The AI Architect: How María Camila Ramírez Drove Ontop’s Transformation To Profitability And Global Scale

- Sandra Kelembeth

Just a few years ago, fintech companies were the darlings of the business world, riding sky-high on a wave of explosive growth and eye-watering profits.

In 2020 and 2021, as the pandemic turbo-charged remote work and digital payments, startups like Ontop in Colombia were expanding at breakneck speed – hiring hundreds, launching into dozens of countries, and raking in millions as investors threw cash at anything with "tech" in the name.

But then, almost overnight, the party was over. By early 2022, as global interest rates soared and funding dried up in the so-called "fintech winter", many of these once-unstoppable firms slammed into a brick wall. Profits flatlined. Growth stalled. Some even teetered on the brink of collapse.

So what went so catastrophically wrong? It wasn't that the founders suddenly lost their nerve or their big ideas. Far from it. The brutal truth, insiders reveal, was operational overload – a nightmare of red tape, crumbling payment systems and overwhelmed customer service teams that piled up as companies raced to go global.

As platforms frantically scaled into 100+ countries, layers of complex international compliance, fragmented payment providers, and 24/7 support demands snowballed out of control.

Makeshift automation and bloated headcounts – often swollen to hundreds in the boom years – simply couldn't cope when the venture capital tap was abruptly turned off.

Sudden layoffs swept through the sector, cash burn spiralled, and many firms were forced into desperate restructures just to survive.

Yet while countless fintechs stumbled, one Colombian trailblazer refused to buckle – and her story of turning crisis into triumph is now sending shockwaves through the industry.

When Maria Camila Ramirez stepped into her role as COO at Ontop, which provides a platform for businesses to manage contracts, payroll & onboarding in place, she decided to make a change. She realized before many that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could have a ginormous impact on the sector. Her solution was to not only use the technology to speed things up, but redesign how the company ran:  “Everything that we’ve done, from automating processes to launching new features, is built on AI,” she explains, showing how today, AI now shapes how Ontop makes decisions, builds products, and designs teams.

Since stepping into the COO role, Ramirez has led Ontop’s transition to an AI-first organization. She turned it from a fast-growing startup into a cash-flow and EBITDA-positive company serving talent across more than 190 countries: “I’ve been driving all the AI adoption in the company—actually making Ontop AI-first, which we are right now,” she says. Her responsibilities range from strategy, customer experience, and the development of AI-powered financial products.

That transition placed her among a small group of global fintech leaders who have successfully taken companies from hypergrowth into sustained profitability—particularly in the notoriously complex domain of cross-border payroll, compliance, and payments. While many fintech executives oversee AI as a technical initiative, Ramírez is recognized for embedding AI directly into governance, risk management, and financial operations—areas where mistakes are costly and margin for error is minimal.

Ramirez’s skills and leadership style are the result of years spent growing alongside Ontop. She joined the company in 2020 as its very first employee and grew alongside it, from building operations from scratch to scaling a globally distributed platform: “I’ve been through everything in five years of the company, not only launching products, but building the whole team and making the company EBIT and cash-flow positive,” she says.

Having previously scaled operations to millions in monthly payment volume while keeping failure rates below 1%, this highly-regarded expert brought a data-driven, automation-first mindset to Ontop’s evolution.

Her operational reputation extends well beyond Ontop itself. Over the past several years, Ramírez has become a reference point within Latin America’s fintech and operator community for how to scale regulated financial products across dozens of jurisdictions while maintaining control over unit economics. Her work is frequently cited in leadership circles as proof that global scale, compliance rigor, and capital efficiency do not have to be trade-offs.

That operational discipline, forged in Ontop’s earliest days, did not go unnoticed. Julian Torres Gomez, Co-Founder and CEO of Ontop, recalls hiring Ramirez in 2020 and watching her grow from an Operations Analyst into Chief of Staff as the company navigated fundraising, product launches, and international expansion: “From the very beginning, Maria stood out. She has this rare ability to balance hands-on execution with high-level strategic thinking,” he shares. He credits her with playing a key role in raising more than $35 million across multiple funding rounds, preparing investor-ready analyses and forecasts that turned complex data into clear insights.

Beyond technical skill, Gome commends Ramirez’s calm leadership under pressure: “She’s willing to roll up her sleeves in ways even seasoned executives don’t,” he notes, adding that she often outperformed leaders with far more experience. As Chief of Staff, Ramirez went on to lead company-wide OKRs, align cross-functional teams, and support board and investor strategy—all while maintaining empathy and precision in critical moments: “She has an extraordinary ability to organize ideas and turn chaos into action,” Gomez says.

