Raúl Herrera

Babson SEE and Babson Luksic Fellows

PhD in Computer Sciences. Director of the Engineering and IT department at Universidad de Tarapacá

I have always believed that the northern regions of our beloved Chile have held a huge human potential to develop new ideas and innovations that can be shared with the rest of the world.

That’s why when my colleagues told me about the Babson SEE Program (Viña del Mar, Chile, June 2017), I was immediately interested in participating. Through this program, I had the opportunity to meet several other lecturers from all over the country and received wonderful feedback about my idea to establish Arica as the ideal place to develop technological entrepreneurship and innovation, drawing upon all of the unique characteristics of the city. This [Babson SEE] experience was extremely useful in the development of my line of research as it provided me with the opportunity to achieve several personal goals.

The following year with a hunger to improve my abilities in understanding and teaching entrepreneurship, I submitted an application to be part of the Luksic Fellows Program (Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA, April 2018). Through this second program, I was able to visit Babson College where I was able to better develop my idea, as well as receive expert advice, alongside new perspectives and insights; all of which I wouldn’t have been able to discover on my own. Overall, the experience was fantastic and I have very fond memories of all of the travels, classes, and conversations I had there. But most of all, I will always remember the new friends I made.

Last year I was able to travel to Sao Paulo to attend MIT’s “The Future of Work” Conference (Sao Paulo, Brazil, August 2019). It was here in which I many of the aspects of my future research became clearer to me, as well as new challenges related to human factors that needed to be addressed if I wanted to truly achieve the ultimate goal of making my dream come true.

I have always believed that the northern regions of our beloved Chile have held a huge human potential to develop new ideas and innovations that can be shared with the rest of the world.”

Now, as a Director of one of the departments of the Faculty of Engineering at the Universidad de Tarapacá, I intend to use all the knowledge I have obtained from these three different opportunities that the Luksic Scholars Foundation has granted me. They will ultimately help me to improve the opportunities for all entrepreneurs in the north of Chile and because of that, I am grateful for all these experiences.

Rodrigo Frías

Babson Chilean Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE)

Director of Early Investment in the entrepreneurship division of the Chilean Economic Development Agency (CORFO)

From a personal perspective, the Luksic Scholars program gave me the opportunity to be part of a dedicated network that seeks to promote entrepreneurship education from different sectors and organizations. I’m really looking forward to exploring any chances to collaborate with other fellows from different generations.”

Being selected by the Luksic Scholars program was a unique opportunity to meet professionals with the same purpose. Also, to connect with scholars from Babson College which is a very well-known university in terms of entrepreneurship.

From a professional side, the program provided me with a deep understanding of how to teach entrepreneurship, but also gave me a full perspective of the best methods to use in an agile way. From a personal perspective, it gave me the opportunity to be part of a dedicated network that seeks to promote entrepreneurship education from different sectors and organizations. I’m really looking forward to exploring any chances to collaborate with other fellows from different generations.

Studying entrepreneurship through specific methodologies is a good starting point. However, if you really want to go deeper, then you will need to get more knowledge in order to understand the dynamics and impact of entrepreneurship in our society. Mainly because people think that entrepreneurship is a “new field related to startups”, but in fact, it’s not. There are tons of academic papers, research centers, and practitioners that are providing top-tier tools, evidence, and cases to shed light on how to teach, learn and design better entrepreneurship policies and educational programs. A holistic perspective is key to developing a better sector.

Due to my current professional position as deputy director of the entrepreneurship division at the Chilean Economic Development Agency (CORFO), I was invited by international scholars from the UK and US to write an academic paper. This work is about the role of the entrepreneurship policies in Chile to tackle the social crisis, and now also in the face of COVID. It’s called “Reorienting entrepreneurial support infrastructure to tackle a social crisis: A rapid response”.

This work is part of a rapid response research initiative and was published by the Journal of Business Venturing Insights, an esteemed international academic journal.

