PERSON: Fernando Mateo

United Bodegas of America

President

Fernando Mateo was born in 1957 or 1958 in the Dominican Republic, the youngest in a family of ten children, and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father, Kristobal, worked as a taxi driver and later opened a bodega, while his mother, Carmen, was a stay-at-home mom. He attended Seward Park High School, but dropped out at the age of 15. Three years later, in 1976, he started a carpeting business which eventually grew into a multi-million dollar contracting firm.

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