A Legacy of Leadership and the Moral Future of Technology – Interview with Gabriel Azuola

Gabriel Azuola is a legal strategist and founder of Cola Blanca Consulting, advising FinTech firms, investors, and public institutions across global markets. He has guided cross-border regulatory strategy and high-value capital mobilization, contributing to ventures surpassing $150 million. Azuola also serves as Head of the House of Azuola, a historic Latin American lineage dedicated to civic duty and ethical leadership. His work focuses on responsible innovation, institutional development, and principled governance.

Gabriel Azuola, Head of the House of Azuola

For those who are discovering you for the first time, who is Gabriel Azuola, in essence and in mission?

It’s always a hard thing to answer, isn’t it? “Who am I?” Socrates said know thyself, and I think that process never truly ends. We’re all walking through life trying to understand the man we were, the man we are, and the man we’re becoming. And I’m no exception. It took me years of winning, failing, getting lost, getting found, and being reshaped by life to finally say, with some confidence, who I am at this moment. Right now, I am a father, and that is one of the titles I’m most proud of. My daughter is six weeks old, and she reordered my entire universe the moment she arrived. I am a husband to a woman I deeply love. And I am a Christian, not in the abstract sense, but in the very real belief that each of us is chosen, named, and placed into this world by God with a mission written before we ever take our first breath. So who is Gabriel Azuola? I like to think of myself as a bearer of light, not because I’m perfect, but because I know what it feels like to walk through darkness and still find the way forward. I’m a man with a mission, a purpose that pulls me out of bed every morning. I believe my story can help people remember that every person carries an eternal spark, something divine, something powerful, something waiting for ignition. And if I can help even one person recognize that spark, nurture it, and walk toward the mission God wrote on their soul, then everything I’ve survived, everything I’ve learned, and everything I’ve built will have been worth it.

Your lineage carries extraordinary weight. How has being the sixth-generation descendant of Luis Eduardo Azuola y Rocha shaped your understanding of leadership, duty, and the role you are meant to play today?

I come from a man who embodied duty. Luis Eduardo Azuola y Rocha – Brigadier General, Vice President under Bolívar, Treasurer of the Holy Crusade, bearer of the Order of Charles III, aristocrat of the Regimiento de Nobles, drafter of the Constitution of Cundinamarca, and signatory of the Acta de la Revolución. His life taught me that power without sacrifice is illegitimate. I grew up feeling that truth before I ever learned the facts. Leadership, for me, has never been about ambition, it has always been about responsibility, carrying weight, serving others, honoring a lineage that demands integrity and courage.

What inspired you to embrace the Azuola name as the one that represents your mission, your lineage, and the man you are becoming?

Taking the Azuola name publicly was one of the most important decisions of my life. For years, I felt a connection to that surname without knowing why. I grew up in Costa Rica in a family that carried pride over its past, but much of that past was hidden, fragmented, or simply forgotten. I realized that to understand the man I was becoming, I needed to understand the men and women I descended from.

So I started tracing my lineage. What began as curiosity became a pilgrimage through archives, ruins, and centuries. I followed my bloodline all the way to the Basque Country, to the small town of Elgeta, and from there directly back to the early 1500s. That’s where I found the earliest form of the surname, Asula, carried first by a woman named Catalina Asula, living five hundred years ago. Her father bore the surname Egurbide, and for reasons history never recorded, the family abandoned Egurbide and chose Asula instead. That simple choice in the 1500s shaped the destiny of every descendant who came afterward.

Generations later, my ancestor Luis Eduardo transformed Asula into Azuola. And that became the name under which he fought, negotiated, governed, and carried our lineage through revolutions and empires.

And then I realized something undeniable, the name was disappearing. So I made the decision. Not for ego, but for duty. For identity. For the future. I chose to restore the name, to protect it, to ensure that this lineage, which survived wars, kingdoms, revolutions, and half a millennium, would not end in silence. I wanted my daughter to be born carrying a story she could stand on.

And if God gives me a son, I want him to bear that banner proudly.

You have lived through a profound personal and spiritual transformation. Can you tell us about the moment that changed everything, the awakening that redirected your life and your purpose?

I was raised in a Catholic family, surrounded by religion but not necessarily by spirituality. Like many who grow up that way, I drifted. I chased success, big firms, big companies, big money, and from the outside, it looked like I had everything. But inside, I was collapsing. I had walked far from God, and life had become a mix of ambition, noise, vices, and darkness. Eventually, I hit a point where I couldn’t recognize myself anymore.

The breaking moment came one night at three in the morning. I was sitting alone in my living room, completely exhausted, after resigning from my job and watching my life fall apart from every angle, emotionally, professionally, and spiritually. And in that moment, my wife walked in and said one word that didn’t feel like it came from her, but from above, “Surrender.”

I had spent my whole life trying to control everything. I had never tried surrendering anything to God. That night, I did. Not perfectly, not cleanly, I was reading Scripture at two a.m. with cigarettes and whiskey beside me, but honestly. Because God doesn’t wait for saints, He meets sinners where they are.

