Design Leadership · Content Strategy

Danielle Cruz.

Fifteen years building disciplines, teams, and product experiences at scale — from editorial media to one of Latin America's largest fintechs.

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Who I am

I'm a design leader who came up through content — graphic design, content strategy, then product design leadership.

Today I lead 10 designers at Mercado Pago, one of Latin America's largest fintechs. I care about strategy backed by data, AI-augmented workflows, and developing the people I work with. I've built disciplines from scratch and I'm just as comfortable defining content strategy as I am leading a design org.

What I do
Design leadership Content strategy Team building AI-augmented workflows People development UX writing Data-backed prioritization Voice & tone Stakeholder management
Trajectory

From graphic design
to design leadership.

2008
Graphic Design
SENAC — BA
2010–19
360 Content Strategy
Editorial media & advertising
2019–20
UX Writing
Itaú, Fleury
2021–22
Senior UX Writer
RaiaDrogasil
2022–24
Content Design Lead
RD — team of 4
2024 →
UX Design Lead
Mercado Pago — 10
Selected work

Four cases.

Case 01
RaiaDrogasil · 2021–2024
Senior UX Writer → Content Design Lead

Building Content Design from the ground up.

The situation
One Content Designer (me). Fifty Product Designers. No content strategy, no guidelines, no shared vocabulary. Content was an afterthought in the delivery flow.
The outcome
A recognized Content Design discipline with its own systems, processes, and a team of four — with prioritization tied to business metrics.
01
2021
Mapping & Culture
Benchmarked the market, mapped needs, built the writing guide, checklist, workshops and a Content Guild.
02
2022
Pilot
Defined the operating model — scopes, processes, allocation logic, people foundations.
03
2023
Refinement
Grew the team's depth, connected across squads, refined processes from real friction.
04
2024
Strategy
Moved into quarter-level prioritization, focusing energy on the highest-impact initiatives.
0
upstream initiatives mapped
0
with Content involvement negotiated
0
high-impact opportunities surfaced

A snapshot from a previous quarter — plus a Content Design System, writing guide, checklist, individual-development framework and team-skills map, all created from scratch.

Case 02
Mercado Pago · 2024–Present
UX Design Lead, team of 10

Leading design in practice.

Mercado Pago home screen — after the redesign, showing balance, credit card and loans modules
Mercado Pago Home — after the redesign

Leading a team of 10 designers across UX, UI and Content at one of Latin America's largest fintechs — from a transversal role spanning the whole product, not a single squad — through big, visible projects and a shift in how the team works.

Home redesign
Led the complete redesign of the Home experience — one of the product's most visible, high-stakes surfaces.
Dark mode
Instituted dark mode across the product, from design tokens through rollout.
Automated approvals
Built automated approval flows for pending requests, replacing manual sign-off with a faster, auditable process.
Content rituals
Created recurring content rituals for the team — critique, calibration and knowledge-sharing built into the workflow.
Roadmap & capacity
Restructured roadmap planning and task assignment, cutting team overload intelligently and freeing up a meaningful buffer of designer capacity for the extra miles that always come up in this kind of product.
AI in practice
Drove the adoption of AI into the team's processes and deliverables — working hands-on with Claude, Cursor, and other tools.

Full case study in development — happy to walk you through it live.

Case 03
Itaú · 2020–2021
UX Writer · Onboarding redesign

Making consortium make sense.

Redesigned onboarding, screen 1 of 3 — Lia, quer planejar uma conquista? Redesigned onboarding, screen 2 of 3 — Em grupo, fica mais acessível Redesigned onboarding, screen 3 of 3 — Duas formas de ser contemplada
The redesigned onboarding, cycling through its 3 screens
The challenge
Consortium is a complex financial product in Brazil — easy to misunderstand. The onboarding was packed with jargon that didn't belong in a first contact.
The approach
Listened to customer-service calls. Ran semantic research. Aligned with marketing and sales. Co-designed with the squad. Rewrote content to lead with benefit, not mechanics.
From 0% → 0% user comprehension in testing — same product, redesigned content.
Case 04 · Beyond the team

Teaching the craft.

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designers trained
Through the "Figma for Writers" workshop, bridging writing and product UI for designers across the market.
0
courses in development
Building new courses, including "From Brief to Screen — UI with AI for Writers," aimed at writers being asked to deliver UI screens.
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talks delivered
Long-standing speaker on UX writing, content ops, creativity and design leadership — and an in-company instructor for career transition.
On leadership

How I lead.

I.
Strategy backed by data
Opinion is a starting point, not a destination. I prioritize by business impact — mapped, measured, negotiated. The work I'm proudest of is the work I can defend with numbers.
II.
People grow disciplines, not the other way around
Disciplines scale because individual designers grow into them. I invest in individual development — building career paths, mentoring towards autonomy, and creating the tools and space for people to own their growth.
III.
Tools are leverage, including AI
I bring AI into team workflows when it removes friction, not when it removes craft. The same principle applies to processes, systems and rituals: keep what serves the work, prune what doesn't.
Before all this

Fifteen years in design, editorial & brands.

From 2005 to 2019 — five years as a branding and editorial designer, then a decade in content and digital strategy for editorial media and advertising: magazines, music festivals, and social media for global brands.

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Also Worked with brands and agencies including MTV Brasil, DM9DDB, Wunderman, Kérastase, Land Rover, China in Box, Natura, and Optimum Nutrition.
New work drops here often. Stay tuned.
Let'stalk.