Javier Santiso is CEO and General Partner of Mundi Ventures, an international venture capital firm investing in technology companies across Europe and the United States with 1,5bn of assets under management). 

He has backed some some of the successful technology businesses of the past decade, including Farfetch, Palantir, Skyscanner, Auto1, Wefox, Bolttech, Shift Technology, Betterfly, or Klarna. He currently serves on the boards of several companies and is a member of the boards of PRISA in Spain and FNAC Darty (in France). He has dual nationalities, French and Spanish.

Previously, Javier held senior leadership positions across finance, public policy, and international development. He served as Director and Chief Development Economist of the OECD Development Centre, where he expanded the institution’s focus on emerging economies and significantly increased its global reach. Prior to the OECD, he was Chief Economist for Emerging Markets at BBVA and an Emerging Markets Economist at Crédit Agricole Indosuez. He also held senior executive roles at Telefónica, where he helped establish and lead the group’s venture capital and innovation initiatives, and later served as CEO, Head of European Investments and Global Head of Technology Investments at Khazanah Nasional, Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund. He was a member of the Investment Committee and also of the Executive Committee. 

Alongside his investment career, Javier has maintained a strong academic profile. He has been Professor of Economics at ESADE Business School, taught at Sciences Po Paris and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and founded the OECD Emerging Markets Network (EmNet). He began his academic career at the Latin American Centre at the University of Oxford and was a Research Fellow at Sciences Po Paris. He published books with Oxford University Press, MIT Press, Cambridge University Press, and now writes novels, some published in France, by Gallimard and others. 

Javier holds BA, MA, and PhD degrees from Sciences Po Paris and completed his doctoral studies at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He also holds an MBA from HEC Paris, an Executive MBA from IESE Business School, and has completed executive studies at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on emerging markets, venture capital, and international economics, and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2009. He is member of international he board of trustees of El Prado museum and also of Teatro Real, the Opera House, in Madrid. He created an art and literature publishing house, La Cama Sol, and worked with artists like Anselm Kiefer, Paula Rego, Etel Adnan, Jaume Plensa, Miquel Barceló or Fabienne Verdier.