2021 Match-Up Showcases

Opt Health

Camilo Isaza is the co-founder and CEO of Opt Health, a telehealth platform dedicated to helping men live their best lives through the science of preventative medicine.

Prior to founding Opt Health, Camilo spent ten years working in corporate America as a sales executive where he expanded sales territories in Latin American and Caribbean markets, as well as pioneered programs to develop local economies."

Snowball Wealth

Tanya Menendez is the Co-Founder and CEO of Snowball Wealth, a platform that provides personalized guidance to pay off debt and build wealth. Snowball’s first product, a free student loan plan, helps users save $6K on average. Tanya is a second-time founder and before becoming an entrepreneur, she worked at Goldman Sachs and Google. Tanya has been included in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List and named one of People en Español’s Most Powerful Latinas. You can connect with Tanya on Instagram and Twitter @makertanya and Snowball @asksnowball.

OpenField

Emily Del Beccaro (she / her) is the Co-Founder of OpenField. A veteran of several political campaigns over the last 10 years, she is a national data expert and one of a handful of people to have built a national voter file from scratch. She has been a key member of the data teams at both Target Smart, the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, the 2012 Obama presidential campaign, and NationBuilder before Co-Founding OpenField. Emily went to Washington State University where she majored in business administration and management and is a diehard sports fan, especially for teams from her hometown, Seattle.

Agua Bonita

Kayla Castañeda, co-founder & CEO of Agua Bonita, lives by the mantra "when life gives you lemons, make aguas frescas". With a passion for eco-friendly practices and innovation, she works to amplify Latinx culture & causes by bringing a traditional drink to the modern market while simultaneously working to rescue millions of pounds of produce. She has been recognized as an award winning public speaker & entrepreneur and takes pride in her favorite role, "tia".

Everyday Contacts

Lawrence Chavez is the Founder & CEO of EveryDay Contacts, a new brand of daily disposable contact lenses helping independent eye doctors redeem the doctor/patient relationship through their doctor-enabled direct-to-consumer model. Lawrence previously co-founded Lotus Leaf Coatings, an advanced materials company in 2011. Prior to 2011 served as a Venture Partner with Flywheel Ventures and served as Interim CFO at Astria Semiconductor, a Flywheel portfolio company that was subsequently sold to FormFactor. Lawrence has a finance background receiving his undergraduate degree from New Mexico State University and his Masters’ from Texas A&M University. In 2017, Lawrence completed the Stanford Graduate School of Business' Latino Entrepreneur Initiative Program.

Avenida

Fanny Grande (Formerly Fanny Véliz) is a Venezuelan-American award-winning filmmaker, actor, and director with more than 20 years experience in the entertainment business. Grande, who was born in the US, grew up in Venezuela performing from a very young age. She returned to the States to attend college, she quickly realized that roles available for her and other Latinos were very limited and often portrayed negative stereotypes. So she decided to start creating her own content.

A three-time Imagen Award nominee, she has received several recognitions for her work both in front and behind the camera. She’s currently one of 8 fellows selected by Geena Davis for the See it, Be it fellowship.

Her films focus on creating content that celebrates diversity and her main goal is to transform the way Latinos are portrayed in the media.

5 years ago she co-founded Avenida Productions with her husband Nelson Grande. Avenida is a consulting and production firm that specializes in empowering independent media content creators with a focus in diversity. To date Avenida has helped raise millions of dollars via crowdfunding for over 150 media projects. In 2021 the team launched Indieseats.com, a cinema-on-demand platform that allows filmmakers to screen their films in thousands of movie theaters across the country.

She served as a vice chair of Nosotros for 3 years. Nosotros is the oldest Latino Non-Profit in the entertainment business and it was founded by Ricardo Montalban. She currently has one feature documentary film in post-production that she directed and produced about DACA called My DACA Life. Her award-winning feature documentary called Our Quinceañera was released in December of 2021.

