I was born in Colombia, South America and emigrated to the Empire State as a small boy with my mom, grandma, and sister. We settled in Flushing, New York. I grew up as one of only a few Hispanics in my neighborhood and school. Although we were economically challenged, I had a happy childhood. My mother was very focused on academics; learning proper English, becoming a good citizen, and doing well in school were never optional. To help out, I began working at age eight, delivering meat to little old ladies in my neighborhood for a small wage and tips. I never stopped working, but it never seemed like work to me. I loved earning my own resources to buy my own things and help my family.

After college, I started working in finance in New York and had a successful corporate career, rising up the ranks of senior management at PepsiCo, Colgate, Citibank, and Cendant. None of these corporate giants necessarily associate readily in one’s mind with catering to people of great wealth. I wound up in the luxury industry by pure chance.

I was fascinated by a business model that designs and delivers the very best products and services to the most educated, sophisticated, and discerning clients on the planet. Amazingly, I quickly learned that HNW and UHNW clients, while highly coveted by brands, did not have objective representation or much of a voice in the luxury industry. Mythology and half-baked assumptions were rampant. Consumer research was rare. With few exceptions, luxury brands did not really know their best customers well. I also observed that too many luxury brands were very hierarchical, rigid, and transactional, which isn’t terribly conducive to long-term trust or the loyalty of customers. This prevented brands from empowering front-line associates to bring their full humanity to work and engage customers in the emotionally intelligent way that is yearned for by human beings. I knew that far better treatment of HNWIs and UHNWIs was possible. I saw this as a great business opportunity, so in 2003, I took the entrepreneurial plunge and founded the Luxury Institute. This was something new, a research, consulting, and training firm geared to empower HNW and UHNW clients with a voice via surveys and qualitative research. I also recognized a unique opportunity to help luxury brands humanize their associate and customer experience. Everyone could be made to feel cared for and special.

Today, Luxury Institute has served over 1,100 luxury and premium goods and services brands. The Institute has conducted more quantitative and qualitative research with affluent HNW and UHNW consumers than any other entity. Our understanding of wealthy consumers has led to Luxury Institute’s high-performance relationship building education system, Luxcelerate, which has trained tens of thousands of sales associates globally with phenomenal human and financial results.

Both of us know that with the right tools, the correct mission, constant determination, and an unflinching insistence on business excellence, you don’t have to shoot for the stars and hope you hit the moon. By sharing our experience with you, we aim to help you create a whole world of opportunity for yourself comprised of high performance with high trust worth within an ever-growing galaxy of trusted business relationships and happy customers.

To learn more about Luxury Institute, please visit www.LuxuryInstitute.com