Designing journeys that don't exist yet

Bruna started as an actress, wanting to plant a small seed and change the world. At 21, almost by accident, she found tourism, and realised that hosting people well can change lives too.

Since then she has worked across every side of hospitality: as a guide, as a diver, and as Destination Director for Selina, leading 15 properties across Brazil and Ecuador. Today, as founder and CEO of Craftedways, she works where vision meets operations: finding the territory, designing the experience and building the system that makes it work on the ground.

Recent work includes Echo Charlie, a private aviation journey aboard a DC-3 across the Americas and the North Atlantic, where she leads product and experience; and, with her co-founder Beno Atan, the first luxury river cruise on Colombia’s Magdalena River, for AmaWaterways.

Through the Craftedways Foundation, which she co-founded, every journey the team designs aims to leave something behind for the communities that host it.

Beno grew up on Rapa Nui, one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. It shaped much of how he thinks about tourism today: the relationship between people and place, the importance of local culture, and the responsibility that comes with bringing visitors into a territory.

His career has evolved around developing complex tourism projects from the ground up, combining strategy, product development, operations, partnerships and territorial understanding to turn an idea into something that can actually work in the real world.

At Craftedways, he and Bruna Fornasier take on tourism and hospitality projects that require more than traditional consulting: identifying the opportunity, understanding the territory, designing the product and experience, building the partnerships around it and supporting the operational structure that brings it to life, for companies such as AmaWaterways and Echo Charlie, and for new concepts across Latin America.

The project that best represents this work is AmaWaterways’ river cruise operation on Colombia’s Magdalena River. As Managing Director for AmaWaterways in Colombia, Beno has led everything from shipbuilding and infrastructure to itinerary development, operations, government relations, community engagement and the creation of an entirely new tourism ecosystem along the river.

He also serves as Chairman of the Craftedways Foundation, created so that tourism development can become a platform for conservation, education and long-term opportunity for the communities and territories involved. Across every role, the common thread is the same: remote destinations, new tourism models, complicated logistics, many stakeholders, and ideas that need to move from a presentation into reality.

Gabriela brings a thoughtful, people-first perspective to every collaboration, helping connect ideas, places and the details that make an experience meaningful.

Renata moves the body to stimulate and care for the mind and the heart as well. A journalist for 28 years, she went from radio monitor to TV editor-in-chief over more than two decades in the newsrooms of ten different outlets.

She was editor-in-chief and executive editor of Café com Jornal, head of assignments at Jornal da Band, director of Rádio Bradesco Esportes FM, and head of creative and production at BandNews FM. She anchored, edited and produced digital newscasts with journalist Lillian Witte Fibe’s team for UOL and Terra, produced special projects for Valor Econômico and Carta Capital, and served as politics editor at Último Segundo (iG), head of reporting at SBT and producer-reporter at Rádio Bandeirantes.

She created BandNews Em Forma, a programme she pitched, produced and presented for 15 years on BandNews FM. She is the founder of Corpo Cabeça Coração, author and narrator of Atividade Física no Cotidiano, and creator and curator of Projeto Cicatrizes. As a volunteer, she leads communications for Instituto Mundo Aflora.

She runs, cycles, trains for strength, practises yoga and takes on trails and mountains wherever she can, always ready to try something different. She is also Bruna’s mother, and grateful for a partnership and love without conditions.