Our Team
Joseph Williams
Joseph Williams is the founder, CEO & President of InDev Capital and directs the overall direction of the firm. He also leads our investor engagement efforts.
Joseph traces the roots of his international business career to his undergraduate experiences at Stanford University, where he minored in Japanese. Going to college was his second plane flight, the first being a church convention in Biloxi, Mississippi.
While living in Tokyo for three years, he worked as an engineer and business development liaison for a joint venture between Konica and HP. After returning to the U.S. he earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School and worked in investment banking at DLJ.
Soon after, Joseph co-founded a private equity firm, Wakefield James Management Group, with a Harvard Business School classmate. The partnership acquired a residential supply company that provided building material to large residential developers across the U.S. and Canada. Joseph served as President of the company and helped lead the company to become the largest in its industry while expanding into Phoenix, Atlanta, Calgary and Edmonton, among other key markets.
In late 2009, Joseph sold his interest in the company and moved to São Paulo, the business and financial heart of Latin America. After extensive travel, networking, and rigorous study of Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language, he had the opportunity to connect with many key players at the top of the burgeoning real estate development, asset management, and hedge fund industries. This led to the formation of InDev Capital – an emerging market real assets merchant bank.
Joseph has an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He speaks and reads Portuguese and is proficient in Japanese. Most importantly, he hails from the city of Durham in the great state of North Carolina.
He relaxes through reading all types of history and fiction, but has found a particular affinity for the writings of Nassim Taleb. His claim to fame is that he has read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged once a decade since college and Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan three times. He seeks to pound through Time Magazine’s Top 100 Fiction list before this wonderful adventure called life expires.
Ricardo Carvalho
Ricardo, a Partner at InDev Capital, leads our efforts to source and build close relationships with Emerging Market Project Sponsors. A project sponsor is our real asset focused sector expert and local co investment partner in a chosen emerging market, currently Brazil and mid-tier cities in China.
Ricardo has significant experience as an opportunistic investor in Brazil. Most recently, Ricardo was a managing partner at JPP Capital, a boutique real asset focused asset manager in São Paulo. During his time at JPP, Ricardo was instrumental in the execution and investor engagement to raise an FII (Brazilian version of US REIT) focused on for-sale residential real estate. In addition, in partnership with InDev Capital, Ricardo played a key execution role in a $135M residential JV that closed in 2014.
Prior to his time at JPP, Ricardo was a managing partner at Avant Garde Development. At Avant Garde, he successfully led the investment and investor engagement effort for a 7 million square meter land development project in a suburb of São Paulo.
Ricardo, a native of São Paulo, has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from FAAP and an MBA from FGV (Fundação Getúlio Vargas).
He is known and loved by the nickname of “A Guru” within our firm. Ricardo is an avid student of meditation and can be found on holidays going on meditation retreats where people meditate for four to eight hours at a time. Obviously, he is the meditation inspiration among the InDev team.
Beatriz Martínez
Beatriz Martinez, a co-founder of InDev Capital, serves as controller of our firm. This is an important role as the firm’s business model has relatively few and large transactions, hence a person that is detailed and good at budgeting allows the firm to concentrate and have the resources to do what it does best. Beatriz manages the firm’s budget and our co-investments.
Before co-founding InDev Capital, Beatriz, a Spanish national, worked as an architect with one of the most successful architecture firms in São Paulo. During this time, she worked with top developers in the city such as Brookfield, PDG and Rossi on their urban residential infill projects.
Beatriz has a BS in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Las Palmas Gran Canaria (Spain), a Master’s degree in Collective Housing from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain), and a Graduate Certificate in Housing and The City at Escola da Cidade, a São Paulo university focused on urban development. She has also completed a course at FGV, a top business school in Brazil, on real estate investment.
Beatriz holds a PhD in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Campinas, São Paulo, where she studied the relationship between finance and housing policy in São Paulo in comparison with the market in Madrid. She is fluent in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.
Beatriz very much wants to master meditation, but finds the choice between waking up early to meditate and sleeping later a tough one. In fact, currently with three children four years and under, relaxation is a word that is not in her vocabulary.
Joshua Shake
Joshua, an Associate at InDev Capital, plays a key role in our Business Development efforts. He also leads our Training and Development programs.
Joshua has spent the majority of the past 11 years in Brazil, conducting research and collaborating with local governments on cross-sectoral management and economic development issues. Most recently, he served as an Assistant Professor at a large public university in the São Paulo region, where he taught courses in economic development, governance, and strategic planning. Prior to his time in Brazil, he worked in various capacities in and with local governments, including with business policy advocacy and urban redevelopment investment programs.
Joshua holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Urban and Regional Planning, a Masters in Urban Planning from the University of Southern California (USC), a Bachelors of Science in Public Policy, Management and Planning from USC and a Bachelors of Arts in Economics, also from USC. Joshua was born in Indianapolis, IN and spent his high school years in Seattle, WA. He is fluent in Portuguese.
Carolina Ulloa
Carolina is InDev Capital’s Executive Assistant and Marketing Associate. She leads our marketing efforts and global investor research. She supports the CEO in marketing campaigns, road shows, logistics, research, and setting up meetings with global investors.
Prior to joining InDev Capital, Carolina worked for 7 years at ProColombia (the Colombian government’s promotion agency) in São Paulo, where she led the promotion strategy for tourism and trade between Colombia and Brazil.
Carolina has a B.A in Finance and International Relations from Universidad Externado de Colombia, and Certificates in International Peace and Conflict Resolution and International Trade from American University.
Carolina was born and raised in Colombia and holds dual Colombian and Brazilian citizenship. She is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and English.
Carolina is still trying to accept that she is eclectic, an unofficial prerequisite for joining the InDev team.
Tami Gongora
Tami supports our deal sourcing efforts in Brazil. She has a B.A. with Honors in Psychology from Bethel College, KS and certificates in Neuroscience and Clinical & Counseling Studies from the same institution. She was a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and was awarded an academic scholarship from Bethel College.
She is from São Paulo, Brazil but spent a great deal of time in Kansas, where she graduated from high school and college and served as a mental health Case Manager for Sedgwick County.
In Brazil, she discovered her entrepreneurial abilities and started a small business teaching English to teenagers and adults. Eventually she moved on to teach English in kindergarten at a prestigious school in the city of São Paulo. She also served as a Chapter Manager for the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) of São Paulo for three years.
In addition, she is, surprisingly, an aspiring actress and has been studying Theater since 2017.
