Puentes Global

Federico, Co-Founder & CEO

Federico grew up close to the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego. From his hometown he observed the plight and the indignities of Latin American immigrant families seeking better opportunities in the United States. The son of a Spanish mother and Mexican father, Federico is a passionate globalist and has also lived in Barcelona, Boston, Madrid, Mexico City, New Delhi, and San Francisco.

Federico’s undergraduate studies in Boston and Barcelona focused on business, economics, and international relations. He earned his full tuition as valedictorian of his class at La Salle-Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona.

In college, Federico wrote his final-year thesis on the relationship between international migration, economic development, and social entrepreneurship. His thesis was asserted to be the best in the school’s history, and served as the theoretical backbone for Puentes Global.

Federico went on to earn a Masters in Business Administration, Certificate in Global Management, and Certificate in Public Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

While at Stanford, Federico began developing the philosophy for Puentes Global: applying his academic knowledge and the insight and learning garnered from professors, classmates, and the administration. Before graduating, he was awarded the inaugural Stanford Center for Social Innovation (CSI) Fellowship, which enabled him to launch Puentes Global. Read Federico’s profile, interview and blog at the CSI.

During his seven years of management experience, Federico has founded an import-export startup on the U.S.-Mexico border, served as vice president at a wholesale auto-parts firm in Mexico’s BOP, worked in management and marketing consulting in Spain, and led strategic business development initiatives at D.light Design—a venture-backed, global social enterprise in India’s BOP.

Federico feels blessed to be leading Puentes Global, an organization that couldn’t be more aligned with his values as an entrepreneur and, more importantly, as a human being.

Conchita Galdon, Co-Founder & Director Spain

Conchita has worked in social projects since, at age 15, people stopped saying that she was too young to volunteer. At 18, Conchita travelled to El Alto, Bolivia to help develop a child-education project. It was whilst here that she realized that underdevelopment is too complex a problem to be solved solely with goodwill. This prompted her to seek the best possible education that would enable her to maximize the impact of her future development work.

During the following four years, she combined her studies at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with the founding of Villanueva Solidaria Foundation, which offered mentoring to young people perceived to be at risk—many of them immigrants—in Spain’s capital. After graduating with a B.S. in Economics, and interning at the United Nations, Conchita started work at Banco Santander: Spain’s largest bank. She was responsible for conducting analyses and forecasts of Latin America’s main economies, primarily Mexico, Brazil, and Chile.

Conchita holds a Masters in Public Administration and International Development from Harvard University’s Kennedy School. Over the summer of her first year at Harvard, Conchita worked in Liberia providing assistance to the Ministry of Finance.

Back in Cambridge, she wrote her thesis—It’s possible to have it all…Using migration as a tool for development—with supervision from Lant Pritchett, a leading immigration and economic development scholar.

Today, Conchita leads Puentes Global’s Spain Office. She is certain of—and driven by—one fact: it is possible to reduce global poverty by better managing the experience of migrants.

Rodrigo Santibañez

Rodrigo Santibáñez has developed a successful international career in corporate business. He brings finance, marketing, and operations experience to Puentes, as well as a strong vision of how to grow the social enterprise into a global organization.

Rodrigo grew up in Mexico and has been exposed to the issues that migration can present for most of his life. He spent seven years living next to the U.S.-Mexico border in Ciudad Juarez, and ten years living close to the Mexico-Guatemala border in Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state. While living here he experienced firsthand both sides of the economic coin, and his sense of injustice at the staggering gap between rich and poor has stayed with him, and drives him today. As valedictorian of his high school, he earned a full scholarship to ITESM Campus Monterrey. He graduated valedictorian of his university class with an Industrial Engineering degree, and specialized in Operations Management in the U.S. and Poland.

Before joining Puentes, Rodrigo worked as Finance Manager at a consumer goods company in Mexico and Italy. He was responsible for over $60 million in marketing expenditures on a $2 billion revenue-generating brand portfolio. He has also held marketing roles within top service companies such as The Walt Disney Company, in Los Angeles, and Capella Hotels and Resorts, in Singapore. While working in Asia, Rodrigo witnessed the abusive labor practices that Chinese and Philippine immigrant workers were forced to endure. Rodrigo currently lives in California, where he frequently visits Day Labor Centers to help develop his understanding of the needs of the Latin American immigrants who are, in many cases, struggling to find any kind of work that will provide them with basic labor protection and rights.

Rodrigo is currently studying for his MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (class of 2010). He leads Puentes Global’s advisory commitments with Stanford’s faculty, students, and administration, organizes fundraising events there, and represents our organization in the United States. He speaks English, Spanish, Italian, and is currently studying Mandarin.