Building an AI-First Culture

Ontop’s AI journey is not limited only to implementation. Rather than rolling out AI as a technical initiative, Ramirez focused on building internal expertise first. She held AI bootcamps and created an AI experts network to help teams use AI in their daily work.  Teams across compliance, payroll, customer support, and finance then adopted AI-powered processes. As a result, AI becomes part of the company’s daily decision-making process. By democratizing access to AI tools, non-technical teams can now deploy automation and decision support without relying on large engineering teams.

This approach established Ramírez as an early advocate for AI, recognizing it as more than a growth tool and instead a structural advantage for operations-heavy fintechs. By proving that AI could meaningfully reduce compliance overhead, payment reconciliation risk, and support costs, she helped redefine how operators across the region think about sustainable scaling. Several founders and operators who later adopted similar AI-first operating models credit Ontop’s transformation as an early benchmark.

Her belief in making AI accessible to everyone aligns with what she has spoken publicly about talent development and digital transformation in Colombia’s tech scene. The approach centered on three core goals: strengthening skills, streamlining operations, and enabling faster decisions across regions.

As COO, Ramirez operationalized this vision through internal training initiatives and governance standards that supported responsible AI adoption. The initiative culminated in Ontop’s first internal AI Hackathon, where cross-functional teams designed automation tools that removed manual tasks and increased efficiency.

These solutions significantly reduced human intervention across onboarding, payments reconciliation, and compliance—some of the most cost-intensive areas in global payroll: “Discipline is non-negotiable if you want to deliver and grow,” Ramírez emphasizes.

Ramirez also understood that technology bootcamps weren’t enough.  This sought-after AI expert knew that progress would stall if fear wasn’t addressed: “A lot of people worry about being replaced. That is why I shifted the conversation toward efficiency. I make them understand that AI gives them more time to focus on work that actually needs human judgment, and that it will not replace their jobs,” she explains. To her, AI implementation was never just about software itself: “It’s a mindset change. When teams see AI as a partner rather than a threat, adoption happens much faster,” she adds.

The impact was tangible. Operational overhead dropped, processes became more streamlined, and Ontop successfully processed more than $1 billion in cross-border payments while remaining profitable—a rare achievement in the industry.

Processing over $1 billion in cross-border payments profitably places Ontop—and Ramírez’s operating leadership—among a very small subset of fintech platforms globally. In a space where growth usually comes at a cost, she has managed to grow volume without losing financial discipline. Her combination of AI fluency, regulatory expertise, and cost control continues to distinguish her from others in the field.

Ramirez’s ability to lead through complexity has also drawn recognition beyond Ontop. Federica Vegas, a performance coach and facilitator for Women in Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, worked closely with Ramirez while coaching Ontop’s executive team. She describes Ramirez as “one of the most impressive and promising young leaders” she has mentored over the past decade.

From her earliest days at Ontop, Federica witnessed Ramirez’s “owner’s mindset.” She is creative, resilient and accountable. Federica also commends how Ramirez never hesitated to step up when the company faced uncertainty.

As Federica puts it: “Ramirez also had a rare ability to grow alongside the company, while continuing to support the CEO and leadership team.”

Vegas later watched Ramirez come into her own as a leader—one who leads with empathy but acts decisively: “She’s deeply reflective and always trying to improve,” Vegas says. Over time, Ramirez overcame self-doubt and impostor syndrome and became a confident presence on panels and podcasts: “Her growth mindset is real. Maria doesn’t just build companies, she also builds up people,” she adds.

That growth also translated into her becoming a more visible public voice—participating in business school forums, fintech summits, and national media conversations on youth, work, and leadership.

Over time, Ramirez’s influence has expanded from operator to industry voice. Her insights on AI-enabled operations, global workforce infrastructure, and responsible scaling are increasingly sought after in executive forums, accelerator programs, and leadership communities. Rather than focusing solely on Ontop’s success, she consistently frames her work within the larger challenge facing fintech: how to build systems that endure beyond funding cycles and market hype.

From Vision to Victory: AI-Native Products

Ramirez’s leadership is most visible in Ontop’s AI-native products. She led the development of automated workflows that dramatically reduced delivery times while improving accuracy. This approach enabled the rapid launch of new financial products, including Early Wage Access and USD investment features: “We launched Early Wage Access in a matter of weeks. The entire flow—the risk matrix, approval process, and disbursement—was built on AI.” By leveraging AI-driven risk and eligibility models, Ontop reduced product development cycles from months to weeks without the need for large engineering teams.