Avenida

Nelson Grande is no stranger to the gravitational pull of the entertainment industry. Growing up in Highland Park, it was normal to stumble upon productions like Tarantino shooting Reservoir Dogs or Gregory Nava shooting Mi Familia. With this sense of attraction to film distilled in his youth, Nelson Grande’s rise from actor to entrepreneur was written in the stars. However, it wasn’t until Grande was 21 that he would take a leap of faith and pursue a career as an actor and never looked back.

Grande has been in national commercials and has done guest spots on several TV shows including the critically acclaimed HBO show Eastbound and Down and Grey’s Anatomy. While pursuing and acting career Grande managed several startups and soon found that business came easy to him.

Although he continues to thrive as an actor, his story was similar to many actors of color in Hollywood. He found that the majority of the roles he was offered were rife with stereotypes and thick accents. To combat the underrepresentation of Latinos in Hollywood, Grande took another leap and co-founded Avenida Productions in 2016.

Being a husband and father of three, Grande made it his company's mission to pave a way for Latino representation in media by providing access for their stories to enter center stage. Even with a quickly growing company in a fast paced business climate, Grande has not lost sight of the glass ceilings and obstacles that underrepresented communities face in same the entertainment industry. This year, his wife and him opened a studio in the heart of Hollywood that will serve as a hub for Latino artists and filmmakers to produce films, which is just another step to transform the entertainment industry to be more inclusive.

Parabeac

Self-taught programmer & entrepreneur from El Paso, TX. Ivan is a LatinX Founder & CEO at Parabeac, an early-stage startup working on a continuous design and continuous integration (CD/CI) tool designed to automate code conversion for fast and effective application development. Prior to Parabeac, Ivan ran a developer agency that consulted startups around the U.S. on building mobile & web applications. Ivan is also an OnDeck Founder fellow & currently works on Parabeac from Austin, TX through the Capital Factory Ventures/Accelerator program.

Camino Financial

Sean Salas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Camino Financial, a neo-CDFI FinTech platform pioneering affordable credit and financial products to U.S. Latinx businesses. As the CEO of Camino Financial, Sean has built a team of 90+ associates across two offices in Los Angeles and Mexico City, supporting thousands of underbanked Latinx businesses across the U.S. Sean works directly with the product and data science teams to build capabilities around data aggregation and machine learning models that predict credit performance and business insights in the Latinx market.

Sean is often featured discussing FinTech and Latinx entrepreneurship, including written articles and appearances on Forbes, Univision, and CNN. Prior to co-founding Camino Financial, Sean worked at a private equity fund where he invested $50 million in direct equity investments and helped manage 4 portfolio companies with over $250 million in combined revenue. Before then, Sean worked as an investment banker at UBS Investment Bank. Sean holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from UC Berkeley.

BabySparks

Gustavo is the co-founder & CEO of BabySparks, an education technology company that helps parents support the growth and development of their children. BabySparks’ adaptive early development program and marketplace for live and on-demand classes have been used by more than seven million parents around the world. BabySparks has been recognized by multiple organizations as a leading innovator in the early development and parenting fields.

Prior to BabySparks, Gustavo worked as an investment banker for JPMorgan (New York) and Merrill Lynch (London) advising clients in $20+ billion in equity capital raising and M&A transactions in the healthcare, consumer & retail sectors.

Gustavo graduated with Honors with a B.S., Industrial Engineering from Los Andes University (Bogota, Colombia) and has a Masters of Business Administration from the Darden School (University of Virginia).

Gustavo is an avid competitive tennis player and is passionate about his two sons, Nico and Luca, the inspiration behind BabySparks.

Caplight

Javier is co-founder and CEO of Caplight, a platform that enables institutional investors to hedge, generate income and take synthetic long & short positions on private company stock. Along with his co-founder, Javier started Caplight in early 2021 in order to bring public market-like efficiency to the private markets. Prior to Caplight, Javier was an early team member at Forge Global, the largest secondary marketplace for buying and selling pre-IPO stock. While at Forge, Javier oversaw the Marketplace business and helped scale annual transaction volume from less than $100M to over $1B. Prior to Forge, Javier helped advise on large M&A, equity and debt transactions in Deutsche Bank's investment banking division. Javier began his career at Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Investment Management & Guidance team, and spent time on Cowen & Company's Technology Investment Banking team. Javier holds an Economics degree from Occidental College. He serves on the Hispanic Scholarship Funds' San Francisco Advisory Board and is an alumni of Sponsor for Educational Opportunities' career program.

