Roberto Rojas was born on November 21, 1946, in Puebla, Mexico to a humble, loving family. Despite scarce resources, he became the first in his family to attend college in Mexico's top ranked university, Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey.
Upon graduating with an M.S in Structural Engineering and a B.S. in Civil Engineering degree in 1969, he received a prestigious scholarship to study abroad in Germany. His move to Europe cemented a love for traveling, and appreciating arts, literature, and lifestyles abroad. It was at this time that he met his first wife, Gabi. He began his Ph.D in Engineering at the University of Sheffield, UK, and taught subjects in computer science, structural engineering, applied mathematics, and business management. During this time, he had three children, Gabriella - "Chipi" - Alexander - "Alex" - and Dominique "Niki". He then completed his MBA at the prestigious IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. After a divorce in 1979, Roberto moved back to Mexico.
Roberto began his career as a management consultant for McKinsey in Mexico. He met his second wife Anabelle in 1980 and married her in 1982. Three children were soon to follow, Tania, Ana Paula - "Paulie", and Adrian. Roberto and his family had an exciting life moving between California, Costa Rica, and Mexico while he was pursuing consulting projects. Travel would never evade Roberto; he would end up working in Jakarta, Indonesia, Stuttgart, Germany, and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, during his lifetime. Roberto helped top executives in Latin-America, Europe, Asia and the USA address strategic, financial, operational and human capital key issues. To fulfill his long-lived desire for learning, he got an additional degree as a Microsoft certified software engineer.
After a decade working for prime consulting companies, Roberto served as business executive for the world leader of corn flour. He developed and implemented the strategy to penetrate the corn tortilla market first for the Hispanic segment in Los Angeles, California, and then for the rest of the USA. Business growth lead to the construction of the (then) largest corn and flour tortilla plant in the world, where he actively participated as project leader. As a General Manager for another company in the specialty food business, Roberto achieved a sound turnaround through employee engagement, client service, product quality, working capital management, and process improvements.
Roberto also served as Program Director at Cal Poly Pomona, USA, where he was engaged with Central American and Caribbean leaders of agribusiness cooperatives teaching business management and conducting improvement projects in the region.
After working at Cal Poly Pomona, Roberto joined the Gallup Organization and served as the co-leader in the emerging Job Creation Practice project. Roberto developed a successful program in Mexico to help Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) to grow, and as a consequence of this growth, to create jobs. In addition, Roberto and his team established a MBA program for high-ranking government officials in Mexico.
Following his work with Gallup, Roberto served as Board of Director responsible for the Guest Care Center at Abdul Latif Jameel Company, Ltd. (ALJ), an $8 billion company in the automotive industry, where he and his group represent the Voice of the Guest within the company and with Toyota Motor Company.
In November 2009, Roberto was diagnosed with stage IV metastized cancer. Despite the diagnosis, Roberto lived a fruitful and fulfilling life until the very end. He worked on his last remaining project, a presentation for his funeral, with his family and passed away shortly on May 26, 2010. He is missed by family, friends, students, and colleagues in Mexico, Germany, the United States, England, Spain, Switzerland, France, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, and many other countries around the globe.
