Ricardo Hijar · Vice President, Design Lead at Lazard Asset Management · 18 years across asset management and exchanges
Leadership
Corporate branding visually defines identity, builds trust and creates lasting connections with the audience.
It simplifies complex information, reveals insights and turns numbers into visuals that support decisions.
A strong team drives creativity and collaboration, turning ideas into work that strengthens the brand.
Refining skills and raising design quality so solutions keep evolving with the audience's needs.
About
I grew up in Peru, surrounded by one of the richest art histories anywhere, and I knew by thirteen that I wanted to be a graphic designer. I studied it at the country’s leading university for design — an arts faculty, where most of my competition could already paint. I got in on the knowledge section of the exam rather than the portfolio, and that has more or less described my career since: the designer who understands the subject.
After freelancing, a print shop, and running one company’s brand end to end, I wanted to work past my own boundaries. I visited four universities in three days, chose SCAD, and arrived two weeks before 9/11 with a computer and a suitcase — writing essays about design in a language I was still learning. I finished the MFA in under two years and took a job in Atlanta, then moved to the city I had always pictured myself in: New York.
A two-week contract covering a designer’s vacation at the New York Stock Exchange kept getting extended. Ten years later I was still there, and I had found the thing I care about most — making information that would otherwise be tedious clear, and making it look like it belongs to someone. Finance turned out to be the place to do that.
Leading came later, and it comes down to the same instinct: explain the why, not just the what, so it stays with the designer on the next project. I defend my team’s decisions when they are worth defending, and I change my own when someone can tell me why. I have raised my voice maybe twice in twenty years, which is probably why it lands when I do.
Ricardo takes the extra care needed to deliver a creative, yet on-brand, output no matter how big or small the job at hand.”
He always goes above and beyond to ensure that the job gets done correctly and expeditiously.”
