Taking the opportunity her to announce that I recently joined the CeLatam Governance!
A couple of weeks ago, I joined the governance team of CeLatam. This moment marks a new chapter in a long and meaningful journey with Celo and the broader ReFi movement.
My path started by co-founding ReFi Spring, supported by Climate Collective. Our mission was to turn ReFi into a real conversation in the Global South—across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. We helped bring the words ReFi and Celo to dozens of communities for the first time.
Then came Blockchain na Escola, an educational project that minted 34k+ onchain certificates, and launched Celo’s presence in Minas Gerais and the Northeast of Brazil—a region that concentrates 90%+ of the country’s unbanked population. We even onboarded the Vice Governor of Bahia. While the project got a grant from Prezenti, I never received anything from the project (only a small $200 meetup grant in Rio).
Later, we helped onboard 800+ students to Celo and Valora in just two weeks during the Modular Carnival.
Through ReFi DAO, I supported the creation of ReFi Nodes—regional hubs that carried the legacy of the ReFi Spring community efforts.
Then came ReFaz, a regenerative-focused Web3 office I co-founded. From there, I helped launch Gira Hub Web3, the first Web3 hub in Salvador, Bahia—contributing to bring Celo to the region and complementing DeTrash’s early ReFi efforts. Gira Hub later organized CeLatam’s first bootcamp in Brazil, in Chapada Diamantina (see this insight) and hosted 7 Web3 events in Bahia since last year.
I joined CeLatam by poking the team persistently—until they let me in 
. Under Mila’s leadership, I began as a social media manager, helping us reach our first 500 followers, deploy regular content, translate and manage the website, and migrate to a new domain.
Even beyond my contributor role, I started supporting CeLatam as a DAO member—helping shape proposals around Governance, Fundraising, and Operations.
In September 2024, I moved into Research, where I helped feed CeLatam’s strategy with relevant data and insights across Celo, Optimism, and Ethereum. I led three research teams in the Hacking Growth initiative, presented during DevCon in Thailand. My last contribution before joining governance was the first iteration of our new decision-making process.
Now, I’m excited to serve in a new capacity—with a focus on:
- Building a Venture Studio focused on micro/small businesses and nature-based regenerative entrepreneurship.
- Driving high-efficiency capital allocation for low-cost, high-impact initiatives.
My first contribution was the Bootcamp in Chapada Diamantina, sponsored by the local Federal Institute of Technology, where we addressed MiniPay and Miniapps, to 159 (registered, but something around 250 as the venue kept full during) students, and got right now we’re exploring ways to onboard 300+ female micro entrepreneurs from the program Mulheres Mil sponsored by the federal government and executed by the Federal institute of technolgy.
Simbora carai! 