Entrepreneurial Thinkers with Rob Ryan

In this episode, Rob and Ileana welcome a uniquely qualified and talented 1st time political candidate here in the City of Los Angeles, California, USA. Dulce Vasquez.

What is remarkable about Dulce is the story behind the journey she and her family made to the United States, as a one-time undocumented immigrant (Tampiqueña, from Tampico, Mexico) and how she has maximized her opportunities over the course of her millennial life while striving to do even more now in a political campaign where all the odds are stacked against her. Like so many of the entrepreneurs we have on our show, Dulce represents “the future,” progress and representation. She’ll share some context on Los Angeles, her policy vision, the story of her family’s support and finally the story of how a pandemic shone a light on her neighbors needs and inspired her to run for office.

Dulce is an active community volunteer, wife, dog mom and very experienced public policy professional who graduated from two of the best Universities in the USA, with an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and a graduate degree from UCLA, (University of California at Los Angeles) before going to work for one of the most innovative Universities in the country, Arizona State University at their LA campus.

Feel free to follow and engage with Dulce here:

Facebook: Dulce Vasquez for Los Angeles

Twitter: @vasquezdulce

Instagram: @vasquezdulce

Tiktok: @vasquezdulce 

DONATE HERE: https://www.dulcevasquez.com

We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers, and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA!

Plug in, relax, and enjoy some Spanish, English, and a fun dose of Spanglish as always. We're here to help inspire, educate, and empower you, so that you can build the future!

¡Salud y gracias!

Mentors Today's Team

In this episode, Rob and Ileana welcome a great, long time friend of Rob's, Yogi Roth, from right here in Los Angeles. Yogi is an accomplished professional storyteller, across multiple mediums including his primary work as the Analyst, for American college football, at the Pac 12 networks. 

Ileana, Rob and Yogi talk about how critically important effective storytelling is to every entrepreneur and their company and their customers/audience. Yogi highlights that no matter how overused the word "storytelling" may seem in popular culture, it is a required skill in today's content heavy world. He drops some incredible wisdom through his specific coaching on "how to" and "why" as well as his 3 pieces of mentor advice, but he also wows us with some of his own life stories. Just listening to how he communicates on this episode will be an enduring masterclass for anyone who is trying to craft "their story". 

Yogi was an American college football player at the University of Pittsburgh, then championship coach at University of Southern California, before embarking on his film/television/writing and media careers. He is an award winning Independent Film Maker (Life in a Walk/link below), NY Times best selling author, and regular television creator/producer, with a new Film releasing in 2022. He's an avid surfer, Yoga practitioner and is a loving husband and dad to his wife Amy and their two boys, here in Los Angeles. 

Feel free to follow and engage with Yogi, his film, and even his wife Amy's startup, KindTail Co, at these links here:

http://yogiroth.com

https://twitter.com/YogiRoth

https://www.instagram.com/yogiroth

https://www.facebook.com/yogiroth

http://www.lifeinawalk.com/

https://kindtail.com/

We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA!

Plug in, relax and enjoy some Spanish, English and a fun dose of spanglish as always. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future!

¡Salud y gracias!,

Mentors Today's Team

In this episode, Ileana and Rob are joined by Ian Paul Otero, one of the Founding Partners at Redwood Ventures, one of Mexico's earliest seed funds. Ian shares some extraordinarily detailed insights into the history and performance of Redwood's Fund 1, as well as his teams motivations and aspirations for their Fund 2, their expansion into USA via their new Austin Texas office and their profile for the sorts of founders and businesses they love to invest in. Ian and his partners Marco and Alejandro were some of the earliest supporters of Mexico's most vibrant local entrepreneurial economy, Guadalajara, and they continue to be huge advocates of founders, and of greater collaboration and transparency in the entrepreneurial economy as a whole. 

As you'll hear Ian brings a unique range of legal, public policy, economics and investment experience to the building of Redwood. As he says, he's not your typical Venture Capitalist. He is experienced in the design and execution of projects related to innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurship, venture capital and merger & acquisitions. He worked for several private companies and government agencies leading teams related to these topics like PEMEX, City of Zapopan, Red Bean Strategies and the Mexican National Secretary of Economy among others. Ian has a Bachelor degree in Law and a MBA from IPADE. He also has professional certificates in entrepreneurship, innovation, and private capital at UC Berkeley and Harvard.

