The Latin American Talent Enriching Sweden

Entrepreneurs at the Expo Kvinnogrow Business Forum, an initiative led by Latin American women. Among them is Ecuadorian entrepreneur Anita Paulsson, co-founder of Kvinnogrow.

Part of my work as Ambassador is to know, first-hand, the Ecuadorian and Latin American community that lives and works in Sweden. That is why, on Saturday 30 May, I took part in Expo Kvinnogrow 2026 — a business forum of the Spanish-speaking community , and had the honour of addressing a group of Latin American entrepreneurs, who came to this country and built their own companies here.

There was everything. An entrepreneur in real estate helping other migrants invest. A nutritionist who left the corporate world to follow her vocation. A psychologist supporting migrant families. An image consultant, a children's book author, a digital content creator, a psychiatrist. People who arrived in a new country, with a different language and a different climate, and decided to build a business anyway.

What I saw there confirms something I have argued for years. Ecuadorians and Latin Americans have an extraordinary entrepreneurial drive. This is not patriotic rhetoric: for several years Ecuador has been one of the most entrepreneurial countries in Latin America, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. And I see it on every trip: in every corner of the world there is a Latin American working hard, building something, trying to get ahead. I have also written that what we often lack is not effort, but ecosystem: financing, institutions that work, a culture that rewards risk rather than punishing it.

Well, these entrepreneurs did both things at once. They brought Latin American drive and planted it in the Swedish ecosystem. They took the best of two worlds. The result is, quite simply, unstoppable. Mariana Mazzucato has shown that no innovation flourishes alone, that behind every success there is a structure that made it possible. This community found that structure in Sweden, and added something that cannot be taught: the determination of those who have left everything behind to start again.

Fernanda, entrepreneur who is part of the startup Zinzino

As I listened to them, I thought of my mother. She was a lawyer, worked her entire life pro bono for those who could not pay her, and raised me alone in a working-class neighbourhood of Quito. She was, before anyone used the word, an entrepreneur: someone who held together a home and a vocation against every current. Every story I heard that afternoon reminded me that behind every business there is, almost always, a tale of sacrifice that no spreadsheet records.

And there is what I learned, which I did not expect to learn. I tend to think about entrepreneurship in terms of systems: capital, institutional frameworks, public policy. That afternoon reminded me that before all of that there is something more basic and more powerful: community. Mutual support. A network that tells you, on the worst day, that you are not alone. No economic report measures that. But it is exactly what sustains a migrant entrepreneur when the language won't come out, when the paperwork stalls, when homesickness weighs heavy. The ecosystem matters. But community comes first.

It is precisely for that reason that I hope this network finds, in the Swedish ecosystem, the recognition and backing it deserves. Sweden has built one of the world's most respected environments for entrepreneurship and innovation. Its institutions, funders and support organisations are among the best in the world at turning a good idea into a thriving company. A community like this one, which already contributes so much to this country, would multiply its impact with access to that financing and support. I say this not as a demand, but as a sincere hope: investing in these entrepreneurs is investing in Sweden's own prosperity.

As an Ecuadorian who also built his path far from home, I saw myself reflected in each of those stories. And as Ambassador, I am clear about it: this community is the bridge between Ecuador, Latin America and Sweden made flesh. My job is to widen that bridge: to open doors, connect markets, and ensure that the talent already here finds even more room to grow.

I congratulate those who organised this gathering with so much work and dedication. To build community, on foreign soil, is one of the noblest forms of entrepreneurship.