Cacao entered my professional journey very early, while I was an undergraduate student, when I became involved in a community-based project. Little by little, I discovered that behind a chocolate bar lay a universe of variables, including raw materials, fermentation, drying, roasting, formulation, processing, equipment, quality control, sensory analysis, and product development.

In 2014, I had the opportunity to receive specialized training in chocolate and to begin working directly in the industry. From that point onward, cacao and chocolate ceased to be simply the sector in which I worked and became the field in which I wanted to build my career.

Over the years, I came to understand that my place was precisely at the intersection of engineering, food science, and the knowledge and expertise of cacao and chocolate. This is where I have been able to create the greatest value: by technically understanding a problem, identifying what is actually happening within a process, and transforming that knowledge into a practical, applicable solution.

When we look at your career, we see quality, research, product development, production, consulting, and your own entrepreneurial ventures. Yet résumés reveal very little about what happens behind the scenes. Which moments along that journey do you remember as genuine turning points in your professional life?

There have been several, and not all of them occurred when I changed positions or took on a new responsibility.

The first came when I joined the mass-market chocolate industry in Venezuela. I realized that having a theoretical understanding of cacao and chocolate science was not enough. I needed to understand the entire process and learn to make decisions based on measurable variables. I worked across production, quality, and research and development, and each of these areas transformed the way I approached both a product and the business behind it.

Another important turning point came when I took on the challenge of creating and leading R&D departments. This required me to stop thinking solely as a technical specialist and start thinking about the key elements of a project: What problem are we trying to solve? Who are we solving it for? What resources do we have? And how can we ensure that a solution is genuinely viable?

Later, working as a consultant and trainer once again broadened my perspective. I began supporting projects of different sizes, in different countries and across a wide range of industrial contexts. This confirmed something that I now consider fundamental: sometimes the problem is not a lack of knowledge, but rather the inability to translate that knowledge into concrete decisions and take swift, effective action.

These experiences shaped the professional profile I have today. I no longer look at cacao solely from the perspective of the raw material, nor at chocolate merely as a finished product. I always seek to understand the entire value chain and, above all, to identify where the real opportunity for improvement or innovation lies.

A chocolate may taste delicious to us, but behind that experience are formulations, processes, controls, and countless technical decisions. How do you manage to explain all that complexity in an accessible way, so that an entrepreneur understands not only what needs to change, but also why it needs to change?

For me, explaining something from a technical perspective does not mean simplifying it to the point of losing its substance. It means finding a way for someone to understand it and then be able to apply that knowledge.

So, whenever I explain a process, I always create a diagram, chart, or visual representation that connects each decision with a visible outcome further down the line. If we are discussing a formulation, I am not interested simply in telling someone which ingredient to add, change, or remove. I want to explain what function it performs, how it affects the structure, flavor, stability, or cost, and what may happen if it is modified.

The same applies to processes. Someone may learn that they need to control a specific temperature, but if they do not understand what is happening within the chocolate when that temperature changes, it will be difficult for them to troubleshoot a deviation when one occurs.

My goal is that anyone who receives a technical recommendation does not have to depend on me indefinitely to repeat it. I want them to understand the rationale behind the decision and be able to apply that reasoning independently within their own process.

After several years of working digitally and supporting projects both within and beyond Colombia, Casa Versado is opening its doors in Bello. What does it mean to you personally to open a physical space where you can now teach, experiment, welcome people, and develop new ideas?

Casa Versado represents a natural evolution of what I have been building since 2019.

Versado en Chocolate began as a digital platform because I needed a way to address the needs of emerging chocolatiers in Venezuela, Colombia, and Spain who were eager to acquire knowledge and find answers to their questions about artisanal chocolate-making based on the Bean-to-Bar philosophy. In other words, it was about sharing knowledge and supporting projects without distance becoming a limitation. Over the years, I have worked with people and companies in different locations, trained professionals, developed products, and supported processes entirely remotely.

I had already experienced this with other businesses in Venezuela: cacao and chocolate also need spaces where people can experiment, test, make mistakes, and create.

