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Managing Partner

Dr. Félix Cárdenas

Dr. Cárdenas has more than 25 years of experience in PEVC, M&A, and global business development. He has operated in the United States, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Kenya, South Africa and Mexico.

Experience & Activities

He is Managing Partner at Ascendis Capital, an independent sponsor, specializing in establishing industrial platforms through North America with a focus on utilizing rollup mergers as a growth strategy.

He was previously partner at Vento Capital a Search Fund where he acquired a pharmaceutical company and GreenTEK Ventures a global fund-of-funds initiative affiliated to the United Nations Environmental Program. At Norsk Hydro Statoil as Sales and Marketing Director he showed strong commercial skills to execute long-term multi-million-dollar contracts. He also worked with ambassadors and energy ministers to develop opportunities in the oil and energy sector in Mexico. He began his career at Ford Motor Company in Planning, Logistics, Procurement, and Quality Control.

He has been a researcher and professor affiliated to Harvard, Columbia, IESE, UT Austin, TEC de Monterrey, and EGADE Business School where he has been the Director of the Center for Innovation and Corporate Entrepreneurship. He has post-doctorates from Harvard and Columbia and studied his PhD at HEC UNIL and EPFL in Switzerland. He obtained an MBA from EGADE, a Masters in International Business (MIB) at NHH in Norway, and graduate studies in Industrial Engineering from Sophia University in Tokyo, and engineering at TEC de Monterrey and UT Austin.

He has been a consultant and researcher at companies such as Cisco, Nokia, Alcan, Logitech, General Electric, Cemex, FEMSA, Credit Suisse, Volaris, Axtel, Proeza, Coca-Cola, Arca Continental, Metalsa, Heineken, and Nestlé. His research has been presented in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Geneva, Zurich, Istanbul and Nice. He is co-author of several books such as: How to Buy a Successful Company? The Search Fund as a Model of Entrepreneurship; Open Innovation: Academic and Practical Perspectives on the Journey from Idea to Market by Oxford University Press; and WealthTech: Wealth and Asset Management in the Fintech Age by Information Age Publishing Inc. Additionally, he is consulted and published as an expert on PEVC matters by media outlets such as: Forbes, El Financiero-Bloomberg, Reforma-El Norte, Preqin, América Economía, Entrepreneur, and CNN-Expansión.