In Partnership with

Dear EVOLVE community,

This week, 57 senior leaders from Brazil and LATAM sat down for a private EVOLVE dinner in São Paulo.

No badges.
No sponsor decks.
No stage performances.

Just one long table, thoughtfully set and intentionally marked.

We designed this evening with one clear question in mind:

👉 What role can senior professionals play in driving strategic growth?

And not from the perspective of theory or aspiration.
But from real, lived experience the kind that only comes from people who have been inside the room, built what matters, and learned what to unlearn.

In Partnership with SINATRA Agents For Commerce

Sinatra AI is the first AI Copilot for Unified Commerce, powered by autonomous AI Agents designed to boost profitability across e-commerce and omnichannel retail.

The corporate world often speaks about senior talent in extremes.
You’re either leading a P&L or riding off into the sunset.

But at EVOLVE, we believe the most overlooked phase is the one in between — where professionals with hard-won experience, pattern recognition, and deep networks can play an exponential role in growth.

We see senior professionals as growth accelerators.
Not advisors in name only. Not consultants for show.
But builders. Mentors. Strategists. Catalysts.

And we’ve seen this happen, over and over when the room is right.

What made this dinner different?

Every detail of the evening was curated to enable organic but intentional connection.

Before anyone sat down, we reviewed each RSVP.
We studied experience, interests, transitions, and industries.
And then, we hand-marked the tables placing people near others with high potential for strategic alignment.

• A payments executive was seated next to a retail media founder expanding across LATAM

• A former CEO exploring a board path was matched with an investor-backed startup seeking senior guidance

• Multiple leaders navigating career pivots were quietly introduced to others living that reality

There was no need to sell.
The conversation spoke for itself.

In Partnership with Braze

Braze is a customer engagement platform that empowers businesses to build strong, personalized relationships with their customers 

Why they came

From our RSVPs, a few patterns emerged:

• Some guests had recently exited senior leadership roles and were exploring their next chapter

• Others were actively investing, advising, or sitting on boards looking to share and learn

• A number of guests were still in high-level roles, but seeking alternative paths to contribute or diversify their work

Why this dinner mattered

What they had in common: they wanted honest perspective not scripts, not job leads, not recycled playbooks.

They came to hear what’s working, what’s not, and how others are navigating the complexity of modern work.

Sponsored by believers, not sellers

The evening was made possible by the support of:

• Braze – powering personalized engagement across channels

• Sinatra – enabling unified customer data for global commerce

• PagBank – driving innovation in digital payments across Brazil and beyond

These weren’t product pitches.
These were partners who share our belief in long-term relationship building, and who trust that business follows connection not the other way around.

Then came the lived experience: Flavio Dias

After the plates cleared, we handed the floor to Flavio Dias, one of our earliest members and someone whose career path mirrors the very questions we gathered to explore.

If you’ve followed commerce in Brazil, you already know Flavio’s story.

But the version he shared with us wasn’t a résumé rundown.
It was the truth behind what happens after the titles.
And what it takes to rebuild your identity when you walk away from the CEO seat.

From CEO to Portfolio Life: Flavio’s Story

Flavio started his career in tech and commerce over 25 years ago, leading initiatives at Philips that helped shape Brazil’s early e-commerce landscape. He quickly moved through leadership roles at Magazine Luiza, and eventually became President of Walmart.com Brazil building it from zero into a billion-dollar business.

Later, as CEO of Via Varejo, he led the integration of over 50,000 employees, transformed the retail operation, and multiplied the company’s value fivefold in a single year.

He’d done the hard things. At scale.

But then he chose to pivot.

What Flavio does now

Flavio built what he calls a portfolio career working across three pillars:

1. Angel Investing
   He’s backed over 30 startups, including two unicorns and several centaurs.

2. Board Seats
   He currently serves on boards of companies like Olist, , Martins, BMG Bank , Copel

3. Hands-On Advisory
   He works with late-stage scale-ups entering Brazil, helping with team building, market entry, and high-level strategy.

But what stood out the most wasn’t what he does it’s how he does it.

Flavio’s Engagement Models

Flavio shared the three structures that define his portfolio today:

His goal isn’t to maximize billing. It’s to maximize usefulness and build long-term alignment.

The Ecosystem Approach

Flavio also shared something few professionals talk about publicly: how his different roles feed each other.

• His board roles expose the pain points of large companies

• His startup investments solve those problems

• His advisory mandates help activate the solutions quickly

• And his network ensures introductions are warm and high-trust

This isn’t multitasking. It’s an ecosystem.

What stuck with us

1. Redesign, don’t retire.
Senior professionals don’t need to step down. They can step across — into roles that create more strategic value across more touchpoints.

2. Own your value, or others will define it for you.
Structure matters. Knowing when to be a board member, when to be an investor, and when to be an operator changes everything.

3. Connection fuels contribution.
Flavio’s ecosystem works because he’s spent years building trusted relationships. And those don’t come from transactional networking — they come from rooms like this one.

Why this matters to you

We hosted this dinner because too many senior professionals are underestimated and underutilized.

And because companies are still learning how to partner with senior talent beyond hiring them full-time.

At EVOLVE, we don’t sell you a dream.
We show you what’s working and introduce you to the people doing it.

There’s no badge. No pitch. No promise.
Just the belief that if you’re in the right room, the right conversations will follow.

What’s next?

We’re scaling this format to more cities. Quietly. Carefully. Intentionally.

• Lisbon. Copenhagen. Madrid. London. Berlin. Cairo

• 1:1 match-making between members exploring portfolio life

• Case studies, frameworks, and lived stories not LinkedIn memes

And we’re doing it all with the belief that the future of commerce will be shaped by people who’ve already lived its past and are brave enough to rewrite the next chapter.

Until next time,
Carlos Monteiro
Founder, EVOLVE Commerce Club

In Partnership with

Airmeet stands out by designing for connection in a sea of platforms chasing leads. It’s used by companies like Walmart, Accenture, and the University of Toronto, yet it works just as well for emerging communities like ours. We’ve trusted and partnered with Airmeet to run 60+ expert sessions. It’s reliable, intuitive, and built for human interaction, not just metrics.

If you host events where relationships matter more than registrations, Airmeet is worth a closer look