Diogo Mónica, Técnico alumnus, co-founder and president of Anchorage is one of the world’s most powerful emerging leaders included in Fortune 40 Under 40 list of most influential people in the world. The prestigious list highlights 40 emerging leaders in five categories: finance, technology, healthcare, government and politics, and media and entertainment. Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of Anchorage, a startup based in San Francisco, was distinguished in the “Finance” category.

According to the American magazine: “As cryptocurrency enjoys a resurgence in 2020, Diogo Mónica is a name you hear frequently. Mónica is poised for a bright 2021 thanks to new federal rules that allow banks to hold assets like Bitcoin—rules that could bring a surge of business to Anchorage”.

Born in California and raised in Portugal, Diogo Monica created Anchorage together with Nathan McCauley, CEO of the startup. In March 2011, they started working on Square‘s security team, where they built Square’s first encrypted card reader. Later, in 2015, they joined Docker, and two years later they found Anchorage.

The Técnico alumnus would soon start attracting the attention of large companies. At the age of 24 he obtained his master’s degree in communication networks engineering. While he was doing his PhD he was invited to do an internship in Google and Facebook but he decided to decline both invitations and accept Square’s invitation, where he began a brilliant career.