I was also a finalist of the UK Alumni Award: This year, the British Council selected me as a global finalist of the UK Alumni Award. The main goal is “recognizing UK alumni who have distinguished themselves through exemplary leadership and achievements in their professional industry, and who can demonstrate the impact and scale of their achievements in their profession, and beyond”.

Josefa Villarroel

Babson SEE and Babson Luksic Fellows

Entrepreneur, professor and mentor

All of my life I have believed that entrepreneurship is an attitude towards life and a commitment to personal freedom. It is an energy that drives, connects and transforms.

With more than 12 years working in the design, implementation and evaluation of different entrepreneurship programs, I have developed a career as a specialist in this area and I am proud to recognize that participating in the Babson Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators program in Chile and being a Fellow in Babson’s campus were the most important experiences of my life.

It was in 2014, in my role as Executive Director of the GarageUAI, accelerator for university students, that I participated in the SEE program taught that year in Puerto Varas. Overcoming the fear that my English would not be enough, I lived a deep learning experience that generated a re-enchantment of my vision of entrepreneurship and the role that I could play in an entrepreneurial ecosystem that is sometimes very unequal for entrepreneurs.
With this new vision and energy, I decided to apply everything I learned in the SEE program to the interior of the classrooms, in working with entrepreneurs in the GarageUAI and in all the activities that I carried out.

While I was working on this goal, the scholarship arrived to study a semester at Babson College, delving into methodologies for teaching entrepreneurship. That was how in 2015 I traveled to Boston to make “Entrepreneurial Thought and Action” my philosophy of life and share with great referents of entrepreneurship education. That same semester, I received the 100 women leaders from El Mercurio award at a distance, in recognition of my work leading the GarageUAI.

All of my life I have believed that entrepreneurship is an attitude towards life and a commitment to personal freedom. It is an energy that drives, connects and transforms.”

Many projects arose from all the great opportunities that this scholarship gave me, projects in different areas but all with the same purpose of democratizing the opportunity to be an entrepreneur, sharing my learnings, my vision and my energy to create more access for those who have talent and seek to become entrepreneurs.

Thus, I joined the Girls in Tech Ada Academy where I had the privilege of being the Principal Teacher in an initiative that graduated 5 generations of technology entrepreneurs; I joined as an Expert Evaluator in the AVONNI National Innovation Awards; established my own company: “The Entrepreneurship Policies Observatory, OPEM”; participated as a panelist presenting entrepreneurship topics on the Agenda de Género of Radio ADN and Sin Corbata of TVN programs, firmly communicating my vision about entrepreneurship support programs.

With the recognition of entrepreneurs, I positioned myself as the author of the “JosefaTips”, reports on Funds and Calls for Entrepreneurship, which annually compiles, analyzes and disseminates more than 100 calls, showing that there are opportunities for all types of entrepreneurship.

I’ve also founded Más Emprendedoras, a space to make visible the institutions that promote entrepreneurship led by women, making it easier for more female entrepreneurs to find the support they need to believe in their business leadership.

And since January 2020, in an attempt to challenge myself, I moved to Easter Island to be in charge of the implementation and start-up of the Sercotec Specialized Business Center, one of the biggest challenges I have taken in my career where, without a doubt, all the knowledge and learning that I have put into practice during all these years will be key to promoting the development of new enterprises in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Li Qingyang (Zachary)

Luksic Scholarship for Chile-China Undergraduate Exchange

Student of Business & Finance at Fudan University

These things are subtly influencing me, are going to give me a different perspective.”

In the course of international business, professors told us that ‘culture shock’ is often encountered when studying and working in a foreign country, which makes it more difficult to do business abroad. However, for me, this is also the most rewarding point. Different political and nature conditions, different greetings, different food and different meal times, even the different price of Coca-Cola, all of these make me feel novel and curious.

These things are subtly influencing me, are going to give me a different perspective and way of thinking, and preparing me for a future multinational work.

