[1] He earned admission in 1953 to the Brazilian Naval Academy Preparatory School, located in Angra dos Reis (Rio de Janeiro),[2] but, instead of pursuing a career as an officer in the Brazilian Navy, decided to return home in order to attend the Porto Alegre Engineering School (part of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), from where he graduated in 1960 as a civil engineer.

[4] In the 1970s and 1980s, already in the private sector, he actively participated in the planning or implementation of large infrastructure projects in Brazil and South America, such as the hydroelectric power plants of Ilha Solteira, Tucuruí, Itaipu (Brazil-Paraguay) and Guri (Venezuela), the Angra dos Reis nuclear power plant, the Rio-Niterói bridge and the Imigrantes highway, where he gained recognition as an efficient manager of projects marked by great complexity from both a technical, regulatory and business perspective.

At the international level, in addition to Itaipu and Guri, he worked as a senior consultant for energy projects in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

He was director for business development at the joint venture formed by Brazilian private groups Votorantim, Bradesco and Camargo Corrêa (VBC), and negotiated partnership agreements with foreign investors, such as the US energy conglomerate PSEG.

According to Roger Agnelli, Bradesco's representative at VBC and later president of mining company Vale, Pestana was “a natural dealmaker, always able to convince and bring shareholders together in order to clinch a good business opportunity”.