The fintech industry can be a relentless cycle of manual processes, sinking margins, and compliance risks. In 2025, however, generative AI is slowly becoming the answer, emerging as the ultimate efficiency engine. One can look at the case of Domu, a San Francisco-based startup that has successfully automated everything from debt recovery to customer onboarding. At its helm is Maria Alejandra Pulido, the Chief Operating Officer, and her rare expertise on fintech automation. Pulido summarizes her role: “At Domu, I listen to their problems, organize the team, and create effective solutions.” While it may sound simple, Pulido is here to fuse operational rigor with AI innovation easily.
In the 2020s, AI has continuously been treated as a tool for various industries, from healthcare to events management. Language learning models offer the benefit of being highly customizable, allowing personalization to serve different consumers with unique backgrounds. In fintech, AI is no different — and Pulido manages to make the most use out of it.
Her passion is driven from a long background in finance, operations, and systems, and ultimately, working hard to be at the right place at the right time. Pulido muses: “Being in San Francisco exposes me to cutting-edge AI and technology discussions, fueling my learning. My passion for financial services drives me to improve global systems using AI, which requires staying updated on new models and trends.” As AI rapidly evolves and changes with the times, she remains ahead of the curve, relentlessly bringing innovation to the table.
Bridging Finance Roots and AI Innovation
With a degree in finance and international affairs, Pulido’s expertise almost comes as no surprise. One can also take a look at her background in companies like PayPal, Holidu and KillB – all companies that have made a mark – to truly assess her exposure and skills in finance. After graduating from Universidad Externado, Pulido launched her career as an assistant professor in Law, before moving on to customer service in PayPal. Her early roles accustomed her to the friction of both people management and customer billing disputes.
Later on, at Holidu, where she became a business operations intern, she learned the importance of operations and data-driven processes for cross-departmental scaling. Pulido built her operations genius from the ground up, initiating and developing systems for metrics, company growth, and operational efficiency.
She further expanded her skill set by volunteering at the Makers Fellowship and completing hands-on, immersive training in product development and tech tools. There, she collaborated with the community and gave back by organizing outreach initiatives and fundraising for various programs.
It was actually this fellowship that soon opened up opportunities for Pulido. Nicolas Diaz Durant, co-founder of KillB, recounts their time together: “We collaborated on several projects at Makers, where she was extremely proactive. Even without a strong technical background at the time, she started developing tools in Python and learning SQL. We were also part of a startup circle in Colombia for several years, constantly sharing insights and supporting each other’s projects. When she began exploring new job opportunities, I immediately wanted her on my team — I knew she had that unique mix of operational, financial, and technical skills that’s very hard to find.”
Soon enough, Pulido wasn’t just a finance powerhouse but someone who excelled in coding Python and SQL to automate workflows with a rare expertise in leadership and operations. She was first the founding member of cross-border banking solutions provider KillB. As one of their founding members, occupying a role in business development, Pulido ensured operations were smooth, scalable, and fast. As soon as she settled into her role, she introduced automated infrastructure that integrated tools such as Airtable, Notion, Retool, and custom Python scripts, eliminating redundant coordination across teams.
Beyond this, Pulido architected and deployed real-time monitoring pipelines with Slack-integrated alertsk, real-time dashboards for metrics and KPIs, and more streamlined onboarding, payment reconciliation, and partner management across various countries. In response to her work, KillB CEO Lisa Muramoto shares: “Alejandra’s contributions went beyond executing tasks: she shaped KillB’s operational DNA. Her role in Colombia helped establish regional best practices, supported regulatory alignment, and ensured KillB’s value was delivered seamlessly in diverse Latin American contexts. Her expertise, technical orientation, and ability to collaboratively design and scale innovative operational systems make her an extraordinary leader, precisely the kind of professional whose influence continues to propel our firm’s mission forward.”
KillB’s leader Juliane Martins, agrees, emphasizing Pulido’s passion for operations: “What stands out most is her initiative and drive to bring AI and automation into the company’s financial operations. She didn’t wait for direction — she identified inefficiencies, researched solutions, and led early implementation efforts to improve workflows and efficiency.”
Upon arriving at Domu, it is clear that Pulido had a lot to offer as Chief Operating Officer. Almost immediately, Pulido identified bottlenecks in the system and resolved them instantly through data analysis and technical tools. The end result was a workflow efficiency like no other enjoyed by different Domu teams. At the same time, Pulido redesigned and implemented internal systems for users, collaborating with product and engineering teams. While she improved operations, she also monitored logistics performance through her own initiatives and led full-cycle product deliveries.
Pulido doesn’t discount the importance of her work and mentions: “We work with multinational enterprises, particularly BPOs focused on financial services, like Teleperformance and Alliance One, and major insurers like Chubb. We also partner with U.S. companies such as Amwins, Ascent, Okinus, Starmark, and Real Time Resolution, addressing their unique needs with tailored AI solutions.”
As a result, accuracy, speed, and efficiency is the name of the game. Pulido knows what she’s good at in delivering these key ingredients to a holistic company, and says: “My expertise lies in combining AI with financial services knowledge to build products that improve collections, compliance, and customer service. I organize engineering teams to create solutions that align with client needs, drawing on my experience in customer service and international transactions.”
