Mr. Penaloza co-founded Ushi.com, widely recognized as China’s #1 business social networking service, supported by 100 business leaders in China. He also founded WorldFriends, a social networking service for internationally-minded people around the world who like to meet new friends, travel, and learn languages. WorldFriends has more than 3 million members from over 220 countries around the world. WorldFriends has over 250 distribution partners including Tencent’s QQ International and Yahoo! Japan Corporation.

 Mr. Penaloza was previously Assistant Director at Prudential Asset Management Asia (1996-1999), now known as EMP-PAMA, one of the longest-established private equity investment companies in Asia. Mr. Penaloza began his business career in 1993 as an entrepreneur in China, co-founding a start-up that established a national bearing distribution business. UBC is now a leading competitor in the bearing distribution industry in China, and also a manufacturer of its own UBC-branded bearings.

 Mr. Penaloza graduated from Canada’s University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business with an Honors Business Administration degree.