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John is an early stage investor focusing primarily on technology opportunities in the U.S. and Latin America. He led the early financing and is a director (chairman 2010-15) of Open Education, the parent company of Open English and Next_U, two of the leading online learning platforms in the Americas. John is an investor in and lead director of itopia, which is Google’s exclusive partner in the SME cloud migration space. Together, these companies have raised over $100 million of venture capital. He recently co-founded the software outsourcing company CodeLabs, which is working with programmers in Cuba, Chile and Argentina.

John is an advisory director of the language services company ProTranslating and the casual dining group Sushi Maki.

He is a Senior Advisor to Endeavor Global, the leading non-profit organization promoting entrepreneurship in the developing world, and has been actively involved in entrepreneur mentoring and selection with that organization for the last 15 years. John is also a member of the Council of the Americas.

John has been dedicated to various non-profit and policy initiatives related to his native Cuba since 2004, including being chairman of the Cuba Emprende Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization which supports the largest entrepreneur training program and the only incubator/accelerator programs on the island. He was one of the Cuban Americans invited to the White House to meet with President Obama ahead of his trip to the island in March of 2016.

John had a 25 year career as an international investment banker in New York and London. He retired in 2004 as a partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co, where he spent 12 years focused on Latin America, including being Goldman’s CEO for that region. He graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Economics.