Santiago Covelli is a technology entrepreneur, AI builder, and international speaker with more than 20 years of experience founding and scaling companies at the intersection of fintech, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation. He is the co-founder and former President of Lulo Bank — the first fully digital bank with a banking license in Colombia — which reached COP $1.2 trillion in assets. He has advised more than 110 organizations across 1,400 projects in Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, and the United States, including Mastercard, Coca-Cola, and the World Bank.
With more than two decades of building companies in Latin America, Santiago combines strategic vision with real execution. He has founded and led five companies across sectors including software, digital communications, video games, and artificial intelligence — a career defined by disruption and the creation of tangible value in complex markets.
In 2018, he served as Senior Advisor to Colombia’s Ministry of Information Technologies, contributing to public policy initiatives around digital transformation. In 2017, he helped design the strategic communications platform for Pope Francis’ visit to Colombia.
Today, Santiago focuses on the most demanding frontier of artificial intelligence — not as a theorist, but as a builder. He advises executives and boards on the practical adoption of AI, serves as Mentor at Orbit Ventures, a global venture capital fund based in Singapore, and teaches Executive Education and AI at Universidad de los Andes. His central thesis: the Age of INTELLIGENC(IA) requires redesigning everything we built when thinking well was expensive.
