I come from the hilly city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I grew up as that typical curious child who takes all the toys and appliances apart.
As a teenager I quickly became fascinated by the possibility of designing and building my own websites. There was something magical about being able to publish something from my bedroom that would be accessed and impact someone in another part of the country or the world.
One of these endeavors – a Harry Potter fansite – became popular at the time and became my biggest motivation.
My fansite ended up being an incredible portfolio when I needed to find an internship straight out of technical school.
I was about to turn 17, but I was already proficient in HTML, CSS and the Macromedia suite. In those early years I worked in digital agencies and software houses and was responsible for projects that I am still proud of today.
2004
It was 2006 when I started my Design degree. UEMG School of Design gave me the opportunity to meet incredibly creative people and provided me technical and theoretical knowledge in a huge spectrum of disciplines that went far beyond I could imagine.
I graduated in Graphic Design after also spending some time on the Industrial Design path.
In parallel to university I joined two fantastic developers in founding Milk-it Software Farm, where I served as creative director for 5 years.
Milk-it made use of cutting-edge technologies and practices for that time: web standards, Git, Rails, prototypes, SEO, Scrum. We were active in local communities, we organized events and had shared our experiences in our blog.
Our team acted as the technology arm of startups and agencies, but in truth our goal was at first to develop our own products, which unfortunately we didn't manage to fund.
The success and the pride we had with our projects did not change their ephemeral and rarely iterative or scalable nature.
2012
I was able to confirm my hunch that working with products would be the right thing for me when I joined Studio Sol in 2012. In just over 3 years of collaboration, I redesigned critical features, launched several apps, paired with an incredible team of designers and began the research for what years later would become a MOOC for musicians.
I learned a lot on every design review, release or coffee break but mostly through the tens of millions of people impacted every day across multiple platforms.
Around the time I was finishing my MBA, I was invited by Hometeka to collaborate on the strategy, design and product management of their pivot into a marketplace.
The challenges were great and I was once again balancing management responsibilities with IC demands such as user interviews, A/B tests and new designs.
2015
2017
I moved to Dublin to fulfill a long-time desire to work on international teams and experience different cultures. It was worth it: building things with people from so many different places and having the opportunity to travel to many countries is insanely transforming.
From then on I lead or contribute to products in different industries such as banking, retail and healthcare.
I found super exciting solving progressively intricate problems and exercising the ability to focus on details without losing sight of the big picture.
I have become particularly fond of Design Systems and tokens. It's incredible to see the growth and maturity of the community in just a few years.
Living in Munich from late 2019, my German has gradually gotten worse since then.
2019
This is perhaps a very obvious example, but my technical background and my interest in technology help me every day in pairing with developers, articulating design decisions and figuring out satisfactory technical solutions.
The same happened with my MBA in Branding – which I studied out of pure curiosity – that turned out to be of great help in later experiences with design systems.
Having interests in many other things such as architecture, science and statistics also deeply influence my way of thinking and connecting dots with design.
We live at a time of profound transformations in our society, which bring with them opportunities but also immense challenges.
The journey of how the world has shaped itself is truly fascinating. Envisioning the potential pathways it will take from this point forward is even more exciting.
I list below books and articles on subjects that apparently have little to do with my role, but which are often as valuable to me as many A Book Apart publications and a few O'Reilly animals.
