Sandra Fernández joins Columbia Road

Hi Sandra, How did you get good at what you do?

I studied Graphic Design at the Art School Nº10 in Madrid and Audiovisual Production at CEV, but I would say that I’ve learnt most of the skills that brought me here out of curiosity by myself. All I know about UX and Interaction design comes from MOOC, online resources, stalking designers on their different social media accounts, and jumping into projects that seem challenging, and in which I’ll be able to learn something new.

I’m also always looking for new courses that can complement my skill set. Most recent ones being the dMBA, a business course for designers, and AJ&Smart Design Sprint Master Class.

Where have you earned your spurs?

I started working as a Motion Designer when I was 19 (2008) and since then I’ve worked
as a digital marketing designer, team lead of an international creative team in a media house, in-house Art Director for a start up and, finally, Visual and UX Designer at Columbia.

Prior to Columbia Road, I was an Art Director at Smartly.io, where one of my main responsibilities was to design and launch their new brand add-on services, creating a new revenue source for the company. In addition, I worked closely with the product design and development team to build a creative automation tool for social media marketing.

Before that, I moved all the way from Madrid to Helsinki to launch Fox and National Geographic Channels in Finland, from scratch. We started off with a bankrupt tv channel, and were able to rank the channel as the 3rd/4th most viewed channel in only 2 years. After that, I managed the creative team, working on the marketing and promotional strategies for Fox and National Geographic Channel for Finland, Sweden and Norway.

Why Columbia Road?

I wanted to surround myself with wise business-oriented people – Columbia Road seemed to be full of very wise people who knew how to truly help customers to increase their business results.

Also, company culture plays an important role for me when joining a new company, and Columbia Road has quite an exceptional take on culture. There are no managers, teams are always multidisciplinary, everyone has ownership of the business financials, there is a very strong effort on supporting employees’ growth, and it’s quite international and diverse. I wanted to experience working in an environment like that.

Eero, what will make our clients love Sandra?

"Everyone who Sandra works with really enjoys her energy and innovative approach to solving problems. You can always count on Sandra going the extra mile to find the best solution. Her work experience in Spain and Finland has taught her both, improvisation capabilities to solve unexpected issues, as well as appreciation for well optimised and efficient processes, which together create a really nice balance. On the other hand, working in a startup made her used to fast iteration and continuous testing. Sandra possesses extensive knowledge in the media and marketing industries, which is reflected in the way she does design work – she helps clients to communicate the right story to maximise their business results," says Eero Martela, General Manager at Columbia Road.

What makes your heart beat a little faster?

I recently became a tutor for the dMBA, a business course for designers. I mainly give feedback to participants and help them to overcome challenges the assignments might bring. I love to learn new things, and I’ve discovered that sharing the things I’ve learnt with others, also results in me learning more in response.

How would you fancy working alongside Sandra at Columbia Road? We're constantly looking for new skilful and nice people to join our crew! Take a peek at our open positions 👇