In international business, opportunity may begin with a connection, but its real value is determined by what happens after that connection is made. Navigating different markets, regulations, relationships, and expectations requires more than identifying possibilities; it demands the ability to turn them into something workable and sustainable.
For Pablo Andrés Ahumada Quintanilla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NEXA Trade & Capital SpA, that understanding has shaped a professional journey rooted in international trade, strategic sourcing, and cross-border business. From an early fascination with how businesses connect people and markets thousands of kilometres apart to building an international platform from Chile, his path reflects a consistent interest in solving complex problems where there is rarely an obvious roadmap.
Yet behind the executive and entrepreneur is a story shaped just as much by family, hard work, setbacks, faith, responsibility, and the determination to rebuild. These experiences have influenced not only the way Pablo approaches business, but also the kind of person and leader he continues striving to become.
In this journey with The Euro Magazine, Pablo shares the thinking behind NEXA, the experiences that shaped him beyond the boardroom, the lessons challenging periods have taught him, and why relationships and long-term credibility remain central to his definition of success.
Foundations Built on Family and Hard Work
Pablo grew up in Chile in a hardworking middle-class family where nothing was taken for granted. While his family was not born into wealth, he considers himself fortunate to have grown up surrounded by values, discipline, education, and parents who taught him that nothing worthwhile comes without effort.
His grandfather, Jorge, was another defining influence. Pablo remembers him as a man who quietly carried the responsibility of an entire family on his shoulders. Watching his grandfather work, provide, and refuse to surrender left a lasting impression on him. Alongside that example, his parents instilled in him the belief that education, perseverance, and integrity are among the most valuable assets a person can possess.
Pablo became interested in business quite early. What fascinated him was not simply the idea of running a company, but understanding how businesses could connect people and markets that were thousands of kilometres apart.
He studied Commercial Engineering and later completed a Master’s degree in Foreign Trade. His education gave him the technical foundation, but he considers much of his real education to have come from working with people, companies, and institutions from different countries.
Long before becoming an executive, however, Pablo experienced work from very different perspectives. He worked in construction, participated in volunteer activities, and took on whatever work was necessary at different stages of his life. Those experiences shaped his relationship with work and his desire to understand not only business numbers, but the people behind them, the workers, suppliers, families, and individuals whose efforts ultimately make business possible.
International business also taught him that things are rarely as simple as they look on paper. Different cultures, regulations, expectations, and ways of doing business all come into play. That complexity attracted Pablo. He has always enjoyed situations where there is a problem to solve and no obvious roadmap.
Building NEXA Around Execution
Today, Pablo serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NEXA Trade & Capital SpA, a Chilean company focused on international trade, strategic sourcing, and cross-border business.
NEXA started from a fairly simple idea: there are many opportunities in international markets, but connecting a buyer with a supplier is only the beginning. The difficult part is everything that happens afterwards.
A successful transaction requires an understanding of the supplier, the buyer, logistics, financing, documentation, compliance, and the regulatory environment in every country involved. If one of those elements is overlooked, a transaction that initially looked very attractive can quickly become complicated.
That is where Pablo and his team seek to create value.
They are building NEXA as an international platform from Chile, connecting Latin American businesses with suppliers, customers, and strategic partners in international markets. What Pablo believes differentiates NEXA is its strong focus on execution. Finding an opportunity is relatively easy; turning it into an actual transaction is where the real work begins.
Falling, Learning, and Rebuilding
Pablo’s understanding of entrepreneurship has also been shaped by experiencing very different sides of life. He knows what it means to have resources and what it means to have very little. His journey has included success, setbacks, and periods when circumstances made rebuilding a necessity rather than a choice. At times, this included financial difficulty and the challenge of starting again.
Those experiences taught him lessons that, in his view, no business school could have provided. They showed him the value of every opportunity, the real cost of every dollar earned, and, perhaps most importantly, that falling is not the same as failing.
Pablo does not allow difficult moments to define him. He has learned to rebuild, recognising that sometimes success comes from being prepared and, at other times, from simply refusing to give up.
That willingness to rebuild has also been tested in his personal life. One of the most significant chapters was the end of a ten-year marriage. For a long time, Pablo believed that losing the marriage would permanently alter the future he had imagined for his family. With time, however, he came to understand that the end of one chapter does not necessarily mean the end of the story.
This perspective also influences what he considers one of his greatest achievements. Pablo is proud of building NEXA and, perhaps more importantly, of the relationships that have been built around it.
He has been fortunate to work with professionals who have contributed far beyond their job descriptions, bringing structure to difficult situations, challenging assumptions, and helping him look at complex problems from different perspectives.
That kind of contribution is difficult to measure on a balance sheet, but Pablo considers it extremely valuable. Ultimately, he is proud that NEXA has been built around people, relationships, and trust rather than simply around transactions.
A Father Beyond the Executive
Away from his professional responsibilities, Pablo considers his three sons, Matías, Lucas, and Pedro, the most important part of his life. Fatherhood has taught him that success cannot be measured only by what someone builds professionally, but also by the person they become for those who depend on them.
For Pablo, children should never have to carry the weight of conflicts between adults. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding a family, he believes a parent’s responsibility to protect, support, and reassure their children should remain constant.
Even when circumstances make family life complicated, Pablo says his love and responsibility towards his children remain unchanged. Being a good father and provider has always mattered deeply to him, not simply in financial terms, but through presence, example, values, and giving his children the certainty that their father will continue fighting for them.