Deepblocks

Olivia Ramos is the founder and CEO of Deepblocks, which uses artificial intelligence to unlock real estate development potential across US cities. Olivia holds a master’s degree in Architecture from Columbia University and a second master’s in Real Estate Development from the University of Miami. She graduated from Singularity University’s Global Solution’s Program and startup accelerator and won first place in innovation for her Big Data navigation software during her residency at DARPA’s Innovation House.

FLOW

Adrian is co-founder and CTO of Flow, an operating system to raise and manage venture capital and private equity funds. Prior to Flow, Adrian was the CTO of Kitchit where he led engineering. Prior to Kitchit, Adrian was the head of engineering and research and development at Nitro, a document productivity company used by half of the Fortune 500 companies. There, he developed and architected their entire cloud offering including document collaboration and e-signatures. Prior to Nitro, Adrian founded 4figs which was a social media API platform for managing multiple accounts and identities. Prior to 4figs, Adrian was an engineer for Adobe where he helped develop several patented technologies. Adrian and his team went on to win a technology Emmy for their work on video streaming.

Boatrax

Arturo Malave first entered the world of technology and innovation in 1999 while working at Solollama.com, one of the first voice-over-ip companies to service the Latin American market with pre-paid virtual calling cards. Recognizing the potential of using marketing, product and technology into one streamlined role, Malave shifted his professional role within the company from Marketing Director to Director of IT. Responsible for the technological growth of the company, he grew passionate for technology products, data and innovation. After leaving Solollama in 2004, he launched his own consulting company in Venezuela, Execute Sistemas Inteligentes where he and his partners crafted a customized CRM and Knowledge Management System that would allow them to automate the consulting process for SAP implementations in the Venezuelan market. During this time he lead a group of highly skilled technology architects who applied new technologies in building solutions for clients. Malave’s entrepreneurial transformation went full circle while boating with his brother-in-law, and now Co-Founder, David Villegas. He noticed how David was laboriously recording every relevant engine metric of their daily boating excursion and realized the importance of developing a technology that would redefine the boat owner’s boating experience. This marked the birth of Boatrax, a Smart Boat Platform with cutting-edge insights that enables consistently safe, hassle-free, and efficient boating experiences.

FLOW

Brendan is co-founder and CEO of Flow, an operating system to raise and manage venture capital and private equity funds. Outside of Flow, Brendan is both an investor and advisor to dozens of mission driven companies. Prior to Flow, Brendan founded Kitchit, an award winning company. Prior to becoming a founder, he was an investment banker at Perella Weinberg Partners, where he focused on the real estate, oil & gas and automotive industries. Brendan received an MBA from Stanford and was awarded scholarships to study finance and theology at Fordham, graduating summa cum laude. Named one of Forbes 30 Under 30, his focus is empowering people through community and innovation.

Caplight

Justin is co-founder and CTO of Caplight. Along with his co-founder, Justin started Caplight in early 2021 in order to bring public market-like efficiency to the private markets. Prior to Caplight, Justin was an early team member at Forge Global, the largest secondary marketplace for buying and selling pre-IPO stock. Justin spearheaded much of the early technology development at Forge including the building of order-matching, deal closing, and auction products. Prior to Forge, Justin worked at early-stage software companies building their technology from 0 to 1. Justin holds a BA from Northwestern University, where he studied Economics, Math and Computer Science.

