Who am I?

Life Story

I was born in Puebla, Mexico. For people always asking: where is it? “Close to Mexico City” is my gold standard answer. My dad is a retired doctor and my mom was a dentist. She died of cancer when I was in my early twenties (I have a blurred memory of that period of my life). My dad always said that when I was a kid, I was always on my own.

Getting lost in a big supermarket was common. My mom would freak out, but I’d always find my way to the toy section. I loved looking at the boxes of new toys and reading every detail about them. Growing up, business and art had always interested me. I used to sketch with charcoal, write poetry, and “kind of” write lyrics. I did well in high school. Math was tough for me.

I was particularly good at a subject called “business English.” We used to go through business case studies, talk about some problems, and come up with solutions. Finding out who I am was the ultimate quest during my teenage years and twenties. My friends were from different social groups. Looking back, I had a weird desire to always “see more.” The idea of one path for everything felt impossible to me.

I went to Brazil right before starting university, and it changed everything for me. I realized, “Kids are doing completely different things than I am,” was my takeaway.

In Mexico, you can choose a “path” in the last year of high school to help you “prepare” for university. I chose “business” because “engineering” felt too hard, and I was lazy. “Arts” didn’t seem useful for my future.

Not feeling super convinced about what I’d choose, I went for “Business Trade,” which felt like a good option. It involved economics, international trade, and cross-cultural studies. I graduated with good grades. I also won a small university grant to help pay for my exchange semester in Germany.

I had a small taste of entrepreneurship after university. My friend and I worked on a project called “Mobile Supermarkets.” That chapter was very fun; it gave me the ability to dream big. Exploring felt more intense than starting a company back then. The only way to do it was to continue my studies. It was not a big deal; I liked learning new stuff.

I found myself at a university fair. One of those where they hand out these nice brochures with pretty pictures of the campus. One of them caught my attention; it had the term “Big Data” (a fancy buzzword back in the day). The argument seemed very solid to me: having the skill to derive intelligence from data. I sold my car, moved to Madrid, and my passion for tech started.

Summer of Machine Learning

I obsessed over ML and its implications in real industries. After I graduated, I created an Excel spreadsheet. It listed all the things I missed from my studies. I decided to self-study everything I could in three months that summer.

During my studies, I went full-nerd and dedicated my entire time to extract all the value possible. Looking back, I was very annoying. I graduated with excellent grades, but it was not enough to get a job in tech; not coming from a technical background made things difficult but not impossible.

Fulfilling Career in ML

I began writing SAS code for big banks and telecommunication companies, learned to always ask why we do things and understand its impact. Then I started designing classification models for churn detection and risk. Technical consulting kept broadening my technical and industry toolkit.

I deployed models for insurance companies. Then, I wrote Scala code for complex operations research problems. Everything while learning best practices for creating MLOps pipelines. This generalist approach made me a fast learner. It also helped me spot common patterns in solutions.

Reset & Entrepreneurship

Not being super clear on where I was heading career-wise, I suffered from a small burnout. A personal crisis on top of that. Which led me to go back to Mexico. Looking back, it was a great experience. I needed to slow down, explore my country, and figure out what to do next.

Building a business started to appear closer to my radar because I moved to a different city. The signals were there: networking events, conferences, and meeting-driven people chasing their goals. Like a moth to a flame, I felt drawn to it. So after I had my last sips of 9-to-5 life, I decided to start the independent path.

Betting on Building Something on My Own

In my years in consulting and startups, I noticed a common problem: a big gap between technical and business areas. One day, while running by the beach, I thought of the name “controlthrive.” To me, it means having good control over the assests of your company so focus only has space for what truly matters: your business.

Now, I help leaders map their business processes. Then, I design and implement custom AI software that they understand from the start. It aligns with their goals and what they want to achieve.