Cristina Junqueira says that the meeting that persuaded her to leave a race with great corporate names and join an insurgent effort to revolutionize the bank was easy to sell.
The person who made the launch was David Vélez, a Colombian who worked in Venture Capital, who wanted him to join him as co -founder of a new Brazilian digital banking platform. “People in Brazil and Latin America thought very high positions, very high interest rates, a terrible [customer] Experience and treaty were normal, ”he recalls.
Junqueira had recently resigned from his work after fighting to implement changes in a large Brazilian bank, and a mutual friend had introduced Vélez. He saw great opportunities for Fintech in Brazil, but needed a local partner who knew the country and understood his bank industry.
“The way he saw the financial industry and its problems was very similar to the way I saw it,” says Junqueira, speaking from his office in São Paulo. “I was also not willing to accept the terrible things that were happening.”
Together with Edward Wible, a young American software engineer, Vélez and Junqueira started cloud in the rich of the Brooklin district of São Paulo in 2013. His goal was to use custom technology to reduce costs for customers, offer financial services to millions that had never had access and improves the service.
Cloud headed the following year with a zero rate credit card managed by a mobile application. Its explosive growth in the last decade has made it the largest digital financial services platform in the world outside Asia, with 114 million customers, including more than 10 million in Mexico and 2.5 million in Colombia.
Professional milestones
Education
Degree and Master’s Engineering of the University of São Paulo
2004-2007 Work in Consulting for Booz Allen and BCG
2008 Complete MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
2013 Leave the work in the bank card division of Banco Itaú; COFUNDA CLORANK of a property in the Brooklin neighborhood of São Paulo
2014 Cloud launches a credit card without annual rate, a rarity in Brazil
2020 It becomes executive director of Cloudank Brazil
2021 Cloud Lanza IPO in New York
2022 It becomes a growth director who supervises expansion in Mexico and Colombia, as well as in global marketing and communications
The company is now worth around $ 50 billion, which makes Junqueira a paper billionario thanks to its participation in 2.6 percent, as well as a rare example of a Brazilian -profile Brazilian business executive. His cloud role is now growth director.
“I often like to tell people who in my career, I have never had a female star,” says Junqueira.
When he started as an intern in consulting companies in Brazil, “I and another girl who joined at the same time were the most important women in the office because there were no other women, only us.”
Diversity has been a key value for the bank from the beginning, she says. When Vélez founded Cloud, he wanted co -founders and “his first instinct, which was absolutely correct, was:” I need people who complement me, people who have different experiences for mine. “
Junqueira brought his experience as a Brazilian executive who had worked in banking and consulting.
The three co -founders are all “very different,” he explains. “From our beginning, we already saw the value of having people who complement each other.”
Cloud, she says, does not fix the hiring quotas for the proportion of historically underwater groups, but has made great efforts to recruit them. Today, about 43 percent of their leadership positions are in the hands of women and the company has promoted women in areas such as software development.
Married to four children, Junqueira has also been anxious to act as a model to follow for Brazilian women who want to combine a career and a family. Her husband is also in the business, as an executive of a steel company.
His Instagram account, which has more than half a million followers, presents topics such as “pregnant woman is the most efficient mammal of the planet” and “The power of motherhood”, along with more conventional corporate subjects, such as the risk of reputation and fear of failure.
She remembers having traveled to San Francisco when she expects her first baby to look for funds from Serie A of the Risk capital firm Sequoia Capital. “I had seven months pregnant when I got there to make the field,” she says. “There were some surprised faces, but they treated me well. . . Two months later my baby was born and signed the paperwork of Serie A in the hospital. “
Only three days before his second son was born, he posed for a cover of Forbes Brazil magazine, clearly very pregnant, and traveled to New York for the initial public offer 2021 of Cloud many when eight months of pregnancy with his third child. His room was born a few months ago.
“It saddes me a lot when I see the number of women who still think they have to make a decision [between family and career]”, She says.” It is not easy to reconcile both, I don’t want to pretend that it is super easy because it is not, it is very difficult. But it is not impossible. “
Junqueira often receives advice requests from women who ask about the balance of a career and a family, and is pleased to please. “I have no doubt that communication is one of the most fundamental [qualities of] Leadership, ”she says. “It’s something that women could invest more [time] In, and that would have a great result. “
Susan Segal, president of the Business Lobby of the Council of America, describes Junqueira as part of a new generation of Latin American women who balance successful careers with family responsibilities. “She has co -founded a company that has done incredibly well and at the same time has juggled with a family. She is a new generation model for women in Latin America. “
Junqueira describes herself as “crazy with Disney” and has a country house full of memories. His three daughters bear the name of Disney’s characters, and the approach of the entertainment group in the client experience was an inspiration for cloud.
“I know that sometimes it is difficult for people to understand this,” he says on Instagram about his obsession. “For me, the first is the beauty of the place, beauty is incontestable. . . And beauty calms our heart. “
Junqueira’s meteoric career has not been free of controversy. In a 2020 interview, he asked about the bank’s difficulties to find Afro-Brazila managers due to strict technical requirements, he said that Cloud could not “level.”
The comment caused criticism and Junqueira quickly apologized to LinkedIn, saying that he had not expressed himself in the best way. Now he describes that as a “very sad episode”, saying that “we continue to believe that there is a lot of talent in all the underrepresented groups and we will continue looking for the best talent wherever it is.”
Now with 42 years, Junqueira believes that the best days of cloud still remain ahead. It is convinced of the bank’s potential to export its technology to provide financial inclusion to millions of people in other nations that do not live throughout the world.
“I really want to see what we managed to do in the next 20 or 30 years,” she says.