My Story

I was born and raised in San Francisco and still consider it one of the greatest cities on the planet despite its flaws. As a kid, I was a nerd at heart, hustler by day, and always the quarterback in the schoolyard. I ​enjoyed building and overclocking computers to play the latest FPS titles, and by the age of 12, I had a 150 computer botnet. I funded these endeavors by soldering mod chips in all of my friends Playstations and Xboxes and selling mixtapes and games to my schoolmates. By fortune of proximity, I attended a Japanese bilingual public elementary school and an overwhelmingly Latino middle school in the Mission--experiences that influenced a deep love for language and world cultures. Although I am by no means a polyglot, I speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese. I love a good cuento and bate-papo while sitting on a sack of rice in the campo. 

After freshman year of high school, I recognized that public school was leading my peers and I on a march to mediocrity. The kid I sold 2Pac mixtapes to ended up shooting and killing my dear friend George Hortado, who was the Latino glass-eyed Biggie Smalls. He was the first of many people I grew up with to lose their life to street violence or incarceration. This prompted me to make a dramatic shift in my life. I walked out of my high school sophomore year in a ball of frustration my sophomore year after listening to my classmates in AP English struggle to read aloud. I couldn't figure out why I was in a school that more resembled a daycare facility and prison than a learning institution. The school police officer arrested me as I strode down the block searching the sidewalk for answers. I remember the words of the School Principal as the officer removed the handcuffs upon bringing me back to school, "Do you want to end up like that toothless drug addict on the corner? That's what's going to happen if you leave here." I politely told him I would never be coming back. And I didn't.

I worked practically every minimum wage job you can imagine, from retail to food service, house cleaning to construction. After a year of working 2-3 jobs at a time while buying, repairing and selling cars for extra money, I began taking classes at City College of San Francisco. I vividly recall opening up the college course guide and not having a clue about what any of the courses were about. After some experimentation, I gravitated towards economics, philosophy and political science, which provided me with a revolutionary new lens to understand the world around me. I hunkered down at school, made the Dean's List with perfect marks and eventually transferred to U.C. Berkeley to study Political Economy. 

After a few years of social venture experience, a stint in the corporate world as a data analyst, and some time in Brazil, in 2015 I opted for law school to hone my pen and sharpen my mind. At Georgetown University Law Center, I focused my coursework on corporate and privacy law, fueled by my passions for international development and technology. I also interned my 2L and 3L years at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (now the Development Finance Corporation), an investment arm of the United States as well as Citibank and the top law firm in Colombia, where I worked on crossborder structured finance. The knowledge I gained drafting $100M+ finance agreements for amazing ventures ranging from the first company to harvest and globally market açaí, to enormous powerplants that keep the lights on in Africa and LATAM was invaluable.

Today, I remain an entrepreneur passionate about technology. In the long arch of life, I hope that I can make a difference levelling the opportunity gap in the world. I have defied the odds to make it where I am today, and I will continue to blaze trails while shining light on the path for those behind me to follow.