Immigrant of the Day: Fernando Espuelas (Uruguay)

Fernando Espuelas (b. August 6, 1966 in Montevideo, Uruguay) is an entrepreneur and the founder of StarMedia Network, the first pan-Latin Internet portal in 1996 and the first IPO for a Latin Internet company in 1999. In 2002, Espuelas founded VOY, L.L.C., a digital media company focused on Latinos and those discovering Latin culture. VOY’s portal was launched in 2005.

Time named Espuelas as one of the “Leaders of the Millennium”, and he was recognized as a “2000 All-Star” business leader by Crain’s New York Business magazine. The World Economic Forum includes him among its elite “Global Leaders of Tomorrow,” and he was also a recipient of Latin Trade Magazine’s prestigious Bravo Award.

Espuelas’ family in Uruguay was financially secure until his father abandoned them when he was 8 years old. Seeking survival at a time when Uruguay was in an acute political and economic crisis, Espuelas and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1976, with only $100. After a series of factory jobs, his mother found work as a housekeeper in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Espuelas attended Greenwich High School and graduated in 1984. While in high school, Espuelas was the President of the Debate Team and the Connecticut State Champion debater in 1982. Espuelas worked in a series of jobs while going to school: gardener; gas station attendant; Woolworth’s clerk; restaurant worker; movie usher; newspaper delivery boy; messenger; Chinese food delivery person; pet shop cleaner; baby sitter; electronics board assembler in an electronic church organ manufacturing company; and as an intern at Philip Morris’ headquarters in New York.

In 1988, Espuelas graduated from Connecticut College with a degree in history.

KJ