Kirchner Fellowship Mexico Announces its 2025–26 Cohort

Seventh Mexico cohort (M7) continues focus on impact investment ecosystem development

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, MX, and JACKSONVILLE, FL – August 1, 2025 — The Kirchner Impact Foundation Mexico A.C. today announced the latest cohort of the Kirchner Fellowship Mexico Program. With a bold mission to develop next-generation impact investors focused on critical sustainability challenges such as food security, the Fellowship continues to strengthen the ecosystem across Mexico through its impact investment training program.

This year’s Fellows represent a fusion of academic excellence, entrepreneurial grit, and purpose-driven leadership. They officially began their journey together during an immersive kickoff session in Querétaro, where they met in person, and began crafting their investment mandate for the year.

The 2025-26 Mexico Fellows are:

Adriana Chico Peralta
PhD candidate in Biotechnology at Tecnológico de Monterrey (Querétaro)
Adriana is a passionate researcher working on the nutritional resilience of quelites, traditional Mexican edible plants, under environmental stress. Her work fuses scientific rigor with cultural preservation and innovation. With a background in pharmacy, food science, and regulatory policy, Adriana brings a unique interdisciplinary lens to the investment world. Through the Fellowship, she aims to support ventures that elevate biodiversity, nutrition, and indigenous knowledge systems.

José Adrián Contreras
Undergraduate student in Business Transformation & Entrepreneurship at Tecnológico de Monterrey (Monterrey)
José Adrián is a serial entrepreneur. Beginning when he was only 13, he has built a diverse portfolio across tech, marketing, and digital commerce. His practical insight into business scaling and customer experience gives him an edge in identifying promising early-stage ventures. As a mentor and community builder, he views the Fellowship as a platform to mobilize capital toward startups that solve structural food system challenges.

Roberto Hernández Amezola
Undergraduate student in Business Strategy & Transformation at Tecnológico de Monterrey (Querétaro)
Roberto stands out as a strategist with a deep commitment to inclusive innovation. He has led projects combining finance and social entrepreneurship, with a keen interest in the role of structured capital to accelerate positive impact. He sees the Fellowship as a launchpad to grow as an investor and changemaker, helping to build resilient, community-centered agrifood enterprises.

“I continue to be extremely impressed by the caliber of talent we attract to our program and this year is no exception, said Blair Kirchner, Managing Director of the Kirchner Group and Co-Manager of the Kirchner Impact Foundation. “This cohort’s ambition, intellect, and clarity of purpose give me great hope—not just for this program, but for the future of impact investment in Latin America and beyond.”

The Kirchner Fellowship follows a unique “real world, real time, real money” model that empowers students to operate as an autonomous investment team over the course of an academic year. The Fellows remain enrolled full-time at their respective universities while gaining hands-on experience in mandate creation, deal sourcing, diligence, and investment decision-making—all with a focus on impact and sustainability.

This year, the M7 Fellows will focus on identifying innovative companies within Mexico’s agriculture and food value chain – startups and early-stage ventures that are using science, technology, and entrepreneurship to solve urgent challenges. At the end of a rigorous due diligence process, the Fellows will aim to deploy capital into one high-potential company aligned with their investment thesis and the overarching goal of advancing sustainable food systems in the region

“Having worked with the program for 5 years, I’ve witnessed its remarkable evolution,” said Héctor Martínez, Program Director and Founder of NataM. “Each year, our fellows graduate with a level of professionalism, discipline, and analytical depth that rivals—or even surpasses—that of seasoned investment professionals. This is not a simulation. They’re making real investment decisions that matter.”

Since its launch in Mexico in 2019, the Fellowship has trained over 20 capital allocators and evaluated hundreds of companies tackling food security and agricultural innovation. The foundation has also provided training to over 2,000 entrepreneurs as part of its investment academy programming and provided countess hours of pro bono consulting and technical assistance to early-stage companies. Its alumni have become key players in the Latin American investment and innovation ecosystem—founding and managing venture capital funds, launching successful startups, holding senior roles in global corporations, serving in government and public policy, and leading academic research at top universities. Their impact is multiplying across borders, industries, and sectors.

Kirchner Fellowship
The mission of the Kirchner Fellowship is to strengthen impact investing ecosystems in areas underserved by capital markets through training and empowering a diverse next generation of investors to allocate equity investments into early-stage companies. Through the use of a “real world, real time, real money” model, the program has proven that it is possible for newly-formed investment teams to become effective capital allocators in a matter of months. www.kirchnerfellowship.com

The Kirchner Fellowship is an initiative of The Kirchner Impact Foundation (501 (c) (3)) one of the “returning arms” of Kirchner Group, that focuses on harnessing the positive power of enterprise to make a difference in addressing some of the most important issues of today. www.kirchnerimpact.com

Hattie Brown | Co-Manager, Kirchner Impact Foundation | hbrown@kirchnergroup.com

Kirchner Group
Kirchner Group was founded in 1985 as a boutique firm and today operates various subsidiaries, providing advisory services (M&A, assessments, diligence) and operational support (interim management, workouts, turnarounds) as well as asset management (dedicated, portfolio optimization) – all leveraging a proprietary approach that dovetails domain and process expertise.

Throughout the decades Kirchner Group has been internationally recognized for its unique business model centered around creating value while promoting values: “earning while returning”. The firm has also established a reputation for building and rebuilding important business and social paradigms based on its deep entrepreneurial orientation.

Kirchner Group’s clients and partners include early stage to mid-market companies, venture capital and private equity firms as well as family offices and some of the world’s largest insurance companies, commercial banks and institutional investors. www.kirchnergroup.com

Blair Kirchner | Managing Director | bgkirchner@kirchnergroup.com