Juan Carlos has been involved in conservation and sustainable tourism for 20 years, setting up successful projects and programs for biodiversity conservation, community development and sustainable tourism in challenging multicultural environments in Latin America and Africa. He is an entrepreneurial leader able to recruit, guide and motivate diverse multicultural and multilingual teams to achieve results with a positive, can-do, problem-solving attitude, addressing complex and difficult situations with innovative approaches.

An effective fundraiser (over $15 million raised to date) and financial manager, creative negotiator and deal-maker, able to articulate win-win transactions to solve conflict and move business forward, he is a persuasive intercultural communicator with strong interpersonal skills, fluent in English, French and Spanish. He led Conservation International’s (CI) ecotourism program in Guatemala and later established CI’s Central Africa Program and served as its first Senior Director, with projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea. He has also served as Vice-President, Africa Programs, for the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund International.

With an MBA from the Edinburgh Business School he is currently in the Doctoral Program (PhD/DBA) at the International University of Mónaco (Montecarlo, Mónaco) and
the Université Nice Sophia Antípolis (France).