Personally, I have known a lot of new bands in Chile, watched a lot of local indie bands and bought a lot of new records. On weekend, and in the mid-term holidays. I went to many fantastic places for traveling. I was fascinated by the spectacular glaciers, lakes and peaks in the national park Torres del Paine, the excellent ski slopes in the Andes, and the leisurely life in a seaside town.

Honestly, I loved the life and people in Chile.

Elías Pinto

Conducting Business in China (CMIX)

Comercial Engineer. Master in Finance UAI and MBA UC. Trader at BCI bank.

I am a Commercial Engineer, with a Master in Finance from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, and an MBA from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, with more than 10 years of work experience in the financial market.

This experience developed my multicultural vision of the world.”

In 2019, thanks to the support of Banco de Chile, I participated in the Culture and Management Immersion Experience (CMIX) program as an MBA UC student. We received MBA students from Tsinghua University in Chile, and culminated the program with a 2-weeks trip to China. This program was not only the best part of my studies, but it also allowed me to learn on the ground about global Chinese companies, such as Huawei and Bytedance; or foreign companies operating in that country, such as Walmart or Antofagasta Minerals, and participate in classes taught by outstanding professors in entrepreneurship and technology.

This experience developed my multicultural vision of the world, since we shared with students from Tsinghua University, making it possible to learn mutually from our cultures, generating guangxi (trust) between the groups of both universities and forming personal and commercial ties towards the future.

I really appreciate this unique opportunity that helped me to get to know China in depth, its history, territory, culture and future vision in a way that was only possible with the support and contact networks of experts in it.

Solange Bascuñán

Conducting Business in China (CMIX)

FX Structuring & Sales Trader Sr. for Banco de Chile

We also visited impressive companies such as Lenovo and B&D, in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. But not everything was pure study; we also learned that engineering in China has no limits with the imposing Great Wall and the Shanghai Tower.”

I am an Industrial Civil Engineer from Adolfo Ibáñez University with a Masters degree in Business Engineering and at the end of 2019, I received my MBA from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
When I started my MBA, I had never thought about a trip to China – long hours of travel and a different culture were far from my plans. That was until I took part in the “International Business: China” branch of study as part of my MBA. Along with a curiosity for entrepreneurship, I thought “China is a country one must experience”.  As Jack Ma said “If you never try, how will you know if there is a chance?”
And, thanks to the UC MBA program, together with Luksic Scholars and the support of Banco de Chile (where currently I work as a Senior Money Market Trader), I had the best opportunity and experience of my life. I was able to share two intense weeks through my MBA program with Chilean and Chinese colleagues alike with interesting classes at Tsinghua University with outstanding professors. We also visited impressive companies such as Lenovo and B&D, in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. But not everything was pure study; we learned that engineering in China has no limits with the imposing Great Wall and the Shanghai Tower.
This trip allowed us to learn about the rapid growth of this world power over the past three decades: its technology, innovation and “Guanxi” culture.
Without a doubt, I am lucky to have been part of this experience and I am grateful for the support of the team of professionals who are part of it and who have made this incredible adventure possible.

María Rosa Olivera-Williams

Faculty Exchange Luksic Grants

Professor of Latin American Literature at Notre Dame University. Faculty Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute and Fellow of the Nanovic Institute.

The award from the Luksic Family Collaboration Grants Program, enabled me and a new generation of scholars to solidify the academic institutional, and personal bridges between the University of Notre Dame (UND) and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC). The award-winning project entitled “University and Catholicism: Memory Studies as a Project of Cultural Politics” was extremely successful and included several enriching events.

A good project has the potential to ignite endless possibilities and to create as well as to solidify many perennial bridges around the world.”

