Tag: leadership

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Caixa + CESAR: Scaling Design Across Strategic Innovation

Role: Design Manager

Industry: Finance

Duration: 24 Months

Leadership Highlights:

  • Led and mentored a team of 15+ designers across multiple strategic initiatives.
  • Built alignment between Design, Business, Engineering and Data teams.
  • Established shared design practices while preserving team autonomy.
  • Supported designers through coaching, feedback and career development.
  • Introduced AI into design research workflows to improve insight generation and decision-making.

Since mid-2024, I’ve been leading the design effort for Caixa’s innovation program in partnership with CESAR.

Rather than focusing on a single product, the program operates as a continuous innovation capability, exploring opportunities across multiple strategic domains. To date, the initiative has delivered more than 15 innovation projects, covering topics such as customer acquisition, Open Finance, investments, housing, product modernization and AI-powered services.

About my Role

As Design Manager, I lead a team of more than 15 designers working simultaneously across multiple initiatives, as well as hands-on experience with rapid prototyping, facilitating discovery and validation workshops, and defining scope using customized Lean Inception.

My role combines people leadership, design strategy and delivery management. I mentor designers, support project teams, align design quality across initiatives and help multidisciplinary teams make better decisions while maintaining autonomy and delivery speed.

The Challenge

Every initiative addressed a different business problem, customer profile and organizational context.

The challenge was not simply delivering products, but scaling a design practice capable of supporting continuous innovation across multiple strategic fronts while maintaining consistency, collaboration and high-quality outcomes.

My Approach

I focused on building shared ways of working rather than standardized outputs.

Alongside mentoring designers and strengthening collaboration between Design, Business and Engineering, I encouraged the use of artificial intelligence whenever it could improve learning, accelerate synthesis or support decision-making.

One example of where AI acted as an extension of the team’s collective intelligence was in analyzing usability testing sessions, transforming qualitative feedback into actionable insights more efficiently.

Outcomes

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Banco do Brasil: Leading Cross-functional Design Teams to Accelerate Innovation

Role: Design Manager

Industry: Finance

Duration: 18 Months

Leadership Highlights:

  • Led 10 designers across 3 cross-functional teams.
  • Aligned design strategy across multiple innovation initiatives.
  • Mentored designers while supporting delivery quality and consistency.
  • Facilitated collaboration between Design, Data, Cloud and AI specialists.
  • Helped create an environment for rapid experimentation and continuous learning.

Outcome: Two initiatives from this program were later featured among the innovation cases that contributed to Banco do Brasil being awarded Bank of the Year 2023 by The Banker, part of the Financial Times Group.

Banco do Brasil partnered with CESAR to accelerate innovation across strategic business challenges through a multidisciplinary initiative combining Design, Cloud, Data and Artificial Intelligence.

As part of this program, multiple solution tracks were developed simultaneously, addressing different customer segments and business opportunities while maintaining a common vision of innovation.

About my Role

I led three cross-functional design teams working across distinct solution spaces, coordinating a team of ten designers throughout the initiative.

Beyond managing delivery, my role involved aligning design strategy across projects, supporting decision-making, mentoring designers, facilitating collaboration between disciplines and ensuring consistency in quality while enabling each team to move with autonomy.

The Challenge

Leading multiple design teams in parallel required balancing different business goals, stakeholder expectations and delivery timelines without losing strategic alignment.

Rather than optimizing individual products, the challenge was creating an environment where several teams could make good decisions independently while contributing to a shared innovation vision.

Selected Deliveries
  • Business Coach — Financial assistant for small businesses.
  • Gamified Financial Missions — Engagement experience for young customers.
  • Investment Aggregator — Unified investment portfolio experience.
  • Innovation Speedboats — Rapid experimentation framework combining Design, Cloud, Data and AI.

My Approach

I focused on building alignment before execution.

This included defining common design principles, facilitating collaboration across teams, supporting prioritization, removing delivery obstacles and creating opportunities for knowledge sharing throughout the program.

Outcomes

The initiative delivered multiple digital solutions addressing different strategic audiences within Banco do Brasil, including experiences for small businesses, young customers and investors.

Beyond the individual products, the program strengthened collaboration across multidisciplinary teams and demonstrated how design could operate as a strategic capability for innovation.

Two initiatives developed within this program were later highlighted among the innovation cases contributing to Banco do Brasil being awarded Bank of the Year 2023 by The Banker, part of the Financial Times Group.

Meet the PJ panel, which is the solution that includes the Business Coach delivered by our speedboat initiative.