Emerging Leaders 2025: Sofia Pimenta Campos, Deloitte

As head of open innovation and ventures at Deloitte in Brazil, Sofia Pimenta Campos gained a good overview of corporate venturing trends in the largest Latin American market. The main trend has been corporates branching out into areas adjacent to minority equity investing to include venture building, venture clienting and mergers and acquisitions. Campos recently left Deloitte to join Brazilian innovation consultancy The Bakery. 

The strong dollar, high taxation and political instability are creating a particularly tough investing environment, particularly in Latin America. This is driving corporates to expand the ways in which they tap innovation beyond making minority equity investments in startups.  

“Companies are looking for ways to drive new revenues, to diversify the business. They are looking more to venture building and other strategies,” says Campos.  

Deloitte’s ventures unit in Brazil provides mostly CVC-as-a-service to large clients, as its venture fund is small compared with other jurisdictions, where investment funds are larger. The Brazil subsidiary advised several large corporates, including Petrobas, which has set up a $150m fund to invest in energy transition startups.  

The Deloitte team also targeted clients outside the commodities and agricultural sectors that dominate the Brazilian economy, and which are more susceptible to the strong dollar and high taxation. “They need to reinvent themselves, too. We need an approach to go after this market. It is important for them to have innovation.” 

As companies diversify their innovation toolkit, Campos predicts that conversations about how to manage the various aspects of venturing will become elevated to the C-suite.  

“Companies will need to take a portfolio view. Not, here you have the CVC, here you have CVB, here you have M&A. But this is a toolkit for driving transformation and how you can use these in a more strategic way.”  

 See the full list of Emerging Leaders 2025 here.