Problems

Wealth Management operates in a highly complex, conservative, and regulation heavy environment. Serving ultra high net worth individuals and institutional clients requires precision, trust, and long term relationship management. However, this same environment can slow innovation, limit cross functional collaboration, and create silos between strategy, operations, and client experience.

The division needed:

• A structured innovation framework
• Stronger collaboration across multidisciplinary teams
• Clearer communication of complex financial solutions
• More human centered approaches to high end financial services
• Cultural transformation that empowered creativity while maintaining rigor

Without a design driven mindset, innovation risked becoming incremental rather than transformative.

Solutions

I was extremely lucky to work with so many brilliant people at Itaú. Every single day I learned something new and I'm proud to say that this collaborative environment helped us establish and scale a design led innovation structure within the Wealth Management division, operating across both project execution and cultural transformation.

I applied design thinking practices to frame problems more strategically, align stakeholders, and ensure solutions were grounded in real user needs. Workshops, co creation sessions, and structured ideation frameworks empowered collaboration between executives, financial specialists, product teams, and operations.

As lead designer, I drove visual and strategic storytelling across multiple initiatives, translating complex financial concepts into clear, compelling narratives that aligned leadership and accelerated decision making. My work strengthened both internal engagement and client facing experiences.

I took part in several high impact projects helping with strategic thinking and storytelling, but most importantly Itaú Women Entrepreneurs, an award winning initiative that recognized Itaú internationally as the best bank for women entrepreneurs. The initiative positioned Itaú as a global reference in financial services for women, reinforcing brand equity while generating meaningful business and reputational impact. We talked with women to understand their daily lives, we identified their needs, and created a package of services and products to help them grow and expand, like a heavily adopted learning platform.

Other projects included Prototypying Lab, e-Prev, Soma, Personas, Pension Funds initiatives, and The Discipline Barrier, each focused on improving strategic clarity, product innovation, or client experience within high value segments.

Beyond individual projects, I helped shape the structural foundation for innovation delivery by improving communication frameworks, strengthening collaboration rituals, and building processes that enhanced morale and creative confidence not only within the WMS division but the entire organization.

As a result, during my 3.5 years at Itaú, I was recognized as one of the top-3 performers for 3 consecutive years.