Hi I am Ana
Living between two cities, Amsterdam and Barcelona, currently pursuing an MBA in Creative Business at Elisava
Brand design director. I scale brands through the phases that break them — startup to scale-up, and the funding and acquisition moments between. Two decades in design. Ten leading design organisations across EMEA, LATAM, North America and APAC. From startup founding through scale-up, leading both rebrands and the positioning work.
What I bring:
→ The right team for the phase you're in. Early, you hire range. Later, depth — and the managers who carry it without you.
→ Agencies, chosen and run well. Wolff Olins, Pentagram, Studio Dumbar, Los York. The work isn't the pitch; it's the brief, and what happens after handover.
→ Budget ownership, not budget requests. Scoping, forecasting, and defending creative spend to people who don't think in design.
→ Design rigour: Twenty years making complex information legible, UX, UI and product design are also on my list, besides complex brand systems — Google, DeepL, WWF, TikTok Business, Newzoo/ Advance Group, and Condé Nast
The Business Impact
→ Business context first. Knowing what the company is actually trying to achieve is what separates award-winning work from work that moves the business.
How I work and build diverse teams:
→ Technical mastery, radical creativity, and empathy. High craft standards only work if people trust the person setting them. Teams that feel safe make braver work.
→ A design team fluent in business, technically sharp, and built to thrive. I create frameworks for team development that serve individual growth while delivering business results and employee satisfaction.
→ Real cultural fluency, not tolerance. Practical, deep knowledge of cultural dimensions and psychology. Reading that right is what turns a distributed group into one team.
Person side
Busy mom, travelling, cycling, reading, lifting weights and collecting architecture and cookbooks. Swimming in the ocean or the Olympic swimming pools around. Slipping into museums, listening to Nina Simone and Brazilian music. Always attempting to get to a tennis court with my lovely and best partner. Baking cakes, which I can't follow the recipes for, drinking a cup of good batch brew, and talking to strangers- strange habit. Enthusiastic about getting lost in a new city, a brief, a problem worth solving, a cause.
Global footprint
20 years · EMEA · LATAM · USA · China · Japan
Selected clients & collaborators
Pentagram, Studio Dumbar, DeepL, Jimdo, Wolf Ollins, DEPT, Google, Google Play, TikTok, Talkingdata China, Visa, MacCann Tokyo, WWF, RNW, Natura&Co Aesop, Blue Group The Hague, VokDams, Fitzroy Hawk, Los York, Identity Global, Thijnk Berlin, Absolut Vodka, NBTC, Advance Publications( Conde Nast, Newzoo, Leaders Group,
Street&Smith-SBJ Sports Business Journal New York), PONY New York, Wageningen University, Menu Magazine, Istoe Magazine, Folha de S.Paulo, Coca-Cola Foundation, NCRV TV, German Green party Bündnis 90