Federico Eisner

Activist, Artist, Brainstormer, Business adviser, Business leader, Business mentor, Change agent, Christian, Connector, Consultant, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Life mentor, Parent, Social entrepreneur, Student

I have had the privilege of growing up in a large family with five brothers and five sisters in Buenos Aires. I came back recently from a family retreat that I organized in South of Patagonia, where we closed a beautiful hotel and spent great time fishing, hiking and enjoying Christmas together. This year, went back to Patagonia to cross the Andes, in a 3-day, 100K marathon. I am a great believer on the power of developing business leaders. I have enjoyed 20 years of strategy consulting with Bain & Company. I have been part of great teams helping drive results for companies in a diverse group of industries in multiple topics, across Latin America. I have been working in telecommunications, media, financial services, oil & gas, industrials, retail and consumer goods, advising Boards, CEO’s and senior executives in strategy, organization, performance improvement and M&A. I did that based in São Paulo, and then moved to Buenos Aires to set up our new Bain office. It has been a fabulous ride developing leaders inside Bain and outside, helping them thrive and create change within our clients and inside Bain. I have enjoyed building a wonderful team of consultants in Argentina that together have been able to help great companies. Several consultants have gone on to create great stories outside of Bain, and I am lucky to have been part of their careers, and continue to be. I have also loved to create a team that continues to thrive within Bain, and several have now become partners, principals and managers. The best asset I have created is the group of promoters at my clients and the group of current and former consultants inside Bain, who I enjoy working with. I am proud of the quality of the group I lead: all great potential leaders. I am an active Trainer in all Bain’s global training programs (trained my 10th program this year), am part of the Local Promotion Committee for new Partners in South America and have been leading for the third time in a row, South America’s annual retreat program. We have received fabulous feedback when we revamped it fully, and built our own TED-style talks, that have been a great inspiration for our teams. Building business leaders will help our country but will not change it. I believe in the power of developing social leaders capable of making social impact within Argentina. The best leadership development is putting them in front of a class in an underprivileged school in the most challenging places of Argentina. I lead Enseñá por Argentina (Teach for Argentina) Board of Directors, and we have now more than 100 potential social leaders that have passed through our 2-year program, and have another 100 currently in it. We have teachers in Buenos Aires’ federal district, in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, in the north provinces of Salta and Jujuy, and in the center, in Córdoba. The 2-year experience transforms these teachers and builds them an eternal bond with education. We have many great examples of alumni changing the education of Argentina, within the public system. Ultimately, the fight is to reduce the high inequality that persists in Argentina. Besides Teach for Argentina, I have served in the Board of Cimientos (another leading NGO working in reducing drop-outs from schools in Argentina), am an active Mentor in Endeavor Argentina and support RAP (Red de Acción Política), that strives to build dialog between politicians of different parties in Argentina as well as with the private sector. We are celebrating with my wife María Andrea our 20th wedding anniversary, and have four kids – Agustín, Catalina, Isabella and Lucía.

We can build our life legacies from within the companies we lead. Inequality in Argentina and most emerging countries can be reduced by developing leaders that can address the most difficult problems. From within our positions as leaders in our firms, we need to strive to build the best business leaders inside our organization, and the best social leaders from within the causes that we support. I think that a life dedicated to build and nurture business and social leaders can make a lifelong legacy, that will allow to change my country.

Crossed the Andes in a 100K 3-day run