Domu serves eight of the world’s top 20 financial institutions, and Pulido is a key figure in spearheading their unwavering commitment to good service. While primarily focused on generative AI deployment, Pulido also oversees redesigning user flows, A/B testing, rapid iterations, and funnel optimization. On this, Pulido says: “I implemented a real-time supervisor system for client calls at Domu. This system flags issues instantly, allowing operations and quality teams to address problems like AI hallucinations immediately, saving time and improving call quality.” Due to her financial background, Pulido instantly spots regulatory gaps and takes the lead on every integration, quality check, and error reduction — all of which amount to an innovative space in the AI and fintech industry.
Real-World Wins: From Dashboards to Dynamic Bots
Pulido’s skills go beyond theory. Due to her hands-on approach, all practical applications succeed under her eye. One of her flagship projects, a generative AI-powered ops dashboard, monitored real-time metrics across channels like voice calls and WhatsApp. This project was especially useful for U.S. lending clients targeting immigrant borrowers. In the project, Pulido customized bots to handle two-way messaging in both Spanish and English, boosting engagement by 50%. On what drives her to such innovations, Pulido reflects: “It’s a combination. Being in San Francisco exposes me to cutting-edge AI and technology discussions, fueling my learning. My passion for financial services drives me to improve global systems using AI, which requires staying updated on new models and trends.”
In her AI work, Pulido takes pride and recounts: “Our AI streamlines discovery and implementation for enterprises, making adoption seamless. For example, with Performics, we’ve improved their customer service processes, allowing agents to focus on complex cases while AI handles routine inquiries. We also provide technical transparency, showing clients how our systems work, which builds trust and enhances their operations.”
Another project to look at is her stint with the buy-now-pay-later leader Klarna. Pulido approached AI models with precision, training them on transaction histories to predict delinquency risks and automate personalized nudges towards users. As a result, Klarna recovered more funds and was better prepared to leverage machine learning, product experimentation, and humanized automation. Under Pulido’s care, AI enhances instead of erodes trust in finance.
Beyond Finance: Passion Projects in Tech and AI
However, Pulido doesn’t just owe everything to her finance background. She’s also well-versed in technical skills that apply to AI and beyond. Pulido starts with AI and tech first, bringing it to the finance industry with finesse. She shares: “I’m driven to reduce frictions in financial systems. By introducing AI, I help traditional industries adopt technology that improves collections, customer service, and efficiency without adding complexity, creating long-term value for clients.”
This flair for problem-solving and systems efficiency can be traced back to her love for coding and technology. To date, Pulido has been an enthusiastic participant in various hackathons, even serving as a judge for three in North America. She’s also become a panelist at blockchain and AI-focused events, serving as a mentor for various start-ups and business cases. Because of her experience, she knows all too well what potential can look like — and what it can deliver in the long term.
Her capabilities and passion never went unnoticed. James Tan, Transpose Platform Management Partner, muses: “Her ability to design exploits, identify weaknesses, and build defensive strategies against sophisticated LLM jailbreaks demonstrates mastery of both the technical underpinnings of large language models and the real-world challenges of deploying AI securely. She is a leading professional with rare, high-demand skills at the intersection of AI innovation.”
Moreover, Pulido became a judge at MHacks, where she was fondly remembered by Desola Fujah, MHacks Head of Outreach, who says: “As a judge, Alejandra’s expertise was indispensable, and helped make our event impactful and memorable for all hackers.”
Future-Proofing Fintech: Ethics Meets Scale
Nowadays, Domu is on the path to growth, expanding its reach to telecommunications and beyond. With this in mind, Pulido emphasizes sustainable scaling, using various strategies to expand their domain while keeping quality work. She uses multimodal AI, merging voice functionality with predictive analytics, to streamline end-to-end operations, sales calls, and collections. The word ‘efficiency’ is an understatement — this approach has cut deployment times for BPO giants, allowing teams to focus on higher-value tasks.
Domu relies heavily on Pulido, and CPO Camila Zancanella makes it known: “Her leadership allowed enterprises to reduce their human agent workforce by a factor of four while achieving superior performance in collections and customer engagement. Domu’s continued success depends directly on Ms. Pulido’s leadership, execution, and operational expertise. Her ability to integrate advanced AI solutions with financial services workflows has made her role indispensable to our growth and market leadership. I can state without hesitation that Ms. Alejandra Pulido plays a leading and critical role at Domu Technology Inc.”
Domu’s CFO, Felipe Cortes, agrees: Alejandra is one of those people who naturally lifts the standard of any group she is part of. She is generous with her time and ideas, deeply empathetic, and consistently supportive of others’ growth. She also has a remarkable sense of discipline; she will consistently deliver what she commits to, and she does so with an attention to detail that inspires confidence.”
As Pulido continues to make a mark in AI, finance, and tech, her real edge lies in foresight: she advocates for “fair AI” frameworks that audit biases in generative models, informed by her global stints in Colombia, Germany, and Brazil. More than “humanizing” language-learning models, she ensures the tools remain sustainable for human beings in the years to come. This future-forward thinking will no doubt revolutionize AI and finance in the years to come, with Pulido at the helm.
