Marcela Bustillos Marcela Bustillos
Strategist · Operator · Marketer
Lore
  • Have called Venezuela, the US, Australia, and Portugal home.
  • Trained to see both sides. I was debate team captain in high school.
  • I like to dance, surf, and go on long walks.
  • Nothing surprises me. I fell through a roof once.
  • Youngest of five sisters.
  • Deeply curious. Please teach me something.
Work
Wormhole Labs
Growth Strategist Feb 2025 — Present

Mayan is a cross-chain swap protocol built on Wormhole — the leading blockchain interoperability company connecting the internet economy. I joined as Mayan's first and only marketer, building the function from scratch.

  • Growth Marketing — Designed and executed co-marketing campaigns with wallets, DEXs, and ecosystem partners, managing 33+ partner relationships including MetaMask, OKX, Solana Foundation, LIFI, 0x, Polygon Labs, and more.
  • Ecosystem Expansion — Helped expand Mayan's presence across new chains, applications, and emerging asset categories; contributed to a 3x protocol volume growth and 2.8M+ unique users; scaled channels by 140% with 3M+ organic impressions across X, email, LinkedIn, Telegram, Discord, and questing platforms.
  • Research & Intelligence — Own competitive analysis, onchain data, and performance analytics using Metabase, Mixpanel, and Dune; translate insights into campaign decisions and partner strategy in collaboration with product and engineering.
  • Brand & Go-to-Market — Build and own Mayan's marketing function as sole and founding marketer, developing positioning, messaging, creative, and go-to-market strategy across all major product launches including Mayan 2.0, which reached 500K+ impressions at launch.
Selected Work
Launch
Mayan 2.0
Protocol upgrade — faster swaps, new partnerships, and a multi-channel launch that reached 500K+ impressions.
Partnership
Mayan x MetaMask
Integrated Mayan into crypto's most widely used wallet, bringing cross-chain swaps natively inside MetaMask.
Ecosystem
Mayan x Monad
Day-one cross-chain partner for Monad's mainnet launch — coordinated ecosystem presence and co-marketing across the launch window.
Thought Leadership
2025 Year in Review
Mayan's largest growth year — a look at cross-chain movement and the thesis that connected chains win.
Milestone
2M Users
Celebrated Mayan reaching 2 million unique users.
Event
Mayan x Breakpoint
Mayan's first main stage presentation at Solana's Breakpoint conference.
Athena Alliance
Head of Operations Nov 2023 — Nov 2025

Athena Alliance is a SaaS platform for executive women — community, coaching, and career development at the senior leadership level. I joined as Head of Operations and rebuilt the infrastructure the company ran on.

  • Revenue Operations — Rebuilt org-wide reporting and metrics from the ground up, enabling data-driven decisions that contributed to a 1.5× revenue increase (2024 vs. 2023).
  • Marketing Automation — Redesigned the email marketing stack with custom automations and segmentation that drove the highest-ever sales month (Dec 2024), doubling membership sales vs. the rest of the year.
  • Retention — Designed and owned member support and content operations, contributing to a 20% reduction in churn (2024–2025 vs. 2023).
  • Systems Design — Identified friction across acquisition and retention workflows and built automation systems that expanded organizational capacity across sales, marketing, product, and support.
  • Strategic Planning — Worked directly with the CEO and CFO on long-term financial, operational, and fundraising strategy.
  • Events — Supported end-to-end execution of 10+ monthly in-person and virtual events and a growing library of 100+ learning episodes.
Purpose
Partnerships Manager Nov 2019 — Nov 2023

Purpose is a creative agency and social impact incubator that works with the world's largest organizations to drive systemic change. I spent four years building and managing global partnerships across six international offices.

  • Research & Social Listening — Identified and cultivated partners across key issue areas including climate, equity, democracy, misinformation, and health.
  • Campaign Strategy — Collaborated with strategy and campaign teams to develop proposals for social impact initiatives across the nonprofit, philanthropic, and corporate sectors. Campaigns include: Verified (United Nations) ↗ — counter-misinformation at scale; and Purpose Climate Lab (IKEA Foundation) ↗ — mobilizing global climate action.
  • Business Analysis — Analyzed and presented operational data on a quarterly and yearly basis, informing multi-year fundraising strategy and key decisions on new product offerings.
  • Pipeline Management — Oversaw Purpose's global pipeline and business intelligence, supporting revenue strategy across six international offices.
TEDx Northwestern
Curator Jan 2019 — Nov 2019

Part of the curation team for TEDxNorthwestern — sourced and worked with speakers who are experts in their fields, guiding them through the talk development process and helping put on a professional, full-scale conference.

Education
Degrees
Evanston, IL
BA, Communications & Media · Minor in French
GPA 4.0 · Summa Cum Laude · Dean's List (All Quarters) · Dance Team · PR Captain
Sydney, NSW
BA, Communications & Media
Awards
  • Northwestern University School of Communication Distinction Award
  • Dept. of State Gilman Scholarship
Certifications
  • Safary Club: Web3 Growth
  • SheFi: Mastering Web3
Skills
Tools
AnalyticsMetabase · Mixpanel · Looker Studio · Dune · Tableau
Automationn8n · Zapier · Claude Code · Claude Cowork
DesignFigma · Canva · Adobe Creative Cloud · Contentful · Mintlify
FinanceSalesforce · Pardot · QuickBooks · Stripe
LanguagesEnglish (Native) · Spanish (Native) · French · Portuguese
Built — things I've recently vibe coded
  • Mayan Blog Branded blog page — migrated from Medium to Contentful integration
  • Mayan Explorer Real-time protocol dashboard + content machine
  • Gentlemayan Games Mini games to celebrate Mayan 2.0 launch
  • Yesteryear Memory vault inspired by the game of life
  • Mayan Intern Pixel art brand character
  • This website You're looking at it
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