From Pascal Programming to Adobe GM: Mari Pinudo's Journey

Mari Pinudo entered computer science at university when the internet was still confined to campuses and cloud computing was unheard of. Over the next 25 years she moved through auditing, consulting, processes and sales at companies such as IBM, Deloitte, Gartner and Salesforce. Last year she became the first woman to hold the general manager role at Adobe in Brazil.

In a recent interview with the CBN Professional podcast, Pinudo repeatedly returned to a lesson she learned across every technological shift she witnessed: "We need to follow the evolution and not be afraid." She pointed out that cloud computing was once met with deep skepticism, yet today it organises the entire software industry. Those who resisted, she argued, were left behind. Now the same pattern is playing out with artificial intelligence.

Her antidote to fear is disarmingly practical. She advises people to test conversational AI tools outside the workplace, choosing a personal interest as a safe playground. A film lover since childhood, Pinudo began by asking AI to write reviews of movies she knew well, ground on which she could judge the answers without pressure. "The AI comes to be an enabler of your mission and your problem-solving," she said, insisting that the goal is to dissolve the anxiety of losing space to technology.

Pinudo also addressed the position of Adobe, the company that created the PDF and tools such as Photoshop and Premiere. In her reading, the growing ease of generating and distributing content means that if the final output does not land correctly, all the creative work behind it is wasted. In a world where placing a piece used to take weeks, creativity itself has never been more valued.

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Why Pinudo Believes Creatives Are More Relevant Than Ever in the AI Era

The Cloud Playbook, Repeating for AI

Pinudo's framing of AI as the latest chapter in a long history of tech transitions is more than an anecdote. When enterprise buyers first heard the term "cloud computing," security and control fears dominated boardrooms. Yet today most software is delivered as a service. The executives who moved early built competitive advantages; the laggards paid in lost market share. Pinudo's message for AI is identical: familiarity, not specialist knowledge, separates those who ride the wave from those who drown. Her personal exercise – testing a movie-reviewing AI on a topic she knew – is a low-stakes way to build mental models of what the technology can and cannot do before bringing it into business decisions.

Creativity as the Differentiator When Distribution Is Instant

The Adobe GM's argument that "the relevance of the creative today has never been greater" hinges on a production reality that AI is already reshaping. With generative tools, the time between an idea and a polished asset is collapsing. That acceleration, however, also means that mediocre content can flood channels faster than ever. In that environment, the ability to craft a message that actually cuts through – the distinctly human skill of judging tone, cultural context and emotional resonance – becomes the scarce resource. Pinudo's point is that AI does not replace the creative; it frees the creative from repetitive execution so that more energy goes into the part that determines whether a campaign succeeds.

A Career Forged by Refusing Single Expertise

Pinudo's own trajectory is a case study in deliberate breadth. Early discomfort with the gap between writing code and solving real user problems led her out of pure engineering and into sales, then auditing, then consulting and eventually general management. Each step was a choice to learn the language of a different business function – finance, client demand, process design. She describes sitting through board presentations early in her career and realising she lacked the vocabulary to follow the discussion; that awareness pushed her toward an MBA in finance. For professionals watching another tech wave break, the implicit advice is to resist the temptation to double down on a narrow technical specialism and instead invest in the business context that makes technology useful.

How Professionals Can Start Using AI Tools Today

For anyone still apprehensive about AI, Pinudo offers a concrete starting point:

  • Choose a low-risk playground. Pick a hobby or personal interest – films, cooking, travel – and ask an AI chatbot questions about it. Because you know the subject well, you can immediately judge where the answers are accurate and where they fall short. This builds a realistic mental model of the tool's strengths and weaknesses without any professional consequence.
  • Move from testing to enabling. Once comfortable, identify one repetitive or time-consuming task at work – summarising meeting notes, drafting a first version of a routine email, generating image variations for a presentation – and have an AI tool handle the first draft. The goal is to free up hours for higher-judgement work, not to automate your role entirely.
  • Invest in cross-functional literacy. Pinudo's career was built by learning the languages of different business areas. If you work in a technical function, spend time understanding finance, sales or customer experience. That broader vocabulary is what allows you to connect technology to real demand, a skill that AI cannot replicate.
  • For women in tech, seek mentorship proactively. Pinudo notes that few female role models crossed her path early on, and she only later hired a structured mentor who had already sat on a major company’s board. Her advice to younger women: "Seek, don't wait." Find a senior professional who can give honest feedback on whether you have the traits to reach the next level, and maintain an open door for those coming behind you.