Lucas Marulanda

Lucas Marulanda López is a Colombian private equity investor and corporate director. As of 2026, he is Managing Director at Ashmore Colombia and a member of the firm’s portfolio management team. Ashmore announced his appointment in November 2025, saying he would join from Advent International after roughly ten years sourcing and managing private equity investments across Central and Latin America.

Before Ashmore, Marulanda spent about a decade at Advent International in Bogotá. Public sources identify him as Director of Advent’s Bogotá office and as the executive covering the Andean region, including Colombia, Peru, and Chile. Advent’s Colombia presence includes investments such as Sophos Solutions, GHL Hoteles, LifeMiles, Alianza Fiduciaria, Alianza Valores, Grupo Biotoscana, GTM, Ocensa, and Siesa.

Earlier in his career, Marulanda was a Partner at Inverlink, a Colombian investment bank, where he led the energy and infrastructure practice and served on the investment committee of Inverlink Estructuras Inmobiliarias. Before Inverlink, he worked for about five years at Sumatoria, a Colombian investment-banking boutique advising clients across sectors.

He is an industrial engineer from Universidad de los Andes, where he also earned a master’s degree in industrial engineering, and he holds an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Juan Valdez’s board profile credits him with more than 25 years of experience in private equity, portfolio management, value-creation plans, investment banking, M&A, and project finance.

• Marulanda’s investment work is institutional private equity, not seed-stage angel investing. Publicly verifiable activity centers on control or significant-stake investments, portfolio transformation, and exits in Colombia and Latin America.
• At Advent, the Colombia strategy focused on five core sectors: financial services, healthcare, retail and consumer, technology, and industrials, with stated target investments of US$100 million to US$200 million.
• He has publicly emphasized a contrarian, long-term view on Colombia: Advent executives told Forbes Colombia they had “un apetito muy grande por Colombia” and described the firm’s nature as “contracíclica.”
• His stated company-fit process is relationship-driven. In Forbes Colombia, Marulanda described an initial “período de enamoramiento” to assess whether Advent and the owners would feel comfortable as partners, with reciprocity required.
• He looks for companies where private equity can professionalize the business, support leadership transitions, diversify owners’ wealth exposure, expand via acquisitions, or help a Colombian company become regional or global.
• At Ashmore, his current platform is aligned with emerging-market asset management, infrastructure, and social infrastructure, including private education platforms such as Legacy Schools.