- Now
- FOUNDER, NORTE · DEBTOX IN BETA.
- Open to
- SENIOR BRAND AND CREATIVE LEADERSHIP · ADVISORY.
- Before
- MIRO · SMARTLY.IO · AGENCIES IN BETWEEN.
- Route
- HELSINKI → AMSTERDAM → NEW YORK → MADRID.
- Off hours
- Running. Best ideas arrive mid-run. Amsterdam Marathon, finished.
There are places that make you and places you run from. Mine was both. I learned flamenco steps at the same age I learned stairs.
Where I started, you learn fast that the world will not come to you. You go and find it. So I did. Half my life since has been in cities that were not mine, in languages I had to learn on the way, in industries no one around me had heard of. I learned to put numbers and moving pixels in the same sentence, and to earn a place in rooms I did not start out belonging to. The discomfort never fully left. I stopped waiting for it to.
That road taught me the thing I have built on ever since. Creativity can change what happens to a business. A brand is the reason someone chooses you when they could choose anyone. And building something real costs more than you expect to give.
For years I wrote the briefs and made the case for why the work mattered, from Helsinki to New York to Amsterdam to Madrid. Then I did the thing I had spent years asking others to do, and built the products myself. Norte is live. Debtox is close behind. I have led the teams and I have made the thing with my own hands, and I have never been able to leave either one alone.
Brand, building, the work in between. It has always been the same instinct. I am still following it.
Straight answers
- What are you open to right now?
- Senior brand and creative leadership roles, and advisory work. Full time, fractional, or a fixed project. I am building Norte and Debtox alongside, and I am open about that in the first conversation.
- Do you take fractional or part-time work?
- Yes. Fractional creative direction, operational, and brand leadership, usually one to four days a week. It suits companies that need the seniority of a brand lead without a full-time hire yet.
- Where are you based and which time zones do you work in?
- Madrid, Spain. Central European Time. I have worked distributed for most of my career, across Helsinki, Amsterdam, and New York, and I keep overlap with US East Coast hours.
- What do you actually do hands-on?
- Brand strategy and positioning, creative direction, design systems, campaign and content production, and building products end to end. Norte is live on iOS and I designed and shipped it myself, with AI doing the volume.
- What does a first engagement look like?
- A short paid diagnostic. Two to three weeks looking at the brand, the creative operation, and what is actually blocking the work. It ends with a written point of view and a plan you can run without me.
- How do you work with AI?
- AI does the volume: drafts, variants, production. Judgment stays human, at the gates where taste and truth get decided. I build the gates into the systems and the products I ship.
- How do I reach you?
- Email jmsanchezfuentes@gmail.com, or message me on LinkedIn. I answer every serious note.