Susana is a venture builder who has spent over two decades shaping Latin America’s VC ecosystem. Popularly known as the “godmother of VC in LAC” for her pioneering work, LAVCA has recognized her as a Top Woman Investor in Latin America every year for ten years, from 2016 to date. An expert in building diversified VC ecosystems, she supports startups across emerging markets to increase profitability, expand TAMs, and build defensible data moats by applying AI.
Susana is a Managing Partner at Capria Ventures, and the heart of the firm’s Latin American thesis and investments. She serves on several boards and committees: the Advisory Boards of ARCAP (the Argentinean VC/PE association), the CITES company builder/fund and the IgniteXL and IThink VC funds; the investment committees of the Bancoldex Fund of Funds (Colombia) and the Fondo de Capital para Emprendimientos Innovadores (the Peruvian Fund of Funds from COFIDE).
She is also a Senior Advisor and a member of the Women’s Council at the Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America (LAVCA), where she is a former Board member. Earlier, she served on the Board of Directors of Village Capital (2020–2023) and on the Advisory Board of the Brazilian VC/PE association ABVCAP.
Before joining Capria, Susana was the leading architect of the Inter-American Development Bank’s innovation lab’s investment strategy for early-stage funds and startups from 1999 to 2020. From September 2017, she served as the lab’s Chief Investment Officer and Gender Initiatives Coordinator, in charge of all financial operations.
An avid supporter of ecosystems, she co-founded the Argentinean VC/PE Association ARCAP and the Colombian VC/PE Association Colcapital. In 2012, she co-founded WeXchange (now housed at IDB), the first networking platform and pitch competition for LAC women STEMpreneurs, dramatically improving women’s access to funding. She also co-founded Emprendedora LAC, and in 2019 co-founded WeInvest Latam, a platform for women investors with LATAM as the central focus region. In 2020, Americas Quarterly recognized her as one of the five Top Champions of Gender Equality.
An expert on development finance innovation, Susana has analyzed and coached thousands of seed and VC funds and startup founders, and invested in and managed over 100 funds and many startups. She has also shared her experience building the VC industry in LATAM with other emerging markets, mainly Africa and the Middle East.
Susana lives in Virginia with her husband, Daniel Q. Kelley; she visits her sister in Buenos Aires as often as she can and is very close to her other sister and her large family, who also live in Virginia.
