Talent Without Borders: AI and Nearshore Talent with TECLA’s Gino Ferrand

On today's episode of That Tech Pod, we sit down with Gino Ferrand, CEO and Founder of TECLA. Born in Lima, Peru and raised in the U.S., Gino’s journey spans continents, cultures, and companies. He shares how those experiences shaped his perspective on technology, risk, and data security.

We dig into the story behind TECLA, which started with a simple insight, Latin America’s deep pool of untapped tech talent, and grew into a platform that has helped U.S. companies worth billions scale their engineering teams. Gino explains how he balances innovation with fairness in building TECLA’s AI-driven talent-matching platform, and what it takes to earn trust when remote developers handle mission-critical and sensitive work.

We also explore the broader context: how shifting immigration policies affect demand for nearshore talent, the challenges of protecting intellectual property and sensitive data across borders, and the future of global tech collaboration. Gino closes with what’s next for him and TECLA as they continue to bridge talent gaps with security and innovation in mind.

Gino Ferrand is the CEO and Founder of TECLA, a nearshore staffing company that connects U.S. tech firms with top software engineers across Latin America. Born in Lima, Peru, he moved to the U.S. at 12 and learned early what it meant to start over, build from scratch, and stay relentless—values shaped by his family of entrepreneurs. From launching an e-commerce jewelry brand in high school to creating a social network for college founders, Gino has always been driven to build.

After college, he returned to Lima and saw the untapped potential of Latin American tech talent, sparking the idea for TECLA. Over the past 12 years, he’s helped companies worth more than $10 billion scale their engineering teams while continuing to stay hands-on as a coder and architect of TECLA’s AI-driven talent-matching platform. Based in Seattle, Gino remains committed to his belief that talent is everywhere—it just needs the right platform to thrive.