User:Guinunez/Andy Freire

Andy Freire (39) is an entrepreneur recognized for co-founding and led Officenet (purchased by Staples in 2004), a company that revolutionized the industry of distribution (retail) of office supplies in Latin America raising over 50M USD (most of it after the Nasdaq 2000 crash) from investors including among others Goldman Sachs, GE Capital, George Soros, JP Morgan Chase, Warburg Pincus, KKR, Thomas H. Lee Partners, FleetBoston Financial, GP Investimentos and Banco Santander.

A case called "Officenet: how to make entrepreneurship work in Argentina" was written by Harvard Business School and taught at over 25 universities including the universities of Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, IE Business School and Commercial University of Paris.

He has participated as guest professor or guest speaker at several universities including Stanford, Harvard, Notre Dame, Wharton, and IE in Spain. His book "Passion for Entrepreneurship – From Idea to Crude Reality" was published in Spanish and Portuguese becoming a best seller in several countries in Latin America (including #1 best selling business book in Argentina for five months in a row since publication)

He´s currently Axialent’s Co-founder, Chairman & CEO. Axialent works with Fortune 500 firms to align corporate culture and leadership behaviors with long term strategy and company values in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

When he was 18 year old co-created Initiative Foundation, an NGO focused on promoting leadership values among the Latin American youth.

He's the Chairman of Endeavor Foundation in Argentina, Chairman of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) in Argentina and also board member of the Steering Committee of the Young Global Leaders of the WEF and member of the Global Latin American Council of the WEF.

His awards include "Global Leader for Tomorrow" in 2000 by the World Economic Forum (WEF), "Latin American Entrepreneur of the Year" in 2001 by Endeavor Foundation, and "World Young Business Achiever" in 2002. Andy was also named in 2008 one of the 100 "Young Global Leaders of the World" by the WEF in Davos, Switzerland.

He participated as investor and/or Board member in multiple start ups including Wanako (online gaming sold to Vivendi), Coffice (coffee service sold to Lavazza), Reed Argentina (trade-fairs), Restorando (online restaurant booking), The Mind Company (services off-shoring), Estrella limited (oilfield services company publicly traded in Toronto as EEN.V), Parque Austral (real estate) among others.

Andy has a Licenciatura in Economics with honors magna cum laude from the University of San Andrés in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is an OPM (33) from Harvard Business School