Carlos E. Odio is the president and chief executive officer of TicoFrut, a Costa Rica citrus company that is the third largest supplier of orange juice to the United States. TicoFrut owns or is a partner in more than 45,000 acres of orange groves in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. TicoFrut also buys oranges from independent producers and processes pineapples. TicoFrut produces 17 products from oranges and five from pineapples and generates more than 3,000 jobs. Odio began his career in Costa Rica's Ministry of Industries in 1965, becoming head of the department the following year. He served as operations manager of Dehydrated Products of Costa Rica later in 1966. Odio worked as an engineer for Redd Laboratories, Inc. in 1968 and a process engineer for Gulf Machinery in Safety Harbor, Fla., in 1970. In 1972, he and the owner of Gulf Machinery founded GUMACO Industria e Comercio in Brazil. He became sole owner of the company in 1988, a heavy equipment manufacturer for the process industry. Odio founded TicoFrut in 1988 and continued to lead GUMACO. At its peak, GUMACO employed 1,100 people in Brazil and 80 in Florida. He sold GUMACO in 1997. In 2004, he won the Florida section Citrus Engineering Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Odio graduated with his bachelor's degrees in industrial engineering and civil engineering from Purdue in 1965 after studying at the University of Rome and Georgetown University.