More than anything, he wants his sons to know that they are loved and that his responsibility towards them is not conditional on the circumstances around them.
That sense of responsibility adds another dimension to the way he views ambition. Professional achievement matters, but for Pablo, it exists alongside responsibilities that cannot be measured through revenue, transactions, or corporate growth.
A Global Perspective Shaped by People
Pablo’s professional life has given him extensive exposure to different cultures and realities. His work and travels have taken him across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, including countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, China, and India.
These experiences have broadened his perspective beyond business. Meeting people from different backgrounds and observing different ways of life have reinforced a principle that has become central to his professional outlook: regardless of geography or culture, business ultimately comes down to people, trust, credibility, and the ability to understand one another.
That perspective is particularly relevant in international markets, where suppliers, regulations, logistics, and geopolitical circumstances can change quickly. Pablo believes that one of the greatest advantages in international business is information combined with the ability to execute.
He therefore places considerable importance on continuous learning, spending time speaking with partners, understanding developments across markets, and attempting to identify problems before they become problems.
As he puts it, a spreadsheet can tell someone the price of a product, but it cannot tell them whether someone will answer the phone when something goes wrong. That is where reputation and trust become real commercial assets.
Principles That Extend Beyond Business
For Pablo, reputation is also closely connected to personal integrity. He tries to conduct business in a way that allows him to sleep peacefully at night. Transparency and honesty, he acknowledges, may not always be the easiest or most profitable choices in the short term. There have been opportunities he has lost because he refused to compromise certain principles. Yet he believes there is enormous value in being able to look back at one’s decisions and remain at peace with one’s conscience.
Difficult personal experiences have also deepened Pablo’s perspective on fairness, protection, and due process. A challenging legal chapter in his life reinforced his conviction that protecting people and protecting the principles of due process should never be viewed as contradictory.
He is unequivocal in his opposition to violence in any form and strongly supports the protection and rights of women. At the same time, he believes that every person deserves to be heard and that justice must ultimately be grounded in facts, evidence, fairness, and due process. Rather than focusing on individuals or specific circumstances, Pablo views the experience as one that strengthened his belief in both human protection and procedural fairness.
Faith is another important part of Pablo’s life. His beliefs have given him perspective through both success and adversity, reminding him that professional achievements represent only one part of a meaningful life.
His faith also shapes the way he understands love. Pablo continues to believe in a form of love rooted in commitment, faithfulness, patience, forgiveness, and the willingness to stand beside one another through difficult seasons. The end of his marriage did not make him cynical about love; instead, he says it gave him a deeper appreciation for what genuine commitment means.
And despite the difficult chapters life has brought, he continues to believe in love and in the possibility of what comes next. His experiences have taught him that life does not always follow the plans once imagined, but a difficult chapter does not necessarily mean the end of the story. There can still be people who inspire, challenge, and renew a sense of belief in the future.
Growing Beyond the Founder
The next stage for NEXA is about becoming more international while also becoming more institutional.
Pablo wants to strengthen the company’s position in Latin America and continue developing relationships with partners in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and other international markets. But for him, growth is not only about entering more countries. It is also about building the internal structure that allows a company to handle that growth properly.
That means stronger compliance, better financial structures, experienced teams, reliable partners, and more disciplined corporate governance.
One of the lessons Pablo has learned as an entrepreneur is that a company eventually has to become bigger than its founder. A business can begin through personal relationships and individual effort, but if it is going to last, it needs systems and people capable of carrying the vision forward.
That is the direction Pablo wants for NEXA.
Building for the Long Term
For aspiring professionals and entrepreneurs, Pablo’s first piece of advice is to learn before trying to lead. Knowledge matters. He encourages professionals to understand their industry, finance, contracts, and the people they are dealing with. In his view, confidence without knowledge can become very expensive.
He also emphasises protecting one’s reputation and learning how to deal with setbacks. Deals will be lost, mistakes will happen, people may change their positions, and circumstances outside an entrepreneur’s control can affect even the strongest plans. While those circumstances cannot always be controlled, the response to them can be.
Finally, Pablo encourages entrepreneurs to think long term. Rather than building a company simply to complete the next transaction, he believes in building relationships, capabilities, systems, and credibility that will still have value ten years from now.
Today, Pablo sees himself less as someone who has achieved success and more as someone who is still building. He is an entrepreneur, a father, a believer, and a traveller, but above all, someone who has made mistakes, learned from them, and continued moving forward. He does not consider himself a perfect man or a perfect businessman. Instead, he tries to become better, honour the people who believed in him, provide for his family, and build companies based on trust, transparency, and long-term relationships.
For Pablo, building an international business is ultimately about much more than completing the next transaction. It is about creating relationships that endure, developing capabilities that remain valuable, and establishing the trust and credibility needed to navigate markets that are constantly changing.
Perhaps the clearest reflection of his entrepreneurial outlook lies in his philosophy: “You do not have to win every day, but you have to remain capable of playing tomorrow.”
His personal journey adds another meaning to those words. Success, as Pablo has learned, is not about never falling. It is about having the courage to stand up, the humility to learn, and the determination to keep walking.
Whether the challenge has been professional, financial, or deeply personal, Pablo’s outlook remains rooted in the same principle: circumstances can reshape a chapter, but they do not have to define the entire story.
As he continues developing NEXA’s presence across Latin America and strengthening relationships in international markets, Pablo remains focused not simply on the opportunities available today, but on building the relationships, systems, principles, and foundations that can carry both his business and his journey forward.
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