A multitalented multitasker, Andres Chico ’13 MBA has a front-row seat to an enviable breadth of fields, from finance to hospitality to transportation. But ask him to define his career in two words and he doesn’t hesitate.
“I tell everyone that my role is ‘chief psychologist,’ because I need to be a psychologist for the entire team,” Chico explains. “I’m also a fireman because problems come to me when no one else can fix them. So those are the two basic things I do every day.”
Based in Mexico City, Chico is co-founder and managing director of Rodina, a family office and investment firm that focuses on real estate, technology, hotels and resorts, and infrastructure investments. He is also co-founder and CEO of Tortuga Resorts, a diversified hotel platform based in Mexico.
“I’m very into moving the operations forward,” he says. “And that’s just the nature of how we do investments. We do very few. We try to concentrate our bets and really spend time helping the companies operationally.”
He also sits on the board of global transportation company Carrix Inc., is chairman of recycling marketplace Rubicon Technologies Inc. and serves as a mentor at Endeavor Mexico, working with young Latin American entrepreneurs.
He credits the Kellogg School of Management with preparing him for a career in global business. “The entire world is based on teamwork,” he says. In business school, “you were thrown into a room with five different people, so you usually were not able to choose them and you met all types of individuals. But you had to figure out how to jointly come up with a solution to the problem in front of you. So that really helped in my ability to interact with different people across cultures.”
It’s a long distance from Chico’s home turf to Northwestern’s campus, but he made the trip to Evanston for Reunion 2023. He came away concluding that the factors that made Kellogg special for him are even more powerful today — especially where the robust alumni network is concerned.
Chico also had his father — Fernando Chico Pardo ’76 MBA, an entrepreneur and investor — to help him through the discernment process. With his dad’s guidance, Chico started his MBA education at just 24 years of age, making him one of the youngest students in his class. “I joined my father’s firm when I was a cub, so I was quite comfortable with the age difference,” he says.
Yet Kellogg gave him exposure to opportunities he coveted. “I really wanted to join either private equity or venture capital in New York, so I led one of the venture capital treks in my second year,” he recalls. “We took students to meet different VCs in New York, and I was supposed to get meetings at a place where I didn’t have many contacts.”
The experience forced him to stretch. “I basically jumped into the alumni network. I literally emailed 10 alumni, and within days every single one replied,” he says. “It was quite impressive.”
Chico emphasizes that today’s prospective students will be able to benefit from those same opportunities.
“I still think we’re one of the most responsive alumni networks I’ve ever seen,” he says. “If you find you like the Kellogg people you’re talking to and have a good fit with them, you should definitely join us.”
And once you’ve reached graduation, be bold enough to put your Kellogg School resilience and creativity to the test. “Experiment — go out and really test your job,” Chico advises. “If you don’t like it, take the time to find someone to talk to in another field. You need to work at what you really like because that helps you wake up every morning motivated and inspired to work harder than ever. That would be my biggest recommendation.”