Opening Casa Versado in Bello means bringing that digital experience into a physical space. It is a place for training, product development, raw-material evaluation, working with equipment, welcoming entrepreneurs, and creating opportunities for people involved in this value chain to connect and exchange ideas.

For me, it also carries a deeply personal meaning. After several years of working from different places and supporting international projects, I am now building a meeting point of my own in Colombia, a place where anyone can come and participate.

I do not see it simply as a store or a classroom. I want it to be a space where an idea can become a product, and where technical knowledge can meet the real-world needs of those who produce.

Your work gives you first-hand insight into the challenges faced by people who produce cacao or make chocolate. Beyond technology and equipment, what do you believe our entrepreneurs need to learn or strengthen in order to turn good products into truly sustainable businesses?

I believe one of the main challenges is moving from simply producing a good product to developing a system capable of sustaining it.

We have people with tremendous talent, excellent raw materials, and products with significant potential, but we still find weaknesses in fundamental areas such as standardization, process control, documentation, cost calculation, raw-material selection, and the definition of target markets.

We also need to learn how to measure. The perception that a product “tastes good” is important, but it is not enough to guarantee consistency or support growth.

A sustainable business needs to know what it is doing, why it is doing it, how much it costs, what results it expects to achieve, and how those results can be consistently replicated.

That is why I insist so much on connecting quality, processes, product, and market as a single system or mechanism. They do not function independently. Technology can dramatically improve a process, but without the judgment and expertise to use it properly, we will simply have more sophisticated equipment producing problems at a faster rate.

You speak about the circular economy and the comprehensive utilization of cacao, concepts that may seem highly technical to some people. How would you bring these ideas into the day-to-day reality of a small business, and what opportunities do you see in what we have traditionally considered waste?

The circular economy begins when we stop looking at a raw material solely in terms of what we have traditionally considered its primary product.

Cacao offers enormous potential for comprehensive utilization. We often say here that nothing is wasted; everything is transformed. Depending on the scale and context, there are opportunities involving the cacao shell, mucilage, husk, and other by-products generated throughout processing. But it is not simply a matter of using a waste material to make something else. We need to ask whether that use is technically feasible, safe and suitable for its intended purpose, economically viable, and whether there is a market willing to pay for it.

For a small business, this can begin in a very simple way. For example, identify which materials are currently being discarded, quantify how much is being generated, characterize them, and analyze what potential uses they might have, either within or outside the existing process.

Even something as basic as reducing losses, improving raw-material yields, or properly reusing a by-product is already part of a resource-utilization strategy.

There is an idea I often share when I connect producers with chocolatiers. I prefer to collect the new, perfectly intact jute sacks—made from jute, fique, or sisal—in which fermented and dried cacao beans are delivered, and return them to the producer for reuse. This way, we avoid generating unnecessary waste in production or taking up additional storage space, while contributing to a common goal.

Let us imagine that among those reading this conversation there is a cacao producer, a company, a university, or someone with a promising idea related to cacao and chocolate. What would you like to tell them about Versado and about what you might be able to build together?

To anyone with an idea related to cacao and chocolate, I would say that they do not need to have everything figured out before they come to us.

They can come with cacao they want to characterize, a product that is not performing as expected, a formulation that needs to be developed, a process they want to standardize, equipment they are not sure how to use properly, or simply an idea that still needs to be turned into a concrete project.

Versado en Chocolate brings together a hybrid model of technical training, consulting, and solution development, specifically designed to work at that point where an idea needs a clear pathway and vision in order to move forward. Now, with Casa Versado, we also have a physical space where we can experiment, train, develop, and connect with others.

I am interested in building projects with producers, entrepreneurs, companies, universities, and institutions that want to do more than simply produce chocolate. People who want to develop products with identity, create innovative solutions, build more robust processes, and develop businesses with the potential to grow.

Because, ultimately, I believe the true value of cacao lies not only in transforming it into chocolate, but in everything we can build around it. And that, in many ways, is what my entire professional life has been about.