Born in San Francisco, Claudia Valderrama spent her childhood in Managua, Nicaragua, before returning to the Bay Area to earn a business degree from Golden Gate University. Somewhat by accident she landed a job in advertising at independent Mandelbaum Mooney Ashley, a spin-off of Hal Riney. A year later she stepped in as controller when her predecessor made the mistake of neglecting to pay off the corporate American Express card before one of the partners did his Christmas shopping.

After a short stint at Atlas Advertising, she spent the latter half of the '90s as the finance director as Legas Delaney overseeing all accounts, including adidas' global business. This was followed by eight years as a CFO in the Grey family, starting at Winkler and then taking over at Grey San Francisco, where she was part of the team that consolidated brand creative with interactive, traditional and direct media years before "integrated marketing" was an industry buzzword.

In fall 2007 Claudia returned to her independent roots, joining W+K as the global CFO as well as the finance director of the Portland office. She oversees the finances of all the offices in the network and is involved in all major decision making as part of the global team. As much as it runs counter to her years of training, she believes valuing creative over the bottom line ends up bringing the agency more billings in the long run.

Claudia and her husband have a daughter, Emma, and a son, Nathaniel.