Betterfly

Overview

Betterfly was a Chilean insurtech with a particularly ambitious thesis: pair financial protection with daily well-being, then turn every healthy habit into a measurable act of social impact. Trees planted, meals donated, schools sponsored. The bet caught the moment. In 2021, the company raised US$60 million; in 2022, it closed an additional US$125 million Series C led by Glade Brook Capital with Greycroft, Lightrock, QED and DST Global, more than tripling its valuation and making it Latin America's first social impact unicorn.

To get there at speed, Betterfly acquired five technology companies during the same window, including Brazil's Xerpay, where I had been Product Design Lead, and the Chilean Kunder group. That M&A wave reshaped the company almost overnight, and reshaped my work with it: I moved into the role of Global Head of Product Design, responsible for integrating a 35-person team that now spanned design leads, UX writers, translators, product designers, design ops, illustrators, motion designers and design system operators across three languages and several cultures.

The job was less about new pixels and more about new connective tissue: defining how four design organizations would operate as one, structuring the department alongside product and tech post-M&A, aligning workflows with CX, brand and engineering, and building hiring and career frameworks that could hold a fast-growing team together without flattening the cultural identities each acquired company brought with it. What I learned in those months has shaped every team I've led since. Culture isn't something you draw in an org chart; it's something you keep deciding for, in public, week after week.

Key Responsibilities

As Global Head of Product Design, my primary role was to lead the integration of design teams following a significant international M&A. I managed the design integration of four companies, including a 35-person team comprised of design leads, UX writers, translators, product designers, design ops, illustrators, motion designers, and design system operators.

Objectives

• —Structuring the design department alongside product and tech post-M&A
• —Unifying design teams across four acquired companies
• —Defining roles, responsibilities, and career paths for each design role
• —Ensuring seamless integration between design, CX, and branding
• —Establishing a recruitment and hiring process for the design department
• —Aligning processes between product design, design ops, and tech teams

Challenges

• —Cultural Integration: Managing rapid team growth after a major acquisition, while maintaining cohesion across teams from different cultural and professional backgrounds.
• —Multilingual Communication: Navigating stakeholder meetings across three languages (English, Spanish, and Portuguese) while ensuring alignment with C-level executives.
• —Agile Transformation: Shifting the mindset from a waterfall model to agile practices across global teams.
• —Stakeholder Management: Unlike Xerpay, Betterfly's decision-making process involved a significantly larger and more complex array of external stakeholders.

Learnings

• —Culture is about people. If you forget about people you fail in culture.
• —Some coworkers are forever. Doesn't matter how distant you are.
• —Language isn't a barrier. Especially with people who really love your job and like to do their best.