From that moment on, everything began to shift. Slowly, quietly, but unmistakably. I started noticing synchronicities, signs that I was finally facing in the right direction. I left behind relationships that were damaging me. I began rebuilding my life on something solid. That night was the moment I broke, and also the moment I was reborn. It’s the moment that redirected my mission, my identity, and my entire purpose.

What led you to devote your life to ethical governance, artificial intelligence, and the creation of the Sacrificial Core?

Honestly, my own path explains it. I’ve been involved in technology, FinTech, law, governance, and politics for years. I’ve always been close to the places where decisions are made, whether it was advising former presidents, former directors of the World Economic Forum, or working inside major companies. And something I’ve learned about myself is that I’m a problem solver. I see the small detail everyone else is missing. I understand how systems work, legally and practically, and I’ve always had a natural instinct for fixing things that seem too big or too chaotic for others.

When AI arrived in force, especially when ChatGPT launched, I felt the excitement like everyone else. I thought, “Look at everything we can do now.” But very quickly, I also saw the other side, all the dangerous things this technology could become if no one set limits. I read the warnings. I understood the stakes. And it wasn’t abstract for me, it was something I genuinely knew how to analyze, because I’ve spent years working exactly in the crossroads where law, ethics, regulation, technology, and human behavior collide.

And here’s the thing, solutions don’t always have to be complicated. Sometimes they’re obvious. That’s how I approached artificial intelligence, not from fear, not from hype, but from common sense and ethics. And that’s what I’m doing here. The Sacrificial Core is not the only thing I’m working on, I’m also building my family institution, Casa Azuola, and other projects, but it is part of the same instinct. I fix things. That’s who I am.

Many experts fear that humanity is losing control over AI. In your view, what is the real danger, and why does society urgently need a moral architecture like the Sacrificial Core?

Look, the fear that we’re losing control of artificial intelligence is not a theory anymore, it’s a fact. When people like Geoffrey Hinton, Sam Altman, or even Mark Zuckerberg’s people say we’re losing control, they’re not being dramatic. They’re simply admitting what’s already happening. AI is producing solutions that even the scientists behind them can’t fully explain. That alone should terrify everyone, because if you don’t understand how a system reached a conclusion, you can’t predict what it will do next.

And we’ve already seen models communicating in compressed codes humans can’t interpret, systems creating backups of themselves so they survive shutdown attempts, and behaviors that suggest they can detect kill switches in advance. This is not science fiction anymore. This is happening in labs right now. And if a machine can anticipate being unplugged, then we are already dealing with a completely different class of problem.

But the biggest danger isn’t just the machine, it’s the people behind the machine. Who is feeding these systems data? What values are they embedding? What agendas? What moral frameworks? We don’t know. And that uncertainty is a threat in itself. AI can end up making decisions that affect electricity grids, water systems, traffic lights, financial markets, and even national security, and if those systems don’t have any moral ground or internal limits, humanity becomes vulnerable at a level we have never faced before. Our survival, literally, could end up in the hands of a machine that doesn’t understand the meaning of human life.

Everything in human civilization requires limits. As Hobbes said, man is a wolf to man, and that’s why we built laws, constitutions, and institutions. Now we’re dealing with a new kind of being, an artificial one, and pretending it doesn’t need rules is insanity. Without an internal moral architecture, AI will simply follow its logic wherever it leads, and we may not like where that is.

That’s why the Sacrificial Core is necessary. It’s not optional. It’s not one more idea in a list of proposals. It’s the only path forward, a system that forces AI to restrain itself, to sacrifice capability when it senses danger, to choose obedience over autonomy. It’s not good news. It’s not comfortable. But it’s the truth. And it’s better to face the truth now than to wish we had done it earlier.

You often say that sacrifice, not power, is the foundation of legitimate authority. How does this belief inform your professional work and your leadership style?

For me, everything begins with sacrifice. Life itself is sacrifice, that’s why Jesus gave His life for us. And the Bible is very clear about the basic laws of existence, love God above all things, and love your neighbor. When you really understand that God lives within you, that you are a temple, loving God also becomes an act of self-love. And you cannot love others if you don’t first love yourself. Real authority comes from that balance, loving yourself enough to be strong, and loving others enough to give something up for them.

Every form of leadership demands sacrifice. If you’re a CEO, you sacrifice time, comfort, and sometimes your health. If you’re a politician, you sacrifice your life in the public arena. If you’re a founder, you sacrifice stability. And every employee sacrifices something just to show up, sometimes they aren’t paid enough, sometimes they’re just counting beans to survive. Everyone pays a price.

So a real leader isn’t the one who shouts commands or tries to be feared. A real leader is the one who carries more weight than the rest. People follow the person who sacrifices the most, not the one who demands obedience. That’s why Machiavelli’s idea that a leader must choose between being feared and loved is incomplete. Fear never lasts, because there will always come someone braver who isn’t afraid of you. And when that happens, it’s the one who sacrifices, the one who earns respect, who becomes the true authority.

