A native from the state of Bahia, Juliana spent good part of her life living in Salvador, the State’s capital, where she started her career as a professional singer. Moved to New York to marry Tuta Aquino, her partner in life and in business . She went back to Brazil after consolidating her musical career promoting Brazilian music in the USA and abroad with 2 Bossa Nova albums recorded. In 2015 got a gastronomy degree from Universidade Anhembi-Morumbi in São Paulo. At that same time started getting back in touch with her father’s farm, Fazenda Santa Rita, reliving her's and Tuta’s precious childhood memories of cacao harvesting and processing. To confirm the progress of the new post-harvest protocols installed to improve the quality of their cacao, Juliana started making small batches of Bean to Bar Chocolate, since it common knowledge that only by tasting the chocolate one can really recognize craft quality cacao beans. After two years of tests and development, the bars started to call the attention of chocolate experts, the final encouragement the Aquinos needed to launch their own brand. Baianí was released commercially in early 2018 and is already available in Brazil and abroad.