Feel free to follow and engage with Ian here:

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/iotero

https://twitter.com/redwood_mx

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-paul-otero-31168427/

We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA!

Plug in, relax and enjoy some Spanish, English and a fun dose of spanglish as always. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future!

¡Salud y gracias!,

Mentors Today's Team

On this episode, Ileana and Rob are grateful to be joined by our first guest from Nicaragua/Central America. This unique multi-cultural, multi-generational team that’s come together across borders to empower and enable female health care, specifically sexual health and wellness of young women in Central and Latin America. The Lily Project team has successfully helped tens of thousands of young women from its origins in rural Nicaragua, but today’s conversation explores the team's ambition to do more, and their coming launch of the “Chava” app/platform.  Their growth of a for-profit technology based startup will take their localized impact in women’s healthcare and scale it regionally and globally. They joined us from their investor tour of the USA in late November.

The project, in all its forms,  is the “Why” for Anielka, a young, university educated mother of one, and her operational and strategic partners, Jonathan Butcher and Susan Cotton. Jonathan and Susan met one another while studying for their Masters Degrees at the Pepperdine University, School of Social Entrepreneurship in Los Angeles, California, USA. Jonathan is an experienced operator in the hospitality industry with companies such as Marriott, Oakwood, and local experience with the Nicaraguan Initiative for Community Advancement who has a passion for life in Central America. Susan provides her decades of executive marketing and growth expertise with big brand companies such as WellPoint, Cal Fed and Bank America in the USA to help scale this new project to it's full potential!

Feel free to follow and engage with Anielka, Susan and Jonathan here:

Linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anielkamedina/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanscotton/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanzanebutcher/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-lily-project/

Website:

https://www.thelilyproject.org/

We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA!

Plug in, relax and enjoy some Spanish, English and a fun dose of spanglish as always. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future!

¡Salud y gracias!,

Mentors Today's Team

On this episode, we're joined by OG Latino American and Mexico Venture Investor, Federico Antoni, founding partner at ALLVP, a leading catalyst to the entrepreneurial economies of the region. If there were a theme of this episode with Fede, it was "the people, the people, the people." He joins Ileana and Rob to discuss some of the best and brightest up & coming founders and their companies in the region, as well as some of their firms past experiences. He also shares his unique perspective on how he and his team, as well as the region has arrived at this moment, and what will be required to thrive in the coming years.

Federico is a pioneer in the venture capital industry in Mexico.  In 2012, he co-founded Antoni Lelo de Larrea Venture Partners (ALLVP), the first institutional early-stage venture capital fund in the country.  As Managing Partner of ALLVP, Federico has successfully raised two Funds focused on Seed, Series A, and Series B investments.  He has overseen 25 investments to-date across four sectors: FinTech, Digital Consumer, Healthcare, and Smart Cities. Federico, who is a frequent TechCrunch contributor, is an Entrepreneurship and Management Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received his MBA in 2004. He also holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Applied Economics from Paris Dauphine.

Feel free to follow and engage with Federico here:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/federicoantoni

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mantoni

Website: https://www.allvp.com

We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA!

Plug in, relax and enjoy some Spanish, English and a fun dose of spanglish as always. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future!

¡Salud y gracias!,

Mentors Today's Team

On this episode, Fran Oliva, Founding Partner at Plaintext Capital, shares his belief in the emerging crytpo-economy! He educates us on the central role that decentralized finance and crypto technologies will play in not just our "fintech" structures of the future, but our social, cultural and even governmental institutions. He shares the story behind he and his partners launching of Plaintext Capital, as well as their investment thesis and profile of the sorts of investments and teams they'll invest in as they move forward. 

Underlying Fran's educational and professional experience with JP Morgan, HSBC and a startup of his own creation, is a fascinating personal journey that has him sprinkled with the cultural roots of Argentine parents, a Spanish upbringing, European education and professional start in the Wall Street USA world of big finance. He's one of this powerful generation of Millennial and Gen Z leaders who are building the future for us whom we can all learn from. 

Feel free to follow and engage with Fran here:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/frenplaintext

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/folivavelez/

Websites: https://www.plaintextcapital.com/

We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA! Ideally, Season 3 will bridge you between these two deeