Bernadine Santistevan
Bernadine’s business development experience includes her tenure as a venture capitalist at GE Capital’s Corporate Ventures where she identified and evaluated strategic transactions across a wide range of technology-related industries. She also held an executive role in risk management at GE Capital, Global Consumer Finance where she was a key participant in international due diligence teams evaluating companies for potential acquisition throughout Latin America, Asia and Europe. Transactions averaged $500 million in magnitude. Additionally, Bernadine served as Managing Director and head of business development at Das Equity Advisors, a private equity firm focused on deploying healthcare and clean energy technologies in India. Bernadine is currently a Managing Director at Universal Management.
Bernadine’s strategic expertise includes working at American Express, TRS headquarters as a core member of a premiere datamining, modeling and analytics team, developing predictive models for consumer card member behavior. Additionally, while at GE Bernadine established an innovative, comprehensive method of evaluating risk across GE Capital, Global Consumer Finance’s international portfolio by integrating economic, political and societal measures into the investment equation. As a consultant, Bernadine has developed strategic and operational plans for numerous companies, such as: Comixology, the world’s leading provider of digital comics (recently acquired by Amazon); Conductor, a top software SEO platform; and Hemaclear, an Israeli medical device company.
On the global social impact front, Bernadine created a cross-platform brand called Wolf Dog that employs a unique and innovative approach of using storytelling to build future generations equipped with the academic skills and integrity to positively address some of the world’s most pressing issues. Select initiatives include: Wolf Dog Tales, an internationally award-winning animated film that features ancient stories of what animals teach us about respecting life—screened around the globe and considered for 2013 Oscar nomination; Wolf Dog Workshop, a cross-curricular educational unit for elementary students (CCSS ELA-aligned) that teaches literacy and character-building skills and connects students to community—beta launched in 2014 in U.S. classrooms and internationally to great success.
Bernadine holds an MS in engineering from Stanford University, an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of Business, an MA in international studies from the University of Pennsylvania and a certificate in filmmaking from New York University. She is also a Bell Laboratories Ph.D. Scholarship recipient. A native of northern New Mexico, Bernadine has lived and studied in various countries throughout Latin America, Europe and Asia and speaks several languages.