The WFE's Women Leaders 2024 - Renata Caffaro Vilela, Managing Director of People at B3

Name: Renata Caffaro Vilela

Member: B3
Job Title: Managing Director of People

Brief job description.

Since 2022, I have been honoured to hold the position of HR Head of the Brazilian Stock Exchange. Responsible for the company’s cultural evolution, setting strategic plans and polices, and collaborating with B3’s Senior Leadership Team to build and improve the organization’s vision and mission as well as developing and improving employee experience in all levels.

Responsible for all areas of People in the company, like Compensation and Benefits, Training and Development; Employee Experience; HR Operations; People and Marketing Analytics among others.

Short biography

Graduated in Business Administration at FAAP - Fundação Armando Alvarez Penteado Foundation, with MBA in Human Resources from IE Business School in Spain and certificated in Remuneration from the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV). Twenty Years of experience in human resources in many financial institutions, ten of them working in B3. Focused on Compensation & Benefits and as Business Partner, but also leading mergers and acquisitions process in global companies of the financial market like Citibank, ABN/AMRO Real and Santander Bank in Spain.

Love spending time with family, especially with kids. Also, travel with them and meet new places. Strongly believes that traveling is a way of growing in experiences and learn about things that goes beyond hard skills by Interacting with new people and knowing other cultures. Reading is also a passion, novels, texts by authors who represent a different way of thinking, as she sees it as a chance to expand her knowledge.

What were your professional highlights and challenges of 2023?

Between 2017 and 2021, the focus was on developing and consolidating a consistent culture aligned with the company's horizons and supporting the integration between BM & FBOVESPA and Cetip, which will live under B3 brand.

After the initial period of five years, we improved especially in three aspects: being a client-centric company, more collaborative and more diverse and inclusive. We are creating an important cultural transformation aiming to be a more agile company, open to innovation and which balances customer relationship and a robust infrastructure for the financial and capital markets, with a vanguardist approach to the market.

We have evolved the agenda of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, making us one of the main references of practical benefits and incentives for the market. Since 2017, we increased in 15 percentage points the number of black people in the company, and 5 percentage points in women in leadership positions by researching, analyzing data, creating programs of inclusion, and monitoring the employee journey. Also, through those years, we develop materials and training programs for the listed companies in B3 to learn more on “how to implement diversity actions”.

We work on building a consolidated brand enabling B3 purpose. Since we started to work on Employer Brand we have evolve in many terms. First, strengthening and consolidating the B3 culture, post-merger. Then, focusing on Tech Talents as a specific segmented. And, in 2023, we are materializing our value proposition, evolving our processes and practices, and generating awareness for the B3 employer brand.

At B3 we are committed to drive economic development for people to thrive, which engages and induces the market to evolve ESG practices, a company that represents one of the main infrastructures of the global market and is aware of discussions related to new technologies that are changing the world as we know today.

Tell us about a few of your key achievements throughout your career?

My career has always been very focused on human resources in the financial market, leading areas of performance management, compensation and benefits and People Analytics. This specific knowledge allowed me to work in some M&A such as Cetip and BMF & Bovespa, leading organizational and cultural transformation projects, having the opportunity to design compensation and performance models from the beginning and implement them in the new companies.

Those experiences have brought me specific knowledge and experiences that generated many career opportunities.

Who and what inspires you to achieve your professional success?

What inspires me to be better is the challenge of always building upon what I found. I believe it is my job to improve things, to make them better than they were when I arrived. This is what truly fulfills me.

It is my belief that we can change anything, and I try to make that true for the company I am in, for the teams I lead, for everything I do.

I had many managers who inspired me and could not pick just one. But mostly they were the most generous with people. Managers who helped me during periods such as maternity leave, who managed to see me beyond the professional I am. A lot of people encouraged me to believe in myself more than I did. They had a huge impact in my career and deeply inspired me.

If I had to choose a role model, I would name Ana Buchaim, who has been my manager through all those years and, also my mentor. I learn a lot from her, and she learns from me. That’s the great thing about it because we work so well together. Her career inspires me to do better, because she builds things out of her creativity, but with a lot of work, perseverance, and resilience. But above all, she helps build our company based on values that support the equality cause. Her leadership focused on decrease gender disparities is also incredible. People who believe and don't stand still, are inspiring.

How have you overcome setbacks, and what have you learned from adversity?

I think setbacks are part of our career and personal life, and have the purpose of showing us another point of view or a new way of doing things, so whenever I found any setback in my career, I saw it as an opportunity to evolve and do things differently, analyzing more scenarios and taking decisions that generated a higher level of maturity and experience in the long term.

What advice do you have for other women who aspire to be in leadership positions? 

I would say we need to empower ourselves, truly decide which chairs we want to take and understand that there will always be difficulties, sacrifices to be made. And that is true for any professional, but especially to women and I see many of us giving up because we don´t believe we have the right to be there. It is common to see, we women, giving ourselves less credit than we should, according to our capacity and effort. This insecurity may appear especially if we are designated to do jobs outside our expertise areas. However, in these situations, it is important to remember that we have a huge chance to bring and share different experiences, knowledge, and perspectives.

Another thing I would say is: if you are invited to be in a certain meeting, project, or conversation, give your true opinion, speak up and bring your point of view, don´t shy away from who you are. This makes us engage, understand the business, and move forward. There is an excerpt from Sheryl Sandberg that says: “Don't leave until you leave,” that is, don't give up too early, stay until the end, take advantage of opportunities and the chance to execute everything you planned. It is worth it.