During the fall semester of 2017, Professor Cristián Opazo (PUC) and I (UND) held a joint graduate seminar on university, Catholicism, the humanities and the market. We communicated every Thursday through Skype with Professor Opazo (PUC) and Cathy Brix (UND), who was doing a field research for her dissertation on memory studies after the Chilean military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet with a prestigious award from the Fulbright Fellowship (2016-17) in Chile. Originally, the seminar was going to have three students from ND. However, the interest aroused by the subject among graduate students in the program of Latin American literatures and cultures was and is much greater than expected and a postdoctoral fellow, Santiago Quintero, and an advanced PhD student, Luis Bravo joined us. The seminar was a resounding success. We invited the following scholars and colleagues to discuss some of the readings of the seminar. With John McGreevy, O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters and Professor of History, we discussed his enlightening book on the American Jesuits, American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global (2016); Ted Beatty, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the Keough School of Global Affairs, gave us the opportunity to talk about the newest school at Notre Dame, the School of Global Affairs; and Vittorio Hössle, the Paul Kimball Professor of Art and Letters, Professor of German Literature, Professor of Philosophy and of Political Sciences, shared with us his book The Idea of the University Facing the Challenges of the Twenty First Century in its Spanish version. The seminar not only received the highest scores in the students’ evaluation, which at UND are extremely rigorous, but also all the participants have been recognized as scholars and teachers. Santiago Quintero is now an Assistant Professor at Furman University; Luis Bravo received the most prestigious award in the humanities from UND, the Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Award in the Humanities (2019), for his brilliant doctoral dissertation on the Uruguayan artist and murdered student activist Ibero Gutiérrez, written under my direction, and his outstanding performance in the program, and is now an Associate Professor in the Universidad de Montevideo and Instituto de Profesores Artigas, Uruguay; Cathy Brix defended her dissertation, also written under my direction, with praise from the members of her committee and received the most prestigious teaching award of the UND (2019); Ruth Solarte, who has completed her second year of the doctoral program, received a prestigious teaching award from the Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning, UND (2019), and Kathleen McDonald, the youngest member of the group, a BA/MA student in the program of Iberian and Latin American Studies, will begin her law career in one of the most prestigious schools in the country.

In April 2018, Professor Cristián Opazo, PUC, came to UND and gave a public lecture entitled “Humanities on the Edge: The Chilean Experience,” which was extremely well received. Professor Opazo’s visit to UND gave us the opportunity to start the first steps in a new exchange program at the doctoral level between our students and professors in the Ph.D. in Spanish and the students and professors of the College of Letters, PUC.

In June 2018, the UND group went to the PUC, where we held a workshop on the topic of the seminar and the graduate students shared their projects, which began in their research essays for the seminar, with people from PUC. In that opportunity, I gave a keynote address on University and Catholicism. The success of these events awoke the interest of Marisol Vera, the editor of the prestigious academic publishing house Cuarto Propio, who invited us to publish our findings with them. Now, and after an exciting and well-attended panel entitled “El (no)lugar de las humanidades en las universidades de las Américas” [“The (No)Place of the Humanities in the Universities of the Americas”], organized by Professor Opazo and I, and whose panelists were the UND participants in the original seminar, which was part of the 2019 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Boston. Professor Opazo and I are editing the book, Universities, Catholicism, and Globalization across the Americas (Cuarto Propio, forthcoming).

A good project has the potential to ignite endless possibilities and to create as well as to solidify many perennial bridges around the world, touching many people interested in the betterment of humanity. However, the financial support of generous people like the Luksic family, is absolutely necessary to make those projects a reality. Thank you!

Richard Taylor

Faculty Exchange Luksic Grants

PhD. Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame

I have had the pleasure to participate in the creation and development of a number of biomedical research centers including the Harper Cancer Research Institute, the Boler-Parseghian Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases, and the Warren Family Research Center for Drug Discovery and Development. These academic centers not only promote and support researchers with overlapping research interests on campus but also seek to identify beneficial complementary expertise through external partnerships. This is particularly true in translational biomedical research which seeks to move fundamental discoveries from the laboratory to clinical settings and ultimately, have a beneficial impact on human health.