GroWrk

Carlos Escutia is the founder & CEO of GroWrk Remote, a global technology platform building the infrastructure for the future of work. Before GroWrk, he co-founded and was the Head of Business and Operations of CasaOne, a venture-backed furniture rental tech company ($78m in funding raised to date). Previously, Carlos was an Investment Officer at FIS Venture Fund, a $100m growth equity fund based in Mexico City. He was also an Investment Banker at Wells Fargo Securities and Barclays Capital, providing M&A and capital raising services to Fortune 500 companies totaling over 4 Billion USD in closed transactions. He holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Lilu

Adriana is co-founder and CEO at Lilu. She holds a Masters in Integrated Product Design from UPenn and a BSc from MIT in Mathematics and Computer Science. Prior to Lilu she worked at Morgan Stanley's Liquidity Risk software team. She has been named one of the top 30 Femtech Healthcare Influencers in 2019 and has won awards such as the SheKnows BlogHer competition (2019) and the AlphaLabGear Hardware cup (2018). She has represented Lilu at SXSW, and TechCrunch Battlefield, and the Anita.B Org 2020 PitcHer at GraceHopper. She and her co-founder are YC and NSF I-Corps fellows and their patent was recognized as Philadelphia’s invention of the year in 2019. In her spare time Adriana loves to run, cycle and attempting to snowboard.

Keyo

Cayetana is a co-founder at Keyo. Keyo is building the first privacy-focused, global identity network. With a contactless scan of the palm, users can pay in stores, unlock doors, redeem tickets, clock in and out, identify themselves, and more. Cayetana has won recognition as a Women Tech Founder in the USA and Latin America and has presented alongside Mark Randolph, Co-founder of Netflix, and Duncan Wardle, Head of Innovation at Disney.

Lilu

Sujay, co-founder and COO at Lilu, got a Masters in Electrical Engineering at University of Pennsylvania, with a focus in Integrated Circuit Design. At the High Energy Physics Group at UPenn, Sujay designed the oscillator circuit for the ATLAS experiment of the CERN particle accelerator. Prior to Lilu, Sujay co-founded a nonprofit organization in India, to help survivors of harassment and rape by providing them with a platform to voice their grievances anonymously and access to self defence and mental health workshops. He also worked at Reliance Jio Infocomm, where he was an integral part of the team that launched 4G in India. He spent 2 years in Shenzhen, China, vetting and working closely with manufacturers to bring the Lilu Massage Bra to market and he is an advocate and thought leader in innovation for women’s health.

listo!

Samuel is the Co-Founder, President & CEO of listo!, a Fintech platform, democratizing access to life-changing financial services for millions of hardworking, marginalized communities.

Just before listo! Samuel, as part of the cofounding management team, took on a leadership role in building Oportun (NASDAQ: OPRT). His leadership helped catapult Oportun into a publicly-traded company and a leading provider of responsible, unsecured loans to the underbanked in the US.

Before joining Oportun, Samuel held roles at Apple, where he was responsible for launching and running worldwide supply/demand operations for the MacBook Pro. And at IBM Global Services, where he helped manage the deployment of complex technology solutions for fortune 500 businesses. Samuel also co-founded and currently serves as COO of the Rising Farmworker Dream Fund, a scholarship and mentoring platform for children of US farmer workers.

Samuel received a BS in Electrical Engineering, Cum Laude, from Cal Poly, SLO and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business; where he received the Bonini Fellow Award.

Samuel is a first-generation immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico, and grew up in Northern California. He is passionate about leveraging disruptive technology to improve the lives of marginalized communities.

Omnitron

Eric started his career by building sensors for drones at US Navy research labs and defense contractors. He then joined a startup company that licensed Navy IP that built a revolutionary motion sensor. That led to an acquisition by Google where Eric then transitioned to developing autonomous systems. He was the avionics lead at Google[x] Wing and enabled autonomous flight for their commercial delivery drones. He then worked for Tesla leading firmware and sensor integration efforts for Model 3. And was most recently at Argo AI and led the sensor integration efforts for their fleet of robo-taxis.

Eric is now the CEO and co-founder of Omnitron Sensors and a Board Member at Ascent Robotics.

