Entrepreneur

Since his teenage years, Pedro has embraced an entrepreneurial spirit. Pedro launched his pop singles through Amazon, Spotify, and Apple Music. During his time at Stanford, Pedro founded SmileyGo while taking ENGR145.  While he was at Berkeley, Pedro raised capital to scale his venture. In 2017, Janet Napolitano awarded Pedro The University of California Entrepreneur Winner for Berkeley. Later, Pedro was nicknamed The Robin Hood of Technology by The Voice of America. In 2018, Pedro became the founder & CEO of Pan Peru USA to empower Andean women to become entrepreneurs. Pedro’s Pan Peru has given 10,000 children access to STEM education and reforested 15,000 trees.

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Author

Pedro believes that inclusion is key for business success: 44% of Fortune 500 Companies were founded by immigrants. He teamed up with Jorge Titinger (CEO of SGI) to interview 150 CEOs on how diversity fuels innovation. In 2019, Pedro wrote his book Differences That Make A Difference, having Eric Schmidt, Reed Hastings, and Dan Schulman as contributors. Pat Gelsinger and Anita Sands wrote the foreword & introduction. In 2020, his book received The Best Latino International Book Award. The Spanish version Marcando Diferencias  has been published in October 2020. In 2024, Pedro’s second book – The Real ROI: Return on Inclusion – attracted 50 CEOs as writing contributors such as Michael Dell, John Hennessy, and Shellye Archambeau.

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Speaker

As a venture investor in technologies founded by under-represented groups, Pedro has given a TED Talk: Build The Bridge. His bilingual (English and Spanish) keynotes on the future of work, inclusion, and belonging have empowered Fortune 500 companies. Pedro has given 300 keynotes by sharing his entrepreneurial immigrant story. In 2020, he became a lecturer at Tecnologico de Monterrey to teach entrepreneurship and engineering. Pedro is the Founder & General Partner of PDE Ventures, a venture capital fund that has 20 startup investments such as Robot.com, Mocafi and Happioh. Pedro serves on the board of directors of Notre Dame de Namur University, CuriOdyssey, Melzi Surgical, Silicon Valley Tech Academy, ActAware, synergEV, and Institute for International Medicine.

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