Latin America is a rising area for business, with sustained multi-year growth in most countries across the region. With a median age well below Europe and North America, young business leaders in Latin America stand out as particularly impressive.
The use of tech and digital solutions is a calling card of young business leaders in Latin America, as it is an area that doesn’t suffer from ossification and established powers as many others do. Innovation and a willingness to go against the grain are hallmarks of everyone on this list.
As the world of work changes, these entrepreneurs and visionaries are changing with it, bringing new solutions to old problems. Many of them are explicitly focused on bringing new markets into play and opening up spaces for those that have traditionally been excluded, whether by gender, poverty or other reasons.
Still, there are issues for many young business leaders in Latin America, with corruption, establishment opposition, infrastructure issues and widespread inequality all playing a part. It is testament to their character and the indefatigability of the Latin American spirit that these individuals have succeeded. This all shows that giving people chances in an area of the world that is often highly risk-averse can pay huge dividends.
Biz Latin Hub is proud to highlight these young business leaders in Latin America and we share with them a strong belief in the potential of the region. There are a great many industries, areas and fields which are growing fast, such as nearshoring in Latin America. Now is a great time to invest in the region.
We can help you enter markets across Latin America and the Caribbean, with 18 dedicated offices regionwide that can offer you personalized back-office solutions for whatever you are looking to do, from company formation to day-to-day management such as accounting and compliancy.
Cristina Junqueria
Co-founder of Nubank, the world’s largest neobank, Junqueira is startup royalty not just in Latin America but on a global scale. With a high degree of people unbanked, the region has great potential for creative financial solutions, with Nubank elegantly stepping in to offer banking to those traditionally excluded from the system. She decided to do this after working for Itaú and Unibanco, two of the largest banking operators in her native Brazil.
Seeing an opportunity outside the banking monopoly, she created a new bank with new principles. The company is designed to be open and transparent, with a focus on diversity and inclusion as well as a keen eye for customer service. That’s Junqueira in a nutshell, and the driver behind the company’s extraordinary success with Nu Holdings valued over USD$50bn on the New York Stock Exchange.
Diego Olcese
The charismatic CEO of Crehana, Peruvian entrepreneur Olcese has plenty of experience in the field. Before he started Crehana, he had already founded and sold Flikn.com. Crehana is an online training platform for creatives, focused on Latin America. Its goal is to bring quality education to a mass audience, especially in a region where many face problems with access to learning.
The app matches quality educators and experts to young and hungry students who are often excluded from traditional avenues for education. This is a huge market, and edtech is viewed as one of the biggest areas of growth within Latin America. In the Covid-19 pandemic, demand soared and Crehana raised another USD$70 million of capital in 2021, giving it a bright future and cementing Olcese as a man with great potential.
Vilma Nuñez
A renowned leader in the Hispanophone tech sphere, Nuñez can rightly be described as a business influencer. With a string of startups under her belt, she now mainly focuses on passing on her advice and considerable wisdom to others in the field. Specializing in marketing, she helps smaller businesses make the most of digital tools and marketing strategies.
An early entrant into the field, she knows digital marketing and the importance of using vibrant content to build customer engagement inside-out and spends her time speaking at conferences worldwide as well as offering her own courses, mentoring and books. These are designed to be accessible – with her courses starting at as little as two euros, meaning she is open to helping anyone.
Luis Carlos Reyes
The head of Colombia’s tax office, DIAN, Reyes built an enormous online profile using the nickname ‘Mr Taxes’, bringing him to countrywide fame and thousands of followers. In a country where both tax evasion and avoidance are rife, he saw it as a personal mission to explain the importance of taxation to an often sceptical and wary audience. Against the odds, he largely succeeded, through an innovative campaign style that was delivered with warmth and friendliness, improving the image of the tax office.
