PopTalk

Victor Santos has over 6 years of experience in telecom and technology start-ups as an entrepreneur. Victor was born and raised in Brazil, the country with the highest telecom and mobile communication costs in the world. His personal struggles to afford communication with his family in different states while in Brazil always astonished him. When he moved to the US, he began working for a telecom start-up that used VoIP (voice over the internet) as a cost alternative to expensive carriers, and led and grew the Brazil business to over $2M/year. He founded his first company, Ciao Telecom, while still pursuing his B.S. at UC Berkeley Walter A. Haas School of Business. Ciao Telecom focused on providing companies with cloud telecom solutions with a cheaper service, and grew to an 8 digits / year business under Victor’s leadership. From there, Victor joined Google as a Marketing Manager on the AdWords product where he was responsible for managing a $60M budget and co-led a team with Sara.

Sara Choi began her first venture — an NGO — in Latin America when she was 17 and left Harvard College (she later went back to complete her degree in Biological Anthropology). In the course of founding an elementary school, Sara worked with some of the most impoverished people in Latin America and first realized mobile service was an expensive luxury for people who needed it most. Sara joined Google and became YouTube’s youngest ever Media Lead heading a team of digital marketers and ad specialists, launching YouTube’s first integrated media campaign: YouTube’s Comedy Week. Sara met Victor when they co-led an AdWords team and had the idea to use ads as a way to power free communication for the underserved and even unbanked in emerging markets, beginning with Latin America. Sara is passionate about using technology as a vehicle for positive change. She believes the best companies have social impact and can ultimately change the world for the better.