he founded in 2001), and discussed the role serendipity has played in his career, why we need a more holistic view of the cell during development, and the challenges and potential of science in Latin America.