Luis Barros, MBA, MS, is managing Partner of Leading Business Ventures (LBV), an investment entity and consultancy and former director & audit committee member of the ECOWAS Investment Bank (EBID) in Africa.

Barros has degrees from MIT-Sloan (MBA), Penn (MS), UMASS Amherst-Isenberg (BBA), and is a graduate of Harvard’s Executive Program on Board Governance.

Barros is an investor, entrepreneur and consultant with over 27 years of experience in science and technology sectors. As a practitioner and scholar, his activities focus on working with organizational leaders in strategically utilizing financing instruments, venture education pedagogy, data-driven market insights and innovation “interventions” to enable commercialization, economic impact, digital transformation, ecosystem effectiveness, and value creation.

As a consultant, Barros concurrently served as Venture Partner of Portugal Ventures and Co-Director of Innovation and Industry at MIT Portugal. In addition, LBV’s application of multi-disciplinary methodologies and speaking engagements have spanned 34 countries and five continents. LBV has provided guidance to numerous startups and high growth companies via roles with mentor-based Accelerators, family offices and investment funds.

Prior to LBV, Barros was on 3 founding teams which architected and implemented 3 separate private venture funds, and served on compliance staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).As a serial-entrepreneur, Barros held leadership roles in early stage venture-backed entities, and two acquired by publicly traded companies. He began his career via successive sales and marketing roles in blue chip companies.