Hello,
I'm Sergio Álvarez Leiva.

During the last decade, I have founded two successful Open Source companies focused on the intersection of Data, Technology, and Human Beings. While I feel a Digital Product Designer at heart, my role and responsibilities are very different these days; I create and lead teams which build digital experiences.

During the last 5 years, I have been experiencing what it takes in order to start, build and operate a fast growing SaaS Startup with CARTO. From zero to more than 1,200 clients in ~65 countries, 130 employees in 5 different locations, $31MM total raised funding and a leading company in the Location Intelligence industry. As Chief Product Officer I work as the human API between business, development & design while enabling leadership and collaboration, focused on building data and open source technology products which users love.

Years before, during my time at Vizzuality after starting it in 2008, I had the pleasure of working with clients which focus on stories that matter – science, environmental change and transparency –. Among others, I worked with NASA and the University of Oxford on discovering exoplanets, Google on visualizing the evolution of the web, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre to create a complete database of protected areas in the world or the World Resources Institute on detecting deforestation globally in almost real-time. This gave me the opportunity of understanding data and its impact on the world, as well as designing projects at a scale that were very different from each other. Vizzuality is now a company of ~40 people with offices in Madrid and Cambridge.

As a result of my frustration during my university years, I have ended up loving teaching. I have taught Design, Coding for designers and Data visualization in many different places such as IED Madrid, IE Business School or Universidad San Pablo CEU.

In 2014 I was selected as Top Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review. In 2016 I received the FPDGi Business Award.

Select articles

If you’d like to chat, feel free to send me an email or ping me on twitter.