Pol Thielen

| Emerald Peak Private Equity

| Founding Partner

A lawyer by profession, Pol Thielen moved to Nicaragua with his family in November 2015 (his wife is Nicaraguan, and Pol is Luxembourgian).

The poverty and inequality Pol came to witness on a daily basis here in Nicaragua pushed him to seek a solution for this untenable situation in the 21st century. He looked at his professional background and experience to develop a tool that would give those left behind a real opportunity.

A fundamental weakness in this country and the neighboring countries in Central America is the inadequate public education system. People come out with degrees that are often not worth the paper they are printed on (if they finish school).

His idea has been to use the private sector businesses to lead the transformation by offering first of all quality jobs (based on new technologies or IT systems that are often lacking in this region) and secondly by training the workforce on the job to give them practical tools that they can use to advance their career in the company or other sectors if they wish. The lack of proper skills keeps an important number of the workforce in low-wage manual jobs. His objective is to break that vicious cycle.

He believes that private sector investments that intentionally pursue impact goals or SDGs will be more effective at bringing about change than public authorities who are often

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