Pierpaolo Barbieri is founder and CEO of Ualá. He is also executive director at Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical consulting firm, senior associate at the Applied History Center of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and founder of 17Sigma, a venture capital firm that aims to support disruptive and innovative Latin American entrepreneurs in their early stages. In addition, he was chief strategist of the Brevan Howard Argentina Fund.
Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Barbieri studied at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude and his senior honors thesis was awarded the Thomas T. Hoopes ’19 prize. He was selected as a Lt. Charles Henry Fiske III Harvard-Cambridge scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded an MPhil in Economic and Social History and a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. His first book, Hitler’s Shadow Empire: The Nazis and the Spanish Civil War, was published by Harvard University Press in the USA and UK, Penguin Random House in Spain and Latin America, Mondadori in Italy, and Citic in China.
Before Greenmantle, Barbieri worked for Goldman Sachs, Soros Fund Management, and Bridgewater Associates.
Barbieri was awarded the Distinguished Leadership for the Americas Award for Innovation and Social Impact by the Inter-American Dialogue in 2022.