Luis Javier Castro
Founder Alejandría ,
Latin America
Education. Connection. Empowerment.
These are the pillars of Alejandría Corp, Luis Javier Castro’s latest investment company, which he describes as “an important experiment in how capital should behave.”
With his conscious capitalism experiment, Castro and his company are helping build a better society.
Alejandría is an ecosystem for leaders and entrepreneurs, focused on building companies that find solutions to humanity’s biggest needs. In only two years, his investments in early-stage companies with high transformation capacity are generating real impact.
“I founded Alejandría to work with world-class people, to build companies that are finding solutions to Latin America’s most pressing issues,” he says.
One of those issues is education. Castro understands too many Latin American students are leaving education without the skills to participate in the economy of the future. Thus, Alejandría invested in Knowledgehook, a math software platform that makes learning math fun and gives teachers remediation guides for each student in only minutes. The investment is allowing Knowledgehook to expand into Latin America, starting with Mexico.
Alejandría’s investments in empowerment has resulted in the digitizing of auto repair shops in Latin American (traditionally an underserved sector), increasing their revenue by seven-fold.
But Alejandría isn’t Castro’s only company making a difference. He is the Founder and CEO of Mesoamérica Investments, a private equity firm that has invested in Latin America for the past 25 years in fields such as renewable energy, telecommunications and the restaurant industry.
He is a member of the board of directors of Grupo de Energía de Bogotá and Codensa and is also the Founder of Yo Emprendedor, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship in Central America. Plus, he is President Emeritus of Alianza Empresarial para el Desarrollo (AED), an organization that brings together more than 150 companies in search of a more prosperous, inclusive and respectful environment. In addition, Castro is a member of the One Young World’s Global Advisory Board, where he focuses his efforts on identifying, connecting and promoting young leaders from around the world. El Financiero, a Costa Rican newspaper, has twice named him Businessman of the Year.