Carla joined ATÖLYE as a community member in 2016, and as a team member in 2018. Carla’s role today as Design Director focuses on leading the design team towards growing our transdisciplinary design practices while also working with clients and partners in the delivery of highly complex projects that address themes such as experience strategy, systems thinking, and holistic experiences. 

Before joining ATÖLYE in 2016, Carla’s professional focus on design-driven innovation led her to become an expert on strategic design research, conducting extensive qualitative research with in-depth interviews and workshops, and analysing the data from both inspirational and analytical perspectives. The key driving force for Carla is  to always uncover market gaps that could allow brands to reinvent their offerings and provide new products and services that people may need and want.

With degrees in Industrial Design (B.A., PUC-Rio, Brazil) and Service Design (M.Sc., Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Carla’s deep interest in multidisciplinary approaches started early. Understanding that as humans, our experiences are always informed and created by several elements, Carla’s interests beyond design expand towards psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, arts and semiotics.

The passion for creating immersive and transformative experiences has been there from the beginning. First, as an aspiring toy designer, Carla’s graduation project won a Red Dot Design Award in 2009. As her focus was always more in the playing and learning rather than the object itself, Carla found in Service Design the breadth of the playground and depth in human-centered approaches she always searched for, in order to achieve her dream as a designer, which is to essentially, make people happy.