Marina Fuzeti Fagali
Director at Juntos por Cripto
Marina, your career has brought together communications, public affairs, sport and crypto. Which experiences most shaped the leader you are today?
Everything starts with sport. The experience of sport teaches teamwork, resilience and collective effort, all qualities that research confirms are central to strong leadership.
Communications consolidated my understanding of corporate management. I was fortunate to be guided by inspiring women leaders, but I also experienced poor leadership that showed me exactly what I never wanted to replicate. Finally, bringing crypto and public affairs together taught me how to navigate the unknown.
In an innovative, fast-moving market that can often feel challenging because of the lack of representation, I learned that leadership means taking up space without waiting for permission. It also means opening paths even when there are no role models to follow, and always remaining true to my values.
Sport undoubtedly teaches discipline, and your point about leadership really resonates. Turning to your work in public affairs and crypto, which regulatory decision do you think will have the greatest impact on Brazil’s crypto market over the next two years, and whose voices still need greater representation in that discussion?
Among the proposals we have worked on most actively in recent years and that are still moving through Congress, I would highlight the stablecoin bill and, above all, the asset-segregation bill. Both are extremely important to the ecosystem, and the lack of progress creates serious and costly systemic risk for the market.
The first Central Bank regulations coming into force will also have a major impact, particularly given the authority’s recent shift in tone and approach to this debate. These will undoubtedly be among the developments with the greatest impact on the ecosystem over the next few years.
The voice that still most needs to be heard is that of the community: people on the ground who use crypto every day and do not represent a company or institution. We can only create fair laws and regulations that reflect the ecosystem when we have a complete view of everything being built with this technology. That is why Juntos por Cripto came to Brazil — to amplify the community’s voice and represent it in this debate.
You can really see how much attention these proposals are receiving and how significant their impact on the industry could be once they move forward. Turning to women’s representation in this debate, women remain underrepresented in many of the institutions and companies influencing crypto policy. How does that affect the priorities and perspectives that reach decision-makers?
I believe that the lack of diversity in decision-making spaces creates a biased view and leads to shallow, evasive debate on essential issues. When women are excluded, decision-makers fail to see the technology’s transformative potential for more than half of Brazil’s population and fail to create regulations that genuinely foster inclusion.
Women still carry a heavy burden of domestic work, and an innovative, digital and flexible market such as crypto can offer a route to financial autonomy and new career paths. So, maintaining a centralised, male-dominated and predominantly white structure limits the sector’s ability to use its technology to address real social challenges.
Indeed, a lack of diversity and inclusion can be particularly limiting in a space as progressive as crypto. What can be done to change this in practice? What can advocacy groups, companies and industry associations do to bring more women into public-policy and regulatory discussions?
I think the key word here is intentionality. Advocacy groups and associations cannot simply open doors passively; they need to build active bridges. In practice, that means setting clear targets to eliminate all-male panels, investing in government-relations training for women executives, and ensuring that women at these discussion tables are there as technical leaders rather than symbolic participants.
When we build support networks and provide genuine space for women to propose policy priorities, we transform the public-policy environment from a reactive ecosystem into a genuinely plural space.
Straight to the point. Stepping back from the women’s agenda for a moment, from your experience at Chiliz, what did sport and fan engagement teach you about making blockchain more accessible and building inclusive communities?
Chiliz was my great crypto laboratory, precisely because it brought a highly complex technology together with a popular passion. Sport works as a powerful cultural bridge. Fans do not need to understand network nodes, digital wallets or gas fees; they want a voice, access to benefits and a sense of belonging to the club they love. We used that familiar dynamic to educate and introduce thousands of people to Web3 naturally.
It taught me that making blockchain accessible and building inclusive communities requires us to make the technology invisible and focus on the real value it provides to people. When belonging is the motivation, rather than financial speculation, the ecosystem becomes genuinely plural.
For me, that was the greatest leadership lesson from Web3 — leading innovation is a continuous exercise in cultural translation. Our role as leaders is to move away from jargon and build simple, secure bridges that anyone can cross and feel part of the ecosystem.
Thank you for these insights! To close, what would you say to a woman who wants to enter crypto, public affairs or institutional relations but does not yet see many people like her in leadership positions?
I believe that when we cannot find the role models we are looking for, we should look elsewhere. They may be outside crypto or of another gender, as long as they can support us in becoming the leaders we want to be.
Start being that leader now, regardless of whether you have those references. Leadership also means taking action rather than waiting for things to happen, as Geraldo Vandré once said.
