# Luana Lopes Lara **Luana Lopes Lara** (born 1996, Belo Horizonte, Brazil) is co-founder and chief operating officer of [[Kalshi]]. In December 2025, when Kalshi's valuation reached about $11 billion, Forbes named her the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire, at 29, on a stake of about 12%. ## Background She trained for eight years at the Bolshoi Ballet school in Joinville, Brazil, and danced professionally in Austria before going to MIT. She won medals in Brazilian astronomy and mathematics olympiads as a student. At MIT she earned a bachelor's in computer science (2018) and interned at Bridgewater Associates and [[Citadel]] Securities, where the idea for Kalshi took shape with [[Tarek Mansour]]. ## Role in the story Lopes Lara runs operations at the company that turned a CFTC license into a national sportsbook. Her public profile is the founder story: ballerina, math competitor, MIT, billionaire before 30. The company's political wiring runs through others: [[Donald Trump Jr.]] as adviser, board member [[Brian Quintenz]] as a Trump nominee to regulate it, and the [[Coalition for Prediction Markets]] in Washington. The vault has no record of political donations or public political statements by her. ## See also - [[Kalshi]] · [[Tarek Mansour]] · [[Prediction Markets]] · [[Sports Betting]] · [[Prediction Markets and Gambling Sector]]