Lara Mendonça is a designer, amateur philosopher and professional fangirl.

With a career of 12 years, her experience ranges from product, interaction and brand identity to print, motion design, advertising and illustration.

She has previously worked at Twitter, Bumble, Wise, HSBC, Mitsubishi, Sky & Globosat. She also co-founded Mischief Studio.
‍
She holds a Master of Arts from the London College of Communication of the University of the Arts London — with Honors.

These days, she's a Design Director at Tumblr, part of Automattic. She lives in Rio de Janeiro.

Tumblr

Design Director

2022 • present

She works with executive leadership to bring Tumblr's strategy to life. She focuses on leading and scaling the team while fostering a healthy culture, elevating design's influence, building a long-term vision and improving design operations.

Twitter

Senior Manager, Product Design

2021 • 2022

She led design teams working on profiles and conversations on the platform, working to improve user safety and self-expression. Notable projects include Twitter Circles, improved reply controls, tweet downvoting and new verification flows.

Bumble

Head of Product Design

2019 • 2021

She established and led a diverse and high-performing team of user researchers, product and content designers—scaling from 1 to 15 members. During her tenure, design became an efficient strategic partner, culminating on a redesign of the product and “contributing to a wildly successful IPO” (Fast Company).