With over two decades of experience, including stints at Google, Twitter, and Lyft, San Francisco-based Koji Pereira is the new CDO of the Brazilian fintech Neon

Koji Pereira

Koji Pereira, Chief Design Officer, Neon

Neon, a fintech company and digital bank focused on improving the lives of working Brazilians, today announced its appointment of Koji Pereira as Chief Design Officer. Pereira, who previously held the position of senior product design manager at Twitter will now lead Neon’s fintech product design.

Neon, which recently achieved unicorn status with its latest round of funding, believes that everyone deserves a bright future. The company was founded with the specific mission to decrease inequality and promote change -- in the lives of its customers and in the country of Brazil.

This mission was especially appealing to Pereira, who grew up in Brazil, but who will fulfill his role from San Francisco.

“Having the opportunity to build a product with such an amazing purpose - to reduce inequalities in Brazil - was something that really caught my attention and that I fell in love with,” says Koji Pereira, the new Chief Design Officer at Neon. “My main focus at Neon will be to use my inclusive design experience to ensure we build accessible products that work for everyone. I’m also excited to work with a team in Brazil, and continue to build a distributed team that includes top talent from the US, Brazil, and other countries as well.”

With over 20+ years of experience in product design, including managing teams at Twitter and Lyft, Pereira also had a long tenure at Google, and led Google's Design for Files, and launched many products, such as Camera Go, Android TV Data Saver, and Google Spaces.

Pereira holds BFA and MS degrees from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), as well as several specializations from institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). Additionally, Pereira has also won awards from MIT Media Lab's Design Challenge, Mobile World Congress, and Webby Awards.

Neon recognizes the enormous community of talented technology professionals in the United States and seeks to take advantage of that, hoping that the company’s purpose-driven mission will be appealing to many job seekers. Neon announced its new flexible hybrid work model, through the ‘Neon everywhere’ project launched this past January. This initiative will make it easy for the new Chief Design Officer to lead his department from the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States, where he currently resides.