Progeny Coffee

John Trabelsi has more than fifteen years of experience in branding and innovation in the tech world of New York and Silicon Valley. After visiting Colombia with Maria Palacio, his wife and co-founder of Progeny Coffee, he quickly noticed a pay disparity between Colombian coffee farmers and what large, internationally recognized coffee chains were providing. He also recognized that the quality of the coffee that was resultantly being sold in the U.S. was not up to par with the quality of the coffee that was available in Colombia.

Today, John is the brand visionary behind Progeny and its well-recognized farmer forward mission. He is also the leader behind the company’s innovative approach, "Beyond Trade™," in which Progeny has streamlined its supply chain, eliminated all unnecessary middlemen, provided transparency, and continues to lift farmers’ livelihood by providing its farmers with free education and technical support, and also through doubling their income.

Both he and his wife are now paving the way for transforming an obsolete industry ecosystem.

Progeny Coffee

Maria Jose Palacio, a fifth-generation Colombian coffee farmer who was born and raised in a famous coffee region in Colombia. After several years working in the design field in New York City, Maria decided to change careers and return to coffee in 2016 after seeing her friends and family in Colombia struggle to maintain a viable living through their coffee farms. Maria’s passion for uplifting others helped her to overcome small business obstacles and build a flourishing business as a distribution platform with the mission of empowering coffee farmers and lifting them out of poverty and helping their communities. Maria believed that Progeny needed to bring in education and entrepreneurship to these communities. Maria has been recognized on Forbes Next 1000 list, 100 Female Founder of 2020 by Inc Magazine, Mujeres Imparables by Telemundo, 12 under 35 Breakout Talent to Watch by SFA, and the latest book "The New Latina - 100 Millennials shaping the World".

Raddle

Liyani is the co-founder and CEO of Raddle, a platform powering facilitated collaboration. Prior to starting Raddle, Liyani was a CPA and spent nearly a decade in professional services with PricwaterhouseCoopers and Connor Group. She's led projects at high-growth tech companies including Snapchat and Survey Monkey with a key focus on financial operations and establishing processes and systems along a company's IPO journey. Liyani also co-founded Lundy Way -- a successful e-commerce apron company that has grown organically into one of the most prestigious apron company's revered by top chefs worldwide. The demands of growing that small business and a yearning to collaborate with other small business owners were key motivators for starting Raddle, which is a Techstars Anywhere 2021 company backed by Andy Ballester, the co-founder of GoFundMe.

Remoov

Luis is the founder and CEO of Remoov, a San Francisco startup fueling the circular economy. Luis is originally from Caracas, Venezuela. Prior to starting Remoov, Luis was the founder of Parenting Bridge and was a VP at ING Capital. Luis obtained a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Somos

Arthur is Co-founder & COO of SOMOS, the first dynamic platform impacting 650+ million Latinos for future tailored health and drug discovery. Arthur Garcia is also the Co-founder of the Contabi Alliance, an international association of independent accounting firms. Arthur has been recognized as a 2x TOP 20 Under 40 influencer by CPA Practice Advisor for his work in the accounting industry. He has consulted hundreds of accounting firms and under his leadership at ATAX (acquired), a large national tax and business services franchise was recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine as a TOP 500 Franchise opportunity in 2019. Arthur recently became a published author and his story was included in the Book Hispanic Stars Rising: The New Face of Power.

Arthur received his B.S. in Marketing from Colorado State University and MBA from the University of San Francisco. In 2019, Arthur graduated from the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative Scaling Program cohort 7.