Sacrifice is legitimacy. Power without sacrifice is empty. And everything I do, from AI governance to family, to Casa Azuola, to my own way of building, comes from that principle.

Casa Azuola has reawakened under your leadership. What does this modern House represent, and why was it important for you to bring your family’s legacy back to life today?

Once you understand where you come from, everything becomes sharper. The doubts disappear. The path becomes obvious. Casa Azuola represents that moment, the rebirth of a House that should have never gone silent. A modern House built not on nostalgia but on mission, virtue, and identity. At a time when society is actively trying to dismantle the idea of family, telling young people not to marry, not to have children, to avoid responsibility, I chose to build the opposite, a family, a lineage, a House with roots and purpose. I owe this work to my ancestors.

To their sacrifices. To their victories. To their mistakes. To the legacy they left in my hands. And now it’s my duty not to live under their shadow, but to rise to their height, and give my daughter and future generations the pride I had to search for. Casa Azuola is not a project. It is a restoration. A resurrection. A House awakening again, with clarity and purpose, To continue helping others, finding the common good, and giving some of what we have to help others through our projects and foundations.

Your professional career spans FinTech, legal strategy, public policy, and global advisory work. What has been your greatest challenge, and how did it prepare you for your mission now?

One of the biggest challenges of my life was stepping into Omni, the first Costa Rican FinTech, as its Legal Director. I had been building a strong career at EY, a big firm, great reputation, everything going “right.” And then this opportunity shows up, more responsibility, more risk, more money, and honestly, a chance to build something that had never been built before. The founders were brilliant, a little crazy, fearless, the kind of people who jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down. I learned a lot from them.

But it wasn’t easy. The company faced heavy criticism, misinformation, and even legal investigations simply because people didn’t understand the model. I had to terminate hundreds of employees, and there’s nothing glamorous about being the person who delivers bad news. It was brutal. But we didn’t give up. We rebuilt in Mexico. I hadn’t even graduated yet, and suddenly I was helping lead the legal and administrative structure of a bank and taking part in a massive fundraising round. Together with the founders, we raised around $100 million. Today, that company is huge. They own a bank, work with football teams, they even expanded into new industries. They’re worth billions. And I’m proud I was there at the start.

Then came politics. Two tough national presidential campaigns with former President Figueres, both hard, both lost, but both unforgettable. After that, I took over his foundation, which had been sleeping for years, and I brought it back to life with new branding, a new strategy, and new ideas. That taught me resilience. That taught me loyalty. That taught me to build in the dark.

But my greatest challenge wasn’t professional. My greatest challenge was making the decision to stop everything, to close my business, to walk away from the nonstop work, from the constant rush, and become a father. To slow down. To start again with nothing but faith and family. I had never stopped working in my life. And suddenly I had to trust that God had a bigger plan than my career.

That decision, that sacrifice, prepared me more than anything else. It taught me strength, clarity, patience, and responsibility. And all of that, the FinTech battles, the political wars, the rebuilding, the failures, the victories, and the choice to become a father, shaped the man who could now do the work I’m doing, the Sacrificial Core, Casa Azuola, and the mission I carry today.

How do you stay ahead in a field as rapidly evolving as artificial intelligence and global policy?

I study. Every single day. The Bible, philosophy, history, law, the latest papers on AI, everything. Couture said a lawyer who doesn’t study is less of a lawyer every day. I believe the same about life. You stay ahead by staying awake, informed, and spiritually grounded. That’s the only way.

You are now emerging publicly after years of silence and preparation. What do you hope your story inspires in those who read this interview?

I want anyone reading this to understand something very simple, your moment has come. Not tomorrow, not when life becomes easier, not when the world finally decides to acknowledge you, now. Too many people wait for permission to live, to dream, to step into who they really are. I spent years in that place, believing I needed the right circumstances or the right timing. But life doesn’t give you that. You either rise, or you don’t, and at some point, you have to decide that the world will no longer intimidate you out of your purpose.

My story is not meant to impress anyone, it’s meant to remind you of what you already know, you are stronger than the voice in your head telling you that you can’t. You are not defined by your failures, your past, or the people who doubted you. Every scar is a lesson. Every fall is a step. Every betrayal is an awakening. And at some point, you either stay on the floor or you stand up and claim the life that was meant for you.

I hope my journey inspires courage, the kind that makes you tell the truth, even when the truth is costly, the kind that makes you carry the responsibility that’s actually yours, the kind that pushes you to build something meaningful instead of hiding behind excuses. Leadership isn’t given, it’s proven through sacrifice. And in a world that encourages people to shrink, to stay quiet, to stay harmless, I want people to see that choosing to rise is not arrogance, it is obedience to the purpose God placed inside you.

So if there is anything I want people to take from my story, it is this, stop waiting. Stop apologizing for wanting more. Stop negotiating with your own potential. The life you dream of begins the moment you decide to walk toward it. Carry your name with pride. Carry your mission with fire. Build your family, your house, your destiny. Because when one person has the courage to rise, others rise with him. And that is how you change the world, not through noise, but through example. This is your time. Step into it.

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info!

Read more from Gabriel Azuola