About
I started as an art director in Puerto Rico, working across local and international advertising clients. When the social media era hit, I moved toward digital creative and strategy, and never fully left either side.
I helped bootstrap two small digital agencies, ran political campaigns across the Americas (armored vehicles included), and directed a team of 40 digital creatives with a $2M budget. Along the way I learned to use Salesforce, HubSpot, Excel, and to care about the difference between all three.
For the last several years I’ve been at de la Cruz, producing digital creative work that has won at Cannes, Effie, Ojo, Cúspide, SME, and others. The work I’m most proud of tends to live at the edge of strategy and technology.
I’ve been speaking and educating on AI, specifically on human-centered design and implementation, at forums ranging from the El Salvador National Marketing Association to the International Women’s Economic Forum. The technology is changing us. Understanding it is not optional.
Outside of work: food nerd, photographer by habit, perpetually curious. Based in Puerto Rico.
Career
Twenty years of following the dopamine.
From a family restaurant in Puerto Rico to a Cannes Gold Lion, the through-line has always been curiosity: obsess, master, move when there’s nothing left to learn.
Pre-2001 · Origin story
Before the brief, there was a kitchen.
I grew up in a family that ran a seafood restaurant and a pharmacy, both small-town businesses where relationships mattered as much as the product. I made my first pastelillos at age five, eventually ran the kitchen solo as a teenager, and learned customer service, discipline, and emotional intelligence before I ever knew those were skills. In parallel: drums in bands (paid concerts), DJ at Alfa Rock radio station, voice-over work for ad agencies, and an obsessive relationship with computers that led to building, repairing, and eventually getting certified in computer repair. All of it at the same time. Still can’t do things one at a time.
~2000–2001 · First creative role
Mangrove Magazine
I started as a photographer and became Director of Photography within six months. I also handled the webmastering, sold ad space, and helped distribute the magazine, regularly sleeping on the office floor. I left after about a year: they never paid me, and they kept blocking my band gigs. Non-negotiable.
December 2001 · Entry into advertising
First ad agency · 6 months
I walked in because they were looking for a messenger. I walked out with a job as a graphic artist: $7.50/hour, 28 hours a week. Minimum wage was $5.15 at the time; my father, a licensed optician, earned $8.75. I saw heaven. Overnight shifts, color separations, print layouts. And a fast-developing love for branding.
~2002–2003 · First agency experience
Nexus · ~2 years
I was called in for a voice-over gig, met the Creative Director, and walked out with a full-time offer, same day, same visit. I was 22. I worked overnight every single day on bank and supermarket accounts, and within a year I was earning what my father earned. These were the last remnants of Puerto Rico’s glamorous advertising era: weekly happy hours, real camaraderie, genuine craft. I loved every minute of it, even the parts that were brutal.
~2004–2006 · Political + pharma advertising
IRC · Art Director
Political advertising bit me hard. The pace rewired how I think strategically: you have two hours to respond, counterattack, soften, or go on offense. I worked campaigns for governors, senators, and mayors across Puerto Rico, traveled all of Latin America and the United States, and arrived to some meetings in Mexico in bulletproof vans. The pharma side taught discipline and precision. Both together taught me to think like a consumer before I think like a creative.
~2006–2007 · Traditional art direction
JMD · Art Director
Traditional work. No good chemistry. Left.
2009 · Freelance + social initiative
Sin Empleo Pero Con Ideas
When Puerto Rico’s government laid off more than 17,000 public employees, I went freelance and launched Sin Empleo Pero Con Ideas (“Without a Job But With Ideas”), giving free logo design to every laid-off public employee who wanted to start a business. It got coverage in the island’s principal newspaper and built a small community of contributors. It was one of the first things I did that felt like it mattered beyond the brief.
~2010–2014 · Entrepreneurship
Alternó Digital Agency · Co-founder & Creative Director
I co-founded Alternó with two partners as one of Puerto Rico’s first 100% digital agencies. We started as two people and grew to ten in four years. As Creative Director, I built the team, the processes, and the culture, and hired people who went on to do remarkable things: one is now Head of Communications at L’Oréal; another is a successful actress in Madrid. During this chapter I was also diagnosed with ADHD at 29, which explained a lot about how I work and why I’d always needed to be doing seventeen things at once. The agency was eventually acquired.
~2014–2015 · Digital infrastructure
Puerto Rico Tourism · Digital Operations
I was brought in to build and scale the digital operation from scratch after another agency won the Puerto Rico Tourism account. We rebuilt the Tourism website with live UGC content pulled from Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (genuinely the wild west of social media at the time), the first TripAdvisor real-time review integration on the island (TripAdvisor later adopted this as a standard product offering after we asked for it), and the first booking engine ever deployed for Puerto Rico Tourism. One of my proudest professional achievements.
~2015–2016 · Business leadership
Infobanima · ~1 year
I made a deliberate pivot to learn the business side. I’d spent too long on the creative and production side and wanted to understand how organizations actually run. The company had 3,500 clients and 300 employees; I managed 40 people and a $2M budget, and presented quarterly to the board. I learned what I needed to learn. After a year I went back to what I love.
~2017–present · Current chapter
de la Cruz · Ogilvy
I joined wanting exposure to a global creative network and stayed because it’s the best possible combination of hustle-culture independence and international structure. My longest tenure anywhere: six-plus years and counting. The work here has been the most meaningful of my career. Car Parts for Life, a campaign that spent a year grinding through the global Ogilvy network, got its first real signal a week after launch when someone called to say: “Thanks to you guys, I got a kidney.” That’s the only metric that ever mattered to me. I’ve also led the island-wide digital mapping project for Puerto Rico Tourism (partnered with Google), built political and government digital strategy for campaigns including the governor’s office, and taken on leadership of the agency’s AI Council: evaluating tools, designing ethical implementation processes, and building internal education programs for a discipline that didn’t exist when I started. My current role spans digital strategy, creative direction, production, and AI, all in one seat. Probably the only role that could keep my attention this long.
- Cannes Lions 2022, Gold: The EyeTracker
- Cannes Lions 2023, Contender: Reusables
- El Ojo de Iberoamérica, Gran Ojo Digital & Social
- LUUM Awards 2024, Campaign of the Year: Car Parts for Life
- LUUM Awards 2024, Grand Prix (×2): Car Parts for Life
- El Ojo de Iberoamérica 2024, Silver (×3): Car Parts for Life
- SME Digital Awards 2024, Gold (×4): Pasaporte a la Aventura
- The One Show 2023, Bronze Pencil
- Effie Awards Latin America, Multiple Finalists
Press
- The World (PRI), 2017Please helpGround liaison — sourced communities, interview subjects, and government contacts for international press coverage of Hurricane María.
- New York Magazine / Intelligencer, 2017Hurricane Maria: A Man-Made DisasterGround liaison — sourced communities, interview subjects, and government contacts for international press coverage of Hurricane María.
- News is My Business, 2021Creativity and tech are 'key to present, future evolution' of brands
- 4As (American Assoc. of Advertising Agencies), 2022Gold Lion, two Bronze Lions and seven finalists for de la Cruz in Cannes
- Ogilvy, 2022The Eye Tracker, Featured Work
- News is My Business, 2025DLC Group enhances AI integration across all departments
- WAPA TV, 2025Asociación de Relacionistas de Puerto Rico, Convención Anual 2025Pre-convention workshop speaker — “La IA y la publicidad: tendencias.”
- El Vocero, 2026Consumidores confían más en anuncios creados por personas que en IAQuoted on AI disclosure, perceived authenticity, and the human work required to keep audience trust.