 The Luksic Grants Program awarded by Notre Dame International, provided to the Warren Center, allowed the initiation of a new interdisciplinary collaboration with Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) focused on the investigation of new leads for the rare lysosomal disorder, Niemann-Pick Type C disease (NPC). NPC is a lethal, genetic disease that effects cholesterol metabolism in children. The disease causes cholesterol and other lipids to build up, which leads to symptoms including deterioration of memory and balance, and seizures. Over the past two decades, NPC has become an important subject for research, fund-raising, and public awareness outreach efforts of our College of Science faculty and university administration. Warren Center researchers, Olaf Wiest and Paul Helquist have identified new chemical compounds that have the potential to benefit NPC patients. Independently, PUC School of Medicine researchers, Professors Silvana Zanlungo and Alejandra Alvarez have previously identified that c-Abl inhibitors, such as the leukemia drug Gleevec, improve neurological symptoms in a mouse model of NPC disease. 

Through this support of the Luksic program, we were able to tap into their expertise with NPC neuronal cell lines and evaluate whether or not the compounds discovered by Notre Dame researchers could show potential synergism with c-Abl inhibitiors. Interestingly, despite the fact that each of the individual compounds improved cholesterol trafficking in neuronal cells, the compounds when given together showed no beneficial effects. Current efforts include identifying the competing biological pathways that lead to this surprising antagonistic effect and exploring another lead compound developed in my own lab.

The Luksic Grants Program allowed the initiation of a new interdisciplinary collaboration with Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) focused on the investigation of new leads for the rare lysosomal disorder, Niemann-Pick Type C disease

The Luksic scholarship not only supported the research collaboration but also enabled the attendance of the researchers at the Michael, Christa, and Marcia Parseghian Scientific Conference on Niemann-Pick Type C Research held annual in Tuscon, AZ. A poster presenting the results of this collaborative project was presented to the more than 150 attendees of the 2018 conference which included a mixture of Niemann-Pick Type C patients, families, and researchers. This initial collaboration sets the stage for the development of further translational research collaborations with PUC School of Medicine faculty in the development of new treatments for Niemann-Pick Type C disease as well as other biomedical research areas.

Carola Bahamonde

Conducting Business in China (CMIX)

Wealth Management Advisor, Grupo Security

I participated in the China / Chile Culture and Management Immersion Experience (C-CMIX) program in 2018 and for me it was really a unique opportunity, given that it allowed me access to a completely enriching experience.

I consider myself very fortunate to have been selected to be part of this experience and I thank Banco de Chile for its support that made this possible.”

For me, the best part of this trip is the mixture of experiences, from attending classes at Tsinghua University in Beijing and getting to know Schwarzman Scholars, to being able to visit relevant companies in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as getting to know the Embassy of Chile and meet with the Ambassador.

Without a doubt, what stands out most is the relationship established with our Chinese peers. I think that being able to share with them is a fundamental part to really understand how this part of the world works that is so often unknown to us from Chile.

I consider myself very fortunate to have been selected to be part of this experience and I thank Banco de Chile for its support that made this possible.

Ismael Espinoza

Babson SEE and SEE Luksic Fellow

Director of Entrepreneurship, Universidad Mayor

I am the director of entrepreneurship and Manager of the DSchool at Universidad Mayor in Chile, first design thinking school in Latin America (in collaboration with the Hasso Platner Institute).

The tools and experience I gained at Babson marked a turning point in my career.”

In my roles I am responsible for implementing the design thinking methodology with the objective of promoting the character, skills and motivation needed to develop in people and students, the entrepreneurial spirit that will allow them to add value to society by solving complex problems.

I am also the Director of La Fábrica (The Factory), a robust entrepreneurship program and platform of the Universidad Mayor that was designed and validated as a direct result of my experience at Babson College as a Luksic Fellow after participating in a Chilean Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators in Chile. The Factory is the unit responsible for transforming entrepreneurial projects into reality, by generating products and/or services that deliver social and economic value for themselves and for others.

There is no doubt in my mind that the tools and experience I gained at Babson marked a turning point in my career and helped launch important initiatives that generate opportunities for the next generation of entrepreneurial students in Chile.