Minerva Vizarraga Rua

It didn't start in a design studio. It started in Tambopata. I was studying Sustainable Tourism when I arrived in the Ese Eja community with a simple question: why weren't women participating in tourism related roles? The answer wasn't in any manual. It was in culture, in invisible incentives, in the way a system, without meaning to, left someone out. That's when I realised tourism was never really the thing. What I was drawn to was understanding why people do what they do, inside systems built on real constraints, not ideal ones. I ended up bringing that same question into banking. Over 5+ years, I've led strategic research at Sof.ia, BBVA, and Caja Los Andes, working closely with Product, Technology, and Business teams. Digital wallets like Plin, mobile banking, gamification, e-signature: different projects, but always the same underlying question. What does this person actually need, and how do we turn that into a business decision that works? Along the way I learned something that now shapes everything I do. An insight that doesn't move anyone to decide is worth nothing. That's why I love facilitation so much. It's where research stops being a document and becomes action. Today I carry the same curiosity I had in Tambopata, just pointed forward. Deepening my experience in service-level prototyping and in how AI is changing the rules of the game, including its technical side, so I can speak the same language as the teams building it.