Dec. 9, 1970 Marcelo Claure is born in Guatemala. He spends his childhood years in Morocco, Dominican Republic, and Bolivia.
AGAINST ALL ODDS
1980 Claure embarks in his first business venture by selling his mother’s clothes. The venture stalls when his mother finds out. 1993 Bentley College awards him with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics and Finance. 1994 With the help of Claure, Bolivia’s National Soccer team plays in the 1994 World Cup against all odds. 1995 Claure buys his first cell phone store in Boston, later turning it into a retail chain. 1997 He forms Brightstar in Miami, with three of his friends, including Davie Peterson. 2004 He divorces Patricia Lara Claure. 2005 One day after his birthday, he marries Jordan Engard. 2008 Achieving a lifelong dream, he buys control of Club Bolivar, his favorite soccer team. Oct. 18, 2014 SoftBank pays $1.26 billion for 57 percent of Claure’s Brightstar Corp. August 5, 2014 Sprint appoints Claure as CEO, along the way Claure becomes the first Latino CEO in the company’s history. He agrees to sell the rest of Brightstar to Softbank.
32 • February / March 2016
Claure joined Sprint in 2014, after selling his company, Brightstar, to Son. The soccer enthusiast (he owns Bolivar, a pro soccer team in Bolivia) moved from his Miami home with his family to Kansas City, where he has been busy attempting what many see not only as a massive task, but some say unlikely. Not for Claure. He says he finds the challenge stirring. When he joined Sprint, he became that company’s first Latino CEO in its 117-year history. “It’s exciting because the decisions you make are bigger. You are running one of the largest companies in the U.S. For the employees it has been refreshing. To be able to see people make fast decisions, take risks. Bring a different attitude to the company, be more aggressive. They say that entrepreneurs are good for forming companies and or for turning around companies. This is definitely a turnaround,” he says. Does he feel the pressure? Yes, especially for taking care of his employees, Claure says. But he adds that since he has joined Sprint it has been the most exhilarating time of his life. “It brings a lot more excitement. Its fun to be part of something relevant. We are in the midst of what is going to be one of the most historic turnarounds in corporate America,” he says. “Its interesting when you have so many people watching what you are doing. We have a very clear plan on how to do this. We are making incredible progress in a short period of time.”
Claure was born in Guatemala on December 9, 1970. His father, René Marcelo Claure, was a geologist for the U.N. working in Guatemala. The young Marcelo grew up with an older sister and a younger brother, moving from Guatemala to Morocco to the Dominican Republic. “I got to travel to different places,” he recalls. A gifted student who could get by without buckling down in his studies and still get good grades, Claure recalls his youthful days as a leader, according to published reports and interviews he has given over the years. His family relocated to La Paz, Bolivia, where eventually he was enrolled in an American school. After high school, he went to study to the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, later transferring to Bentley College, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree of Science in Economics in 1993. He returned to Bolivia, where he got a job with the Bolivian Soccer Federation as International Marketing Manager. For over 70 years, Bolivia had been trying to qualify for the World Cup, to no avail. But that changed in 1994. Claure worked with the federation and also was able to work with Guido Loayza, the then president of Bolivia’s soccer federation, who became his mentor. “He’s the one that taught me that anything is possible; he actually did believe that we were going to take Bolivia to the World Cup when nobody believed. Today he works for me. He runs my team in Bolivia,” he says. An avid soccer fan (he owns Bolivar, a pro team in Bolivia), Claure nevertheless went back to the U.S. to follow his entrepreneurial dreams. By 1995, Claure, then 25, asked the owner of the cell phone store in Boston to finance his purchase and convinced his father and friends to lend him some money. In just two years he had turned the cell phone store into one of the leading retail chains in the Northeast. Two years later he sold the chain, earning a big profit. “This is where I realized the power of this country and how stories like this could only happen in a country like the US – how can a young Bolivian buy a store with almost no money down, put a lot of hard work, go to banks to be able to finance its growth and two years later sell if for a few million dollars,” Claure told a crowd at National Council of La Raza, last July.