Rodrigo Jordan

Rodrigo Jordán Fuchs (born June 30, 1959 in Santiago, Chile) is a Chilean business man, a University Professor, social entrepreneur and mountaineer. He is a founder and president of Vertical S.A., Leadership Professor in Pontifical Catholic University of Chile’s MBA (MBA-UC) and Faculty member of Executive Education at Wharton School of Business in the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2018, he is also president of the Comunidad de Organizaciones Solidarias. Considered an accomplished mountaineer, he led the first South-American expedition to summit Everest in 1992. He repeated the ascent in 2012 and 2016 by different routes, making him one of only three people to have summited Mount Everest on each of its faces. He has also been in many expeditions on mountains around the world and has authored a series of books and documentary films that recount these adventures.

Family and Studies

His father was Ricardo Jordán, and his mother was Sonia Fuchs, the renowned executive director of the fiction department of Televisión Nacional de Chile (Chile’s National TV channel). Both passed away in an aircraft accident in 1991. He has two brothers: Ricardo and Pablo. He attended San Gaspar School and The Grange School, both in Santiago, where he graduated in 1976, after earning the “Best Student of the Class” distinction and the “García Oldini Cup” for the best student in mathematics and physics.

In 1983, he graduated as an Industrial Engineer from Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he received the distinction “Roberto Ovalle Aguirre” for the best engineer thesis awarded by the Chilean Engineers Institute. He also graduated from Oxford University, United Kingdom, where he earned his PhD for his thesis on Innovation and Urban Poverty.

He has three daughters: Sofia, Natalia and Elisa.

Professional career

Back in Chile after finishing his PhD in the United Kingdom, he was Director of the Directorate of Distance Education (Dirección de Educación a Distancia) of Pontifical Catholic University of Chile –TELEDUC- between 1990 and 1994. He also worked as Executive Secretary of the President's Advisory Council of the Republic of Chile for Sport and Recreation (Consejo Asesor del Presidente de la República de Chile para el Deporte y la Recreación).

Business man

In 1994, he created Vertical S.A., a company focused on the formation of excellence teams, and Vertical Foundation (''Fundación Vertical''), that develops educational programs and leadership trainee, social skills and organizational development to institutions, companies and marginal social sectors.

Between 1998 and 2000, he was Executive Director of the TV Corporation of the Catholic University of Chile ( Canal 13).
Rodrigo Jordán is often invited to give seminars and courses of leadership and development of high performance teams among different countries, working actively with several corporations, universities and nonprofit organizations to develop their leadership qualities.

In 2010, he undertook a new challenge, the creation of Vertical Professional Institute, (''Instituto Profesional Vertical'') an educational organization that trains and forms nature professionals through the careers of Tourism in the Nature and Adventure Sports.

Professor

He has been a professor in the Engineering School of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
He is currently teacher in Leadership for the Masters in Business Administration Program of
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (MBA-UC) and participates in various programs of the Center for Directorial Development of the same University (CDD-UC).

Since 2008, he is a professor in Executive Education at Wharton School of Business in the University of Pennsylvania.

Social Entrepreneur

Because of his doctoral thesis and his presidency of Fundación Vertical, he was invited to participate in the National Foundation for Overcoming Poverty (''Fundación Nacional para la Superación de la Pobreza'') in Chile as director in June 2004. Its mission is to contribute to overcoming poverty by promoting greater levels of equity and social integration in the country to ensure the sustainable human development of people who live today in poverty and social exclusion. The year after that he assumed as President of the Foundation, and served as its president for 10 years. In 2018, he remained as one of its directors.

Between 2012 and 2018, he was president of America Solidaria International.

Since June 2018, he is President of the Comunidad De Organizaciones Solidarias in Chile.
In 2013, he was appointed by President Sebastián Piñera to preside the Commission for the Measurement of Poverty, that transformed the way poverty was measured in Chile, changing it from a measurement based on income to using the concept of multidimensional poverty.

He is also a panelist