Pierpaolo Barbieri

Pierpaolo Barbieri grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and studied at Harvard University. His senior honor thesis on the economic ties between Adolf Hitler's Germany and Francisco Franco's Spain was awarded the Thomas T. Hoopes ‘14 Prize. The research was conducted with the support of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies and the Real Colegio Complutense.

In 2017, Pierpaolo Barbieri founded Ualá, an Argentina-based personal financial management mobile app that allows users to conduct transactions, such as money transfers, payments and purchases, without having a bank account. It was backed by Soros, Point72, Kevin P. Ryan and the founders of General Catalyst.

In 2015, his book, Hitler’s Shadow Empire: The Nazis and the Spanish Civil War, was published in the US by Harvard University Press. It has also been published in Spain, Italy, Latin America and China.

Upon graduation, he was elected Lt. Charles Henry Fiske III Harvard-Cambridge scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded an MPhil in Economic and Social History. Between 2011 and 2013, he was researcher and became Ernest May Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and Strategic Advisor at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). He was also special advisor to the Berggruen Council on the Future of Europe.

Pierpaolo Barbieri (Buenos Aires, May 17, 1987) is an economic historian, researcher, Executive Director at Greenmantle and founder of Ualá, an Argentina-based personal financial management mobile app. He is the author of the book Hitler’s Shadow Empire: The Nazis and the Spanish Civil War. He has been featured in publications like Financial Times, New York Times, Foreign Affairs, El País, and The Wall Street Journal.