Marcos Vega

Vega holds a Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Engineering with a concentration in Agricultural Economics from the University of Costa Rica, 1988. He earned a Master’s degree in Agribusiness Management from the University of Costa Rica’s Graduate Studies Program (in partnership with Iowa State University), 2000. He is a DBA candidate at ADEN Business School, pending the defense of his doctoral dissertation.

He worked at various companies in Costa Rica’s agribusiness sector for more than 18 years beginning in 1987, holding managerial and executive positions at the Interinstitutional Association of Heredia (Project Director for Strawberries for Export), the Consortium of Coffee Growers’ Cooperatives of Guanacaste and Montes de Oro (General Manager), the Costa Rican Cooperative Bank (Head of the Technical Unit for the MAG/Bancoop Trust), the Anita de Orosi Coffee Growers’ Cooperative (General Manager), and the National Institute of Biodiversity (Project Promoter and Financial Specialist for the INBio/IDB Project). He was a part-time professor in the Agricultural Economics program at the University of Costa Rica from 1995 to 2001. He provided private consulting services in the area of agribusiness for various organizations in Costa Rica and Honduras, including the National Institute for Learning, the Costa Rican Chamber of Pig Farmers, and the Choluteca Honey Producers Cooperative.

He was an associate professor in the Agribusiness Administration program at the Pan-American Agricultural School, Zamorano University, in Honduras, from 2001 to 2018. There, he also carried out outreach work, providing training in business planning, sales management, cost accounting, strategy, and general management for entrepreneurs and vulnerable groups in the Central American region. He served as Technical Director of the Finance and Marketing Unit at Empresas Universitarias Zamoranas for 8 years. He was director of the Zamorano Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship from 2016 to 2018. He has conducted research in the areas of family entrepreneurship, where he has authored and co-authored several case studies, which have been published and/or selected for forums such as the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association and the Emerald Review. He is currently the executive director of prendho/UTPL and a visiting professor at the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (UTPL) in the Chair of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) and the MBA program with a concentration in Innovation, a position he has held since May 2018. He received the “Member of the Year 2024” award from Babson College for his outstanding work in the Babson Collaborative community, and he is currently a member of the Babson Collaborative Advisory Board. He won the 2026 IDB-GEIAL Award for Commitment to Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the “Commitment to GEIAL-Teams” category.