Selected work
Caroline M. dos Santos
Impact Cohort Manager at Effective Altruism.
Building Community Structure Around Ambition
PrograMaria, 2015, Brazil
Programaria started as a self-taught coding study group among friends. It grew into a community teaching coding skills to women, run by a network of volunteers and teachers, and today counts more than 20,000 members.
The core challenge was never technical. It was turning individual motivation into something that could outlast any one person's energy: building structure, roles, and momentum around people who showed up wanting to change their own trajectory, with nothing yet in place to support that beyond good intentions.
Programaria started as a self-taught coding study group among friends. It grew into a community teaching coding skills to women, run by a network of volunteers and teachers, and today counts more than 20,000 members.
The core challenge was never technical. It was turning individual motivation into something that could outlast any one person's energy: building structure, roles, and momentum around people who showed up wanting to change their own trajectory, with nothing yet in place to support that beyond good intentions.
Teaching and Facilitation
Hochschule Luzern and Fachhochschule Graubünden, 2025-2026
As guest lecturer for BSc Information Science students at FHGR, I used the Consequence Scanning methodology to facilitate a live exercise on ethical decision-making, asking participants to map the intended, unintended, and potentially catastrophic consequences of their design choices.
Pre- and post-session measurement using Mentimeter showed a real shift: participants reporting that responsible decision-making is an active part of their practice rose from 33% to 80% over a single session. The "I want to but don't know how" category dropped to zero, indicating the session left people with practical tools, not just awareness.
I've since served as an invited expert assessor for Bachelor graduation work in Design Management at Hochschule Luzern, and as an industry mentor for Master's research projects, guiding students through real-world stakeholder challenges from concept to delivery.
As guest lecturer for BSc Information Science students at FHGR, I used the Consequence Scanning methodology to facilitate a live exercise on ethical decision-making, asking participants to map the intended, unintended, and potentially catastrophic consequences of their design choices.
Pre- and post-session measurement using Mentimeter showed a real shift: participants reporting that responsible decision-making is an active part of their practice rose from 33% to 80% over a single session. The "I want to but don't know how" category dropped to zero, indicating the session left people with practical tools, not just awareness.
I've since served as an invited expert assessor for Bachelor graduation work in Design Management at Hochschule Luzern, and as an industry mentor for Master's research projects, guiding students through real-world stakeholder challenges from concept to delivery.
From inception to adoption: Consolidating a Fragmented Function Into a running program
Sunrise UPC, Zurich, 2021-2024
When I joined Sunrise, design governance across the organization was fragmented, no clear ownership, no consistent standards, decisions made ad hoc across product, engineering, and vendor teams. I built the function from the ground up: budget, hiring, vendor management, and governance standards, then ran it at scale across 1,500+ internal and external stakeholders.
The result was a structured, funded program where none had existed, with measurable outcomes: a ~50% reduction in design effort and roughly CHF 1.5M in annual operational savings.
When I joined Sunrise, design governance across the organization was fragmented, no clear ownership, no consistent standards, decisions made ad hoc across product, engineering, and vendor teams. I built the function from the ground up: budget, hiring, vendor management, and governance standards, then ran it at scale across 1,500+ internal and external stakeholders.
The result was a structured, funded program where none had existed, with measurable outcomes: a ~50% reduction in design effort and roughly CHF 1.5M in annual operational savings.
Caroline Magalhães dos Santos
magalhaes.caroline@gmail.com
July 2026
magalhaes.caroline@gmail.com
July 2026