According to Pedro David Espinoza, a transformative social entrepreneur based in Peru, business shouldn’t just be about making money. For him, business success and social impact are intertwined, and authentic relationships are the proverbial glue that holds everything together.
Today, Espinoza is not only the founder and CEO of Pan Peru USA but also a highly successful tech investor and sought-after speaker on the international stage. He got his start, however, as a car mechanic.
Pedro David Espinoza’s humble beginnings
When Espinoza was a first-year high school student in Lima, he interned as a car mechanic during his summer break. Later, during another summer break in high school, he also interned at a convenience store, working 40 to 50 hours a week.
“The temperature was at least 90 degrees every day,” he remembers.
After that experience, he worked in a convenience store, followed by helping gas stations with their accounting. At the same time, he excelled in school and served in student government.
He credits this background with giving him the “opportunity to learn, work, and serve at a young age.” It has also influenced his mindset as an entrepreneur. “The best leaders and CEOs start from zero,” he says. “They start by doing the lowest-paying jobs. Every job is worthy.”
Despite being busy, however, teenage Espinoza still felt empty. He didn’t have a passion for anything.
A key turning point in his life occurred when he was about 15, and his mother started a nonprofit organization called Pan Peru. At the time, the charity was building libraries in Pampas Grande and the highlands of Peru. (Now it does much more.)
One day, Espinoza asked his mother why she was donating so much of her money and time to other kids when she could use her resources to buy him a guitar. Answering that it was better to give than to receive, she challenged him to spend a week serving the community of Pampas Grande.
Espinoza accepted this challenge and went up the mountain for a week. By the time he came back down, his outlook had completely changed.
The making of Pedro David Espinoza
“I traveled nine hours in the car, climbing the Cordillera Negra mountain range to Pampas Grande, which is 12,000 feet above sea level,” Espinoza remembers. “I experienced symptoms of high-altitude sickness before arriving at the pueblo, which has no telephone service and no internet. At the time, it didn’t even have tap water.”
While helping to build the library, Espinoza befriended some of the local children. “One of them was a little girl, an 11-year-old named Juana,” he says. “While we were eating breakfast together, I asked her, ‘Juana, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ She answered that she didn’t have a choice — she could only become a farmer like her parents and grandparents.”
This single sentence was a revelation for Espinoza. “My heart started burning,” he remembers. “I realized that if she had access to a book, a computer, a smartphone, or a library, she would have many more opportunities. Her life could be so much bigger. And this wasn’t just true for her — it was the reality that millions of kids in Peru and developing nations worldwide were facing.”
When he got home, he got to work. He started a club at his high school dedicated to raising money for the kids in Pampa Grande. “We would fundraise every week with bake sales and then go up to Pampa Grande once every three months,” he explains.
Espinoza had found his passion.
Making a real difference in people’s lives
Right before Espinoza started his first year of college at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned to Pampas Grande, where Pan Peru had received funding from major corporations, enabling the nonprofit not only to complete its first library but also to construct multiple new ones, as well as greenhouses and computer labs.
“The whole pueblo was developing,” Espinoza explains. “There were telephone lines; there was tap water.”
This time, when he saw Juana, she was about 14 or 15 years old.
“She was like, ‘I know what I want to be in the future now,’” he recalls. “I said, ‘What’s up?’ She said, ‘I want to be an engineer. I want to build bridges. I want to connect my pueblo with the capital and improve lives, bringing infrastructure to our country.’”
Seeing how Pan Peru’s partnership with corporations had made a difference in Juana’s life and the vitality of the entire community, Espinoza became determined to facilitate such collaborations. That was the beginning of SmileyGo, the app he developed that connects companies to nonprofits with a proven track record, making charitable giving quick, easy, and impactful.
Pedro David Espinoza’s transformative social entrepreneurship
Espinoza continues to serve by presiding over Pan Peru USA, which has built 12 libraries, donated over 14,000 books, and given 10,000 children access to a STEM education.
“We’ve also donated 500 desks, tables, chairs, and school utensils, as well as over 50 pieces of tech equipment like laptops, tablets, PCs, and computers,” Espinoza says. “We’ve also built nine greenhouses next to the schools we work with in Ancash and Lima, which encourages the students to become ecopreneurs.”
Pan Peru USA has also built water reservoirs and planted thousands of trees.
Meanwhile, Espinoza has become a highly successful investor in the fintech and health tech spaces.
“My first investment ever was at Robot.com,” he explains. “Back in 2017, I became an early investor and board member. Today, its value has a 50x markup, and we’re going IPO on Nasdaq in a couple of months!”
He is also an early investor, board director, and advisor at Melzi Surgical, which designed and manufactures an FDA-approved medical device that finds needles that are lost in human bodies; Praava Health, Bangladesh’s largest outpatient medical system; Ever Medical Technologies, one of Thailand’s fastest growing electronic medical record companies; Institute for International Medicine, a graduate school in Kansas City; international healthcare company Wander Health, and Wheel the World, a travel platform for people with cognitive and physical disabilities.
Pedro David Espinoza: Servant leader
Espinoza is intentional about the organizations he invests in, and a spirit of service informs everything he does.
“Embracing servant leadership has helped me grow as an entrepreneur, and prioritizing social impact has made me a more well-rounded leader,” he says.
It has also made a major difference in the lives of thousands of people, not just in Pampa Grande and Peru but also around the globe.
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