ℓiⱴε ©2021

Aline Rossin takes over as ℓiⱴε’s CEO, an agency founded by Lucas Mello in 2005 and that, since then, had been run by him. Working as partner and the vice-president of client services operations for over five years, Rossin becomes one of the few women leading advertising agencies in the country. 

Article – Media & Message

Aline Rossin takes over as ℓiⱴε’s CEO, an agency founded by Lucas Mello in 2005 and that, since then, had been run by him. Working as partner and the vice-president of client services operations for over five years, Rossin becomes one of the few women leading advertising agencies in the country.

The process of transition had been happening for a year, period in which Aline, who was already in charge of the areas of business, customer service and operations, began to work more actively with people and business management. Together with Lucas, she helped ℓiⱴε to make the transition to the cloud-based model (the operation does not have a fixed headquarter in São Paulo anymore, now it is 100% remote). In addition, she was one of the responsible for bringing Natura to the agency’s portfolio. 

“I had been informally occupying this position for a year. But to have led the achievement of Natura was very important for me because there are 21 people working for this account. Until then, I hadn’t dived into areas such as finance and planning. This gave me even more security to take over as CEO. And the fact that I am a woman, and a CEO, is important for Live and for all the women in the market", says Aline.

She has a major in Journalism and a post-graduation degree in marketing with specialization in Executive Business Leadership that she got from Harvard Business School. As a yoga teacher, she gives classes for Live’s collaborators and also contributes with a social project in the neighborhood of Capão Redondo, in São Paulo.

Having Aline as a leader is something that has a bigger impact than our business itself. It accelerates a transformation to which the market is prepared for”, comments Lucas. For him, the new companies that are emerging demand new types of solutions at various levels, which include diversity and inclusion, varied platforms and new media formats. 

From now, he will occupy the position of chairman and will dedicate himself to Live's 'venture building' projects. Ollo, a HR tech company that connects talent to startups, was born from this movement.  Karina Rehavia, former director of international operations at Live, is Ollo’s partner and CEO. The initiative was created in 2013, with the incubation of ProfilePR, which was sold in 2019. The idea is to build and accelerate other new businesses together with entrepreneurs, Lucas explains. "I will keep developing our vision for the future at Live by accelerating the changes that the market requires." Besides the agency, he co-founded the research companies Box 1824 and TalkINC, and was an angel investor at Aquiris, one of the growing national companies in the gaming universe.

New partners
The transition in the agency’s leadership encompasses another movement at Live, with other four executives becoming partners in the business: Leonardo Viri, who has been in the agency for five years, takes over as service director to lead the team that works with accounts such as YouTube, Natura, Unilever, Vulcabras Group and AmBev; Bruno Poiani, business director, eight years in the business, has developed the whole commercial strategy and Live’s flexible business model; Pedro Becker and Samir Arrage, creative directors of the agency for two years, have developed projects for clients such as YouTube USA, Under Armour and Amazon Prime Video, besides having expanded their creative team.

The new group joins the corporate structure that already includes Heber Araujo, CFO and VP of Organizational Development (who works with Lucas in the venture building project, running a Shared Services Center that already serves five companies); and Lucas Polato, vice president of data & consumer connections, who is ahead of the data, strategy, social, media and insights disciplines. They are responsible for the largest group of professionals at Live's staff.

Diversity on the top of the list
One of Aline's management priorities is diversity. Today, the agency has about 35% women in the leadership and about 20% Black people in the team. The goal is to reach rates of 50% and 30%, respectively, by the end of 2022. Expanding the number of LGBQTIA+ collaborators is also on the CEO's agenda. "This is a factor that motivates me and has a lot to do with my leadership profile. When I listen to other people in the market, I realize how much this market is still extremely oppressive. I want Live to be a place where people are free to be who they truly are. We are moving towards this and towards making this diversity impact on our business and on the services that we deliver," she says.

Today, Live has the Women’s Committee, LGBTQIA+ Committee, and the Black Livers. In addition, the agency supports the project Perifa Lions, whose goal is to include young people from peripheral colleges in the advertising market – some of them are already work as interns in the company.