To help build engagement for relatively dry tax and finance lessons he incorporated humor into the message, building both his personal brand and that of DIAN as well as helping thousands understand finance better. Just last month, he took over as Colombia’s Minister for Commerce, Industry and Tourism, a large brief in the country, meaning his impact is now set to grow even further.
Doménica Obando
Another Peruvian edtech visionary, Obando is the CEO and cofounder of Talently, winner of Peru’s best startup in the Startups Latam Fest 2022. That same year, she was included in the top 50 Peruvian power list for women by Forbes. After cutting her teeth with the Ministry of Education and the third sector as an NGO founder, she decided to turn her attention to helping young professionals connect with companies as well as finesse their profile.
That led her to found first Andi and then Talently. The latter works by analyzing candidate profiles and optimizing them for potential employers, usually by offering courses designed to fill the gaps in their CVs. This has an enormous impact on job applications, with many users ending doubling their salaries or more.
Maite Muñiz
This Colombia-based Mexican entrepreneur was instrumental in the development of Truora, a company that recognized the potential of WhatsApp as a tool for communication in Latin America. Their great idea was to integrate that app with their existing products, given its dominance in the local market. They use WhatsApp as a tool for conducting background checks in a way that makes it easier for both job applicants and potential employers.
From that base, they have gone on to offer a range of business support solutions such as popular WhatsApp chatbots, now operating across the region in 15 different countries and valued at over USD$75 million. Muñiz herself is a keen supporter of women in business and offering opportunities for women to thrive and succeed, especially in the world of tech.
José Facchin
This Argentinian SEO specialist is among the very biggest names in the world of Latin American business influencers. In a typically self-effacing manner, he describes himself first as a blogger, although his portfolio of achievements is much more than that. CEO of JF-digital, his very own company, he and his team help businesses across the region with web positioning, content marketing and social media management.
On top of that, he’s even started his own school, Webescuela, which offers courses and workshops in digital marketing, community management, SEO and many other related topics. You can be sure that whatever you may be interested in, Facchin will know all about it and be available to offer some useful pointers.
Ana Karen Ramírez
A keen advocate for female involvement in STEM spaces, Mexican web designer Ramírez founded Epic Queen to help women in the field with training and access to opportunities in the field. She did this after years in which she realized she was the only woman in the room in many of her business interactions. That led to the MIT Technology Review naming her as one of their top under-35 innovators in Latin America for 2020.
Epic Queen focuses on women and girls, offering encouragement and opportunity to people as young as six. Her initiative has already helped thousands of young girls in Mexico to get interested and involved in STEM fields and study. But that’s far from the limit of her ambition – Ramírez sees Epic Queen as the place that can change the lives of millions of people in Latin America.
Mayer Mizrachi
Although perhaps now best known for politics, Panamanian Mizrachi cut his teeth in the business world and remains a staunch supporter of small businesses and startups in the region. He was the founder of Criptext, a shortlived competitor to Whatsapp, before turning his attention to the ballot box. He ran for and won the mayorship of Panama City in 2024 and has used his considerable social media profile to position the city well on the global stage.
He has hundreds of thousands of followers on both TikTok and Instagram, making him part of the new generation of politicians that understand the power and importance of social media. Just this month, he’s made headlines across the world after offering tourists affected by the protests in Barcelona a free week in Panamá. This type of innovation is typical of his freewheeling style.
Biz Latin Hub can help you connect with young business leaders in Latin America
At Biz Latin Hub, we offer a comprehensive range of market entry and back-office solutions across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Our expertise encompasses hiring and PEO, accounting and taxation, company incorporation, and corporate legal advice.
With offices in major cities across the region and partnerships established in numerous other markets, we possess a vast network of resources, ideally positioned to support cross-border operations and market entry across multiple countries.
Contact us today to find out more about our services and how we can help you achieve your business goals in Latin America and the Caribbean.
If you found this article interesting, be sure to explore the rest of our coverage of the region. Additionally, you can learn more about our team and expert authors here.
