Business + Education in LATAM: Private Equity and Venture Capital in Education Panel

Moderator Bio

Federico Antoni

Federico is a pioneer in the venture capital industry in Mexico. In 2012, he co-founded Antoni Lelo de Larrea Venture Partners (ALLVP), the first institutional early-stage venture capital fund in the country. As Managing Partner of ALLVP, Federico has successfully raised two Funds focused on Seed, Series A, and Series B investments. He has overseen 25 investments to-date across four sectors: FinTech, Digital Consumer, Healthcare, and Smart Cities. Federico brings nearly twenty years of extensive strategy, marketing, and operational experience to add value to startups in his role as Managing Partner of ALLVP. As Head of Business Development and subsequently CEO of Edoardos, a then publicly-traded Mexican apparel company, Federico led the Company’s international expansion across Latin America, its launch of new brands, and its turnaround efforts during the economic crisis. Federico also served as CMO of Mexico for B2W (formerly Submarino), the dominant e-commerce platform in Brazil, doubling the country’s sales prior to the subsidiary’s acquisition by Televisa, the world’s largest Spanish-speaking media company. At Televisa, he took on the role of VP of e-commerce and restructured the division to cut costs, grow sales, and launch new product offerings in Mexico. Federico also successfully developed and launched three new product lines in Europe while working at L’Oréal.

In addition to ALLVP, Federico’s entrepreneurial drive led him to start two more companies: Fondeadora, the principal crowdfunding platform in Latin America, and Venture Institute, a premier seed acceleration program. Under Federico’s leadership, Fondeadora facilitated the successful funding of over 1,000 projects, before being acquired by Kickstarter, the global crowdfunding leader. Venture Institute merged with NUMA, the global accelerator program, thus creating NUMA Mexico which has backed over 150 startups. Federico, who is a frequent Techcrunch contributor, is an Entrepreneurship and Management Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received his MBA in 2004. He also holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Applied Economics from Paris Dauphine.

Speaker Bios

Martin Ferraro

Martin is Managing Partner at Edventures, the Venture Fund for the Hochschild Family Office based in Lima, Peru. He previously worked as CEO in Takay, the first corporate-backed venture the Hochschild Group (HG) launched in 2019. For the past 17 years, Martin has held different leadership roles in the HG such as Sales and Marketing Manager, Deputy CFO, and Innovation Director, all of them in Cementos Pacasmayo, the second-largest cement company in Peru. Martin has a bachelor degree in Business and Finance from UPC (Lima, Peru) and an MBA from Stanford University (MBA 2011). He is married to Alejandra and has three boys, he is passionate about traveling and hiking, and he enjoys swimming and cross-country biking.

Carlos (Degas) Filgueiras

Carlos (Degas) Filgueiras is a former senior executive, serial entrepreneur, and investor. Currently, Degas is a partner at Bewater Ventures, a global investment firm with a focus in Series B transactions for tech-enabled companies.
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Previously, Degas co-founded one of the first colleges that made up Adtalem Educacional do Brasil (ATB) in 2000, and in 2004 assumed his position as President and CEO. In this role, he managed ATB’s growth from 2,500 students to 115,000 students across 17 institutions in the most important cities in the country for business and growth. In 2017, in addition to his role as CEO of ATB, Degas also became Group President, of Business and Technology of Adtalem Global Education (ATGE), being responsible for expanding the company to other countries and running the vertical globally. Degas totalized almost 20 years in Higher Education when he left his executive role in June 2019.
 
Previously to Adtalem, Degas was a co-founder and General Director at InterCouriers and eventually helped facilitate the merger of InterCouriers with four other companies, forming ebX Express Brasil, the largest private parcel delivery company in the country.
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In 2016, Degas was elected by Forbes Magazine as one of the best CEOs in Brazil. Degas holds a master’s in business from Stanford University, a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of São Paulo.

Iona Szkurnik do Rio, MA ’14

Iona is an entrepreneur in education and technology. She is the founder of Education Journey, a startup focused on making innovation core in education, and co-founder of Brazil at Silicon Valley, a not-for-profit organization that fosters innovation and technology in Brazil. Iona worked in Silicon-Valley-based SaaS B2B company as international expansion director for many years and taught at Menlo Park and Palo Alto public school districts. A graduate of Stanford University School of Education with a degree in Policy, Organization, and Leadership Studies in Education, a BA, and MA in Psychology, and an MBA from Brazilian institutions. Iona served on the Stanford GSE Alumni Advisory Task Group and serves today at Hillview Middle School Council. Iona is a fellow at the Lemann Foundation and mentors young Brazilian students who dream to study abroad. Married and passionate mother of two teenagers, cannot live without hiking, the ocean, and ice-cream.

Ximena Alvarado Trespalacios, MBA ’21

Ximena is looking to become an agent for social change through the intersection of investing and education. Over the past five years, she has had exposure to both fields through her work in Nexus Group, Peru’s largest Private Equity fund. Her experience includes both M&A and portfolio operations across different industries, ranging from retail, entertainment, and education. During her time at Nexus, she specialized on the latter, working deeply in strategy within the education portfolio, including K-12 schools, universities, and technical institutes. She also served as the first CFO of Innova Schools Mexico; the Mexican operation of the K-12 network started in Peru. The mission of Innova is to provide high-quality, world-class education to middle-to-low income families in Latin America.

Ximena is currently in her second year of the MBA at Stanford, where she serves as Executive Chair of the International Committee and works on independent research in the K-12 field.

Daniel Uribe

Daniel is passionate about education investing and entrepreneurship in Latin America. Over the past five years, he has worked with multiple for- and non-profit education ventures in Latin America, including ESCALA Educación, the Latin American Leadership Academy, the Alianza Educativa and Eleva Educação. He is also the Founder of Mentors4U Colombia, the leading career development mentorship NGO for low-income college students in Colombia, and was an Adjunct Professor at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Medellin, Colombia). Daniel started his career at Citigroup’s Latin America Investment Banking group, working at the firm's New York City and Mexico City offices.
 
Daniel is currently an MBA / MA in Education joint-degree candidate at Stanford, where he is an Arbuckle Fellow. While at the GSB, he has worked with Stanford GSB’s Impact Fund Education Team and Owl Ventures, leading both of the funds’ first investments in Latin America. Daniel earned his bachelor of science in Economics and Finance from Bentley University and after graduation, he will be joining Appian Education Ventures, an education-focused investment fund, and venture builder, as a General Partner.