Hi 👋, I'm Claudio Afonso.

I’m a Vancouver-based design leader with over 25 years of experience spanning digital product design, creative leadership, and experience strategy across advertising, enterprise, and financial services.

I began my career in marketing and creative technology, where I eventually became an Executive Creative Director and helped lead award-winning work at one of South Africa’s top agencies. Over time, my focus evolved from campaigns and storytelling into building digital products and platforms, designing complex systems that solve real business problems at scale.

In recent years, I’ve partnered with global teams and organizations including HP, Microsoft, and Google, helping teams modernize digital experiences while balancing usability, innovation, and real-world execution. I do my best work in high-trust, incubated environments where ambiguity is expected and momentum matters. I thrive in player-coach roles, shaping product vision, aligning stakeholders, and helping teams move quickly from early concepts to validated outcomes.

Today, I’m leading key product initiatives at a prominent Canadian fintech, modernizing platforms delivered through a B2B2C model across Canada’s credit union network. My work focuses on simplifying advisor workflows, navigating complex compliance requirements, and enabling straight-through processing that reduces operational burden while improving day-to-day efficiency.

I’m known for bringing clarity to complexity, building alignment across product, engineering, and executive teams, and creating design direction that is both strategic and measurable. I’m especially energized by the intersection of design, systems thinking, and emerging technology, including AI, where the goal is not novelty but meaningful impact.

I’m currently open to senior design leadership opportunities where design is expected to shape strategy, drive modernization, and help teams build what’s next.

If you’re hiring for a role where design leadership needs to drive real outcomes, I’d love to connect. I’m happy to share a detailed resume directly upon request.