Fernando Espuelas (born August 6, 1966) is an American entrepreneur, author, media personality and philanthropist. Espuelas is one of the pioneers of the consumer Internet. He is the co-founder (along with Jack Chen) and first CEO of Starmedia, the first pan-Latin Internet portal, launched in 1996 and now part of Orange, France Telecom's Internet services company. Starmedia was the first venture-capital backed Latin Internet company and also the first initial public offering (IPO) in the Latin Internet industry. According to the Harvard Business School case StarMedia: Launching a Latin American Revolution, "by the fall of 1999, StarMedia had sprinted to a sizable lead in the race to acquire Latin American Internet users. Its pan-regional, horizontal portal was the first to target Spanish- and Portuguese-language speakers on the Internet, registering 1.2 billion page views in the third quarter of 1999. Thirty-three-year-old StarMedia co-founder Fernando Espuelas was the toast of "Silicon Alley" and a recognized hero throughout Latin America. A picture of him on the cover of Internet World magazine--ripping his shirt open to show the Starmedia logo, like Superman, summed up the spirit of the company." By the year 2000, Starmedia was the world's leading Latin portal, serving over 25 million Spanish and Portuguese speakers every month across Latin markets in America and Europe, making it one of the top sites by audience size in the world. Espuelas is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Many years before social media would play a leading role in the Arab Spring, Espuelas presaged that the Internet would provoke an "uncontrollable wave of democracy" and give "the power of information and communication to the individual, not to institutions." In 2012, Espuelas was named one of "The Nation's 100 Most Influential Hispanics" by Poder Magazine. Time included Espuelas on their list of the "Leaders of the Millennium", and he was recognized as a "2000 All-Star" business leader by Crain's New York Business magazine. He was also a recipient of Latin Trade Magazine 's Bravo Award, being named "Internet CEO of the Year". He received a New York Award in 1999. Hispanic Business magazine gave Espuelas its Hispanic Entrepreneur Award in 2000. He was also named a "Latin American Leader of the Internet" by CNN en Español Espuelas has been part of the "power-list" of such diverse media as The Hollywood Reporter The Industry Standard, Latino Leaders Magazine, Red Herring Magazine, Silicon Alley Reporter, Hispanic Business Magazine, CNN, Upside Magazine, and Hispanic Magazine. Espuelas was also named "Immigrant of the Day" by Immigration Daily in 2008. Espuelas was the co-founder and Chairman of the StarMedia Foundation which, in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank and Microsoft, built technology training schools in poor neighborhoods in Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay. Espuelas served on the board of directors of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, operators of PBS' New York flagship television station Thirteen (WNET) and sister station WLIW, as well as on the Board of Trustees of Connecticut College. In 2009, Espuelas became a spokesman for the Los Angeles Parent's Union, also known as Parent Revolution, a non-profit group that seeks to reform public education across the United States. In 2010, Espuelas was elected to the Board of Directors of Parent Revolution. Latinvision.com selected Espuelas as one of the "Top 50 Who Matter Most!" list of Latino media executives in 2008. The U.S. Hispanic IT Executive Council named Espuelas in 2009 and 2010 to its HITEC 100, the list of "Most Influential Hispanics and Rising Stars in Information Technology". In 2008, Espuelas created Radio Espuelas, a drivetime, daily bilingual talkshow broadcast on the Univision Radio Network, and online at Clear Channel Communications' IHeartRadio. A first for Univision, the leading Spanish-language media company in the United States, Espuelas' national show is broadcast in English. In 2012, The Fernando Espuelas Show was re-launched as part of the new Univision America Network. Espuelas also writes for the Huffington Post, The Hill, and CNN and is a frequent commentator on television, such as CBS News, radio on Univision and NPR, as well in print across the world. Source: Wikipedia (en)