Somos

Christian is a MD, Data Scientist (in training) and entrepreneur who loves to help, to learn and to explore. Passionate for technology as a powerful tool to create and to help exponentially; For the last 5 years working on Democratizing Biobanking and Precision Medicine for Latin America with Collaborative Science. Christian is Co Founder & CTO @ SOMOS where he leads Tech Integration & Innovation, Business Intelligence and Kaizen for Health and Growth Hacking

In 2019, MassChallenge & Accelhub Bridge to Boston Winner with "KPMD/PLZR": Smart Stethoscope and Universal Health Record using AI and IoT to help doctors take better decisions in benefit of their patients | Global & Digital Health for Prevention + Sustainability + Social Impact + Disruption in Medical Education

In 2019, Selected as Health Intelligence Advisor for the Research, Development and Innovation Council at UAEM State University to create the first innovation Hub & Fablab for Health exponential and disruptive technologies, allowing the inclusion of young students and helping them link with worldwide renowned institutions

2017-2019: CIO @ MiADN Mexico helping IT, Innovation, tech integration and sales for 3 brands, +30 employees, to create a network of over 300 health professionals leveraging nutrigenetics in their daily clinical insights.2017 & 2018: Global Impact Challenge (Singularity University) Finalist - KPMD : Universal Health Record; Transforming healthcare systems in developing countries by optimizing processes.

Christian enjoys hiking, rappel, coffee and playing piano.

Somos

Federico is a former professional athlete (soccer), entrepreneur and MD graduated with honors, passionate about data, healthTech, innovation and social impact. He has been deeply involved in research projects focused on identifying genetic biomarkers in different fields: diabetic ulcers, metabolic syndrome, sports performance, nutrigenetics and population genetics. As Co-founder and CEO of Mi ADN México, directed the development and research projects of the company in collaboration with national and foreign, public and private educational institutions, focusing all efforts on global health seeking to integrate technologies in the public and private health systems, thus achieving social welfare, improving education in preventive and precision medicine through users and health professionals. Federico was twice granted $400K by the Mexican government through the science & technology council for R&D. He also managed 5.5M+ in contracts for the health sector in Mexico.

Federico has been a guest speaker in International Congresses in Dubai, Colombia, Guatemala, The Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico, and the USA. He is an innovation and startup advisor, and serves on the scientific boards at multiple international medicine societies.

Additional accolades: Judge at the 100k Latam by MIT competition 2021. Member of the Top Tier Impact group and Silicon Valley Leadership group. Bronze medal winner of the IAB lab data storytelling in 2020 with the SOMOS “Mestizo” campaign co-branded with cerveza Victoria in México. Chosen as Latino Voces de la comunidad ambassador in 2021 and featured in LatinX Business Success book in 2021.

OpenField

Ari Trujillo-Wesler (she / they) is the Co-Founder, CTO and CEO of OpenField. With nearly 20 years of experience to her credit, she is a nationally recognized expert in community organizing, political technology, and movement building. She has been the Deputy National Data Director for the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign and has worked for Wellstone Action, the AFL-CIO, the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, NationBuilder, and the Sierra Club among others before Co-Founding OpenField. Ari attended San Francisco State University and the University of Texas at Austin where she studied English and Classics. She is a non-binary, Afro-Xicana who hails from the East Side of San Jose.

ToDoolie

Sergio holds a degree in Biomedical Physics and is the Co-founder and CEO of ToDoolie Inc., an online platform that connects homeowners with young people for routine outdoor and unskilled services. Sergio moved to the US when he was 12 years old and paid his way through college pulling weeds. He recently received the O-1 visa status by demonstrating extraordinary ability in the field of business and entrepreneurship. As CEO he has raised $1.2 million in funding from institutional investors including the world-renowned Techstars Accelerator Program and top tier funds like Precursor Ventures (San Francisco, CA) and General Catalyst affiliated fund Rough Draft Ventures (New York, NY). Sergio has been recognized by Crain’s Detroit as a top 20 in their Twenties in business, and ToDoolie has been rated as the top Mobile app of 2021 in the state of Michigan. Additionally, ToDoolie was recognized by ChicagoNEXT and Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2020 as one of the ecosystem's most promising startups.

Sergio is also the founder and former President of Timmy Global Health WSU, a chapter of Indianapolis based non-profit organization whose mission is to empower communities to address health disparities in a sustainable way, and the founder and former president of the Wayne State Grappling Club, where Wayne State Students can explore and learn grappling disciplines like wrestling, Judo, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I am on Twitter:@sergiorod007