My dad, Renato Meyer, is an Argentine, son of German jews who luckily fled Nazi Germany before WWII and settled in Parana, a city about 300 miles north of Buenos Aires. Renato was the first resident of Parana who joined American Field Service on a 1-year exchange program in the U.S. The year was 1959 and he was a senior in high school. He later did a semester abroad in Germany during college. In 1971, my dad married my mom, Silvia Francese, and a year later I was born. I’m the first of 3 children. My sister Vanesa lives in Key Biscayne, and my brother Rolando is holding the torch in Buenos Aires.

I was born and raised in Argentina and went to a German school from K-12. I inherited my dad’s curiosity for traveling and was fortunate to spend 2 semesters studying abroad, first in Germany living with distant relatives in the Black Forest, and then later in Calgary, Canada.

My early exposure to international culture allowed me to become fluent in German and English (I’m a native Spanish speaker) and to be able to build bridges with people of different cultures and backgrounds.

I knew I always wanted to be an engineer and so I pursued a degree in Industrial Engineering at the Institute of Technology in Buenos Aires and took my first job as a credit risk and financial analyst at Citibank there. A strike of luck - to be clear, I believe that luck is a consequence of your actions, you first have to play the lottery to win it as they say - landed me a job offer in the Napa Valley at the age of 25. I was unhappy at Citi and in search of something different. But the time at Citibank was not in vane. It is there that I met Daniela, my future wife, and together we decided to take the leap and move to the U.S.

We lived in the Bay Area for 9 years, working, and in my case also going back to school to get an MBA from Berkeley. During our time in California, our first daughter Clara was born and being first-time parents without a social safety net we started to feel lonely and far away from family. That is the reason why we decided to move to Miami in 2006 and have enjoyed being here ever since.

Anna, Emi, and Juli were born at South Miami Hospital. As was the case with Clara, they’ve all brought us joy and a greater purpose in life. Over time, the thought of leaving a legacy for them and others becomes more relevant to me. I have seen how this transition in personal priorities has affected my decisions of where I want to work, more recently choosing companies with a mission that leverages tech to achieve positive impact at scale. I have been in technology for 14 years, first as an entrepreneur, and later as an executive at companies like eBay and Lyft and more recently at Papa and other. Papa exemplifies very well what I mean by mission. Papa is a Miami-based startup that has experienced astronomical growth since its founding 6 years ago. The company’s mission is to bring companionship and support to older Americans that are lonely and isolated, a problem of large and growing proportion, unfortunately. 

Acting for the greater good instead of simply feeding my own ego has always been deeply entrenched in my values. My father served at the President of Transparency International in Argentina. I had introduced him to Moreno Ocampo during a Stanford lecture in San Francisco. TI is an NGO that exposes corruption in government. Let’s just say that my dad did not make too many friends in the Argentine government, but in turn earned the respect from many honest people in Argentina.