Strategic AI
Leadership

High school years were a struggle—lacking motivation to fully embrace the opportunity. But the numbers told a different story: placing 34th out of 1,000+ students on the ICFES exam (Colombia's SAT equivalent). This opened doors to Universidad de los Andes, Colombia's best university. However, my family couldn't afford the tuition, and I didn't want to burden them with debt while my siblings were still in school. So I chose a different path: work over academics.

Started with survival jobs—selling SIM cards around Bogotá. No experience meant no opportunity for better positions. Then came the call center job as a junior salesman. I was good at it, but I realized this wasn't my future. I needed to reinvent myself, and entrepreneurship called—the same spirit that made me sell Pokémon drawings to neighborhood kids when I was 10.

A friend offered me a job selling small business technology. My father had given me a gift years ago—teaching me to assemble computers at age 8. This foundation led me into tech sales, where I learned how small companies operated. But something was missing. I had a bigger problem to solve and a company to build.

I saw the problem clearly: small businesses lacked knowledge and tools to go digital. So I taught myself digital marketing, basic HTML, CSS, and Python. Built my first app—an automated digital business plan. But ambition without resources is dangerous. No programmer budget meant coding everything myself. The venture failed and accumulated debt.

Desperate but resourceful, I leveraged my app-building skills to get hired as a junior web engineer. No formal CS degree, just determination. The first project was huge—building a portal from scratch with limited knowledge. But I learned by doing. By 2016, our finances stabilized. Promotions came, and I was leading a small frontend team. The timing was right for one more attempt at my dream.

After months of research into emerging technologies, I discovered artificial intelligence. Fortune struck when I got to prototype with Watson API at the digital agency. This wasn't just another business idea—this was the future. I worked with my wife to build a business plan: personalized AI-driven healthcare using machine learning, big data, and predictive risk assessment. We called it My Medical Assistant.

Selected among 4,000+ applicants for President Barack Obama's Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative. I traveled to the USA for the first time—Dallas, Detroit, Washington D.C. At the Department of State, I met diplomats, entrepreneurs, and Sir Richard Branson. Experienced mentors analyzed my business plan and pushed me to pivot. The certification I received that month was more than paper—it was a realization: I wasn't just a dreamer. I was someone with the power to create change, not just witness it. AI will revolutionize the world, and I wanted to be a creator, not a spectator.

One month later: invited to Lima for the final President Obama town hall and special APEC training in Peru. Months later: selected for the first TechCamp Hackathon in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Meanwhile, continuing at MDS Digital, studying machine learning, exploring AI APIs for sentiment analysis. Life was accelerating. Nominated for MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 Colombia 2016. Final round of selection at MIT's Australia Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, but the rejections only fueled the fire.

June 2017: Ready for a change, I left MDS Digital for Belatrix, a nearshore company. Moved from UI engineering for a New York startup to roles where I could deepen my AI and blockchain expertise. The professional foundation was set. But life had other plans.

Late 2017: My son Joshua was born. I chose to step back from relentless entrepreneurship. Wise voices reminded me that life is about savoring these moments too. I embraced my role as a parent, realigned my focus while continuing professional growth.

Recognized as one of 25 young influencers worldwide by the Danish Technical University (DTU), I participated in the 2019 C40 World Mayors Summit in Copenhagen and Aarhus. Represented the Americas in high-level sustainability discussions with global leaders including Al Gore and mayors of major world cities. This was a pivotal moment—validation that the work matters on a global scale.

Led a distributed team of blockchain engineers across Africa, Europe, America, and the Middle East for a European blockchain startup. Architected world-class, scalable infrastructure using AWS and Solidity, enabling the company to achieve Series A funding. Simultaneously, developed the multilingual "What The Fanta" campaign for Coca-Cola in 2023—a React + AEM experience deployed globally across 44 countries. Years of building deeper expertise in full-stack blockchain, telehealth infrastructure, and advanced software architecture. Each challenge shaped my approach.

Joseph was born. That same year, I was sponsored by Realio to move to New York—an exciting opportunity to work on multi-chain Real World Assets (RWA) trading platform managing $50M+ in tokenized assets. Balancing fatherhood with ambitious technical work, I continued building expertise across EVM, Cosmos SDK, Stellar, and Algorand.

April 2025: Paths split with Realio. I founded VX—building GenAI infrastructure and memory layer for contextual reasoning across 100K+ tokens. Also launching service automation for small and medium businesses across the United States, making AI cheaper, simpler, and faster to access. The dream continues to evolve. From that kid who needed to work instead of university, to the adult committed to democratizing AI. From My Medical Assistant to VX, the thread is clear: creating tools that empower others to thrive.