Under this AI expert’s leadership, Ontop’s Early Wage Access product surpassed $700,000 in cumulative disbursements by advancing workers’ own paychecks instead of charging interest. “It’s not a loan; It’s just accelerating money they already earned, with a low flat fee,” Ramirez clarifies. She also spearheaded the rollout of an investment feature that allows global workers to invest directly from their Ontop accounts: “We hold nearly $40 million in user wallets. Within two weeks of launch, we saw almost half a million dollars invested by real users,” she shares. Both products were designed to close liquidity and access gaps faced by emerging-market workers: “These are financial tools that simply didn’t exist for these users before,” she adds.

This pace of innovation expanded financial access while driving Ontop’s wallet balances to $36 million and pushing its TPV run rate beyond $450 million. Crucially, these AI-native products were built to scale globally without proportional increases in headcount, supporting Ontop’s move toward cash-flow and EBITDA positivity: “Speed is the key. AI lets us build solutions for emerging markets that simply don’t have access to,” she adds. By embedding AI directly into core operational decision-making, rather than layering it onto legacy systems, she demonstrated a deep mastery of AI-enabled financial technology operations.

What distinguishes Ramírez’s trajectory is that her success at Ontop reflects a broader evolution in global fintech. She brings together AI, cross-border payments, regulatory know-how, and profitable scale—an approach peers now cite as a blueprint for disciplined global growth.

Scaling Globally with Strategic Precision

As Ontop grew internationally, Ramirez’s role went far beyond technology. This sought-after expert worked closely with the CEO to align leaders around clear OKRs, helping the company move fast without losing focus. For her, scaling globally does not mean simply growing bigger. She believes it’s about staying focused: “The goal is on aligning people, processes, and technology, especially in unpredictable markets and shifting funding conditions,” she explains. By bringing C-level and functional leaders onto the same page, she made sure AI initiatives supported profitability, efficiency, and long-term growth.

This focus became especially important during tough times. Ramirez led company-wide restructuring efforts to remove inefficiencies, cut costs, and put Ontop on a path to profitability—without slowing its expansion: “Adaptability saved us during the hard years. Transparency and flexibility were critical,” she shares, referring to the 2021–2022 interest rate environment.

In less than a year, these changes reduced cash burn by 40%, setting the foundation for sustainable growth. Paired with focused AI improvements, Ontop quickly moved from burning cash to operating profitably.

At the same time, Ramirez strengthened Ontop’s global backbone. She partnered with financial and payment providers to build scalable, AI-powered payment systems that supported talent in over 190 countries and sped up international expansion. Her ability to navigate complex partnerships became a key strength: “Mapping stakeholders and making things happen fast—that’s my superpower,” she shares.

The Future of Fintech Leadership

For Ramirez, leadership has never followed a prescribed path. Rather than climbing a conventional ladder, she grew alongside Ontop itself, pairing deep operational ownership with an early conviction that AI could be more than a productivity tool. Under her leadership, AI became inseparable from how the company thinks, builds, and scales, helping guide Ontop to profitability and global expansion while earning the confidence of top-tier investors such as Tiger Global and General Catalyst: “I’ve grown at the same pace as the company. If you invest in yourself and step into uncomfortable situations, rapid growth is possible,” she shares.

That mindset shaped not only her own trajectory, but Ontop’s operating model—one grounded in hands-on execution, internal AI training, and clear governance that balances speed with discipline.

Today, Ramirez extends that philosophy beyond Ontop. She mentors early-stage founders, judges innovation programs, and contributes to communities like SheBuilds, where women are encouraged to lead and scale technology-driven companies with confidence. Across these roles, she consistently reinforces the same belief: sustainable growth comes from building systems that empower people, not from adding layers of complexity.

As Ontop continues to expand financial access for global workers, Ramirez’s leadership reflects a broader shift underway in fintech—one where larger teams no longer drive growth, but by smarter, more adaptive systems. For her, that constant evolution is exactly the point: “There’s always something happening. That’s what keeps me excited,” she shares.

Ramírez’s career increasingly reads less like a single-company success story and more like the blueprint of a new operational leadership archetype in fintech. One where AI is inseparable from compliance, where global payments can scale profitably, and where leadership is measured not just by growth, but by resilience across cycles. As fintech matures, profiles like hers—deeply operational, technically fluent, and financially disciplined—are becoming the exception that sets the standard.

About the Author

Sandra Kelembeth  is an experienced writer who specializes in healthcare, health technology, fitness, real estate, and sports. With a sharp attention to detail and a deep passion for wellness, she creates compelling content that educates, engages, and motivates her audience. Her writing skillfully simplifies complex medical concepts, making them accessible and relevant to everyday life. She is dedicated to empowering readers with practical knowledge that supports healthier, more informed lifestyle choices.