Chairman, La Fragua
Vice Chairman, CARHCO
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Fernando Paiz started his first business at age 13, and his entrepreneurial spirit has never wavered. “When I see a problem, I am driven to start a company that provides a solution,” he explains.

Today, the ventures he has founded in his native Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America cover a wide playing field, extending from telecommunications to forestry and mangoes.

While maintaining an ownership stake and board-level oversight in these ventures, Paiz devotes himself to his responsibilities in his family's businesses.

Local roots, ties to multinationals

Paiz and his siblings literally grew up in La Fragua, the retailing company founded by his father, and developed a healthy work ethic along the way. Paiz is now chairman of La Fragua, Central America's largest supermarket chain, and vice chairman of the Central American Retail Holding Company (CARHCO).

A partnership among La Fragua, Costa Rica's CSU, and the U.S. multinational retailer Wal-Mart, CARHCO is the largest company in the region, with strong market share and over $2 billion (U.S.) in revenues.

Fernando Paiz studied industrial engineering at Northeastern University, spending his co–op terms re–engineering meat packing houses in Boston in preparation for returning home to head up La Fragua's meat packing division.

After working his way up to vice president of operations, he led the U.S. buying office for La Fragua to mitigate the severe credit risk in 1980s Guatemala. Influenced by his brother Sergio, SF '86, Paiz decided he needed a broader perspective and enrolled as an MIT Sloan Fellow.

Experiences that cannot be replicated

“At MIT Sloan, I gained a true facility in finance and accounting,” says Paiz. “As I have moved to board-level, big-picture responsibilities, I have found it becomes all the more important to deeply understand international markets, financial instruments, and how to measure risk.

“But far beyond that, MIT Sloan exposed me to experiences that simply cannot be replicated — visiting Russia at the end of the Cold War, meeting with the president of the first private bank in the then–Yugoslavia, talking with members of the U.S. Supreme Court. These are the opportunities that truly expand one's view and change it forever.”

Paiz is becoming increasingly involved in philanthropic activities. A passionate collector of both contemporary and Mayan art, he is heading the creation of a world class Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Guatemala City and is the force behind the Mayan Route Foundation, which is dedicated to locating and repatriating pre-Columbian artworks.

Through his family's Paiz Foundation, he supports education and the arts in Guatemala and also finds time to serve on the board of Zamorano University in Honduras, the leading school for tropical agriculture. With his wife, he runs marathons, visits his U.S.–based children, and is collaborating on a book about one of their many collections of indigenous art.

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