$32.2 million gift from David Vélez and wife Mariel Reyes Milk to rebuild schools after deadly earthquake

David Vélez, the Colombian-born co-founder and chief executive of Latin America’s largest digital bank, Nubank, and his wife, Peruvian businesswoman Mariel Reyes Milk, have pledged 100 billion Colombian pesos — roughly US$32.2 million — to support recovery efforts in Chocó, the earthquake-ravaged department where the couple say they will concentrate first on rebuilding schools and educational spaces so that children and young people can return to class.

The commitment was announced one week after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck near the town of San José del Palmar in Chocó on Aug. 10, killing more than 300 people, injuring thousands more, and leaving hundreds missing across five departments in western Colombia.

Chocó, one of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable regions, sat at the epicenter of the quake and absorbed some of its heaviest structural damage, with schools among the buildings destroyed or rendered unusable.

News of the gift broke when Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella posted on X that he had just spoken by phone with Vélez, who told him of his decision to contribute the funds to victims of the tragedy. Vélez replied publicly within minutes, folding his wife directly into the gesture: “Mr. President, it is a pleasure for my wife, Mariel Reyes, and for me to be able to help Colombia, and especially Chocó, in this moment of calamity. Let’s move forward with everything to lift up our beloved country under your great leadership”.

In a fuller written statement accompanying the announcement, the couple laid out both the rationale and the intended trajectory of the gift.

“For some years now, as a family, we have worked in the field of philanthropy with the goal of promoting and investing primarily in education proposals, because we believe it is the safest path to transform the life of a person, and that of a society,” Vélez and Reyes wrote.

“That is why, in this reconstruction process, we want to join efforts in this area and help restore schools and educational spaces so that children and young people can return to studying. Our initial focus will be on the department of Chocó, the epicenter of the earthquake and one of the regions where the needs are deepest. From there, we will keep evaluating, together with your government, communities and local organizations, other affected areas to which we could extend our support”.

The pledge is not a one-off act of disaster response but an extension of philanthropic infrastructure the couple has built over several years.

Vélez and Reyes are signatories of the Giving Pledge, the commitment founded by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates that asks the world’s wealthiest individuals to dedicate the majority of their fortunes to philanthropic causes, which the couple joined in 2021.

Their giving is channeled through VélezReyes+, a platform the pair use to fund education and democracy initiatives across Brazil, Colombia and Peru, including technology scholarship programs and government partnerships aimed at transforming public education.

That existing focus on schooling as a lever for social mobility is what shaped the couple’s decision to steer their earthquake relief specifically toward classrooms and educational infrastructure rather than general emergency aid.

Vélez, who co-founded Nubank in 2013 and built it into the most valuable financial institution by market capitalization in Latin America, was named Businessman of the Year for 2026 by Diario La República shortly before the earthquake struck. Reyes, a Peruvian businesswoman who has raised the couple’s four children alongside her own ventures, has increasingly stepped into a public philanthropic role alongside her husband, and the earthquake statement marked one of her most visible joint appearances in Colombian coverage of the disaster.

The Vélez-Reyes commitment quickly became a reference point in a broader wave of private-sector giving that followed the quake. The recent tally of corporate and billionaire contributions placed the couple’s gift among the largest individual pledges, alongside a US$1.5 million donation from mining company Drummond and more than 6.6 billion pesos raised through Fundación Bancolombia’s #UnidosPorColombia campaign, with private-sector donations overall surpassing 1.6 trillion pesos in the days after the disaster.

Vélez has said the funds will be deployed in coordination with the national government, regional authorities and civil-society organizations under what he described as schemes of transparency and follow-up, a structure intended to track how the money is spent as reconstruction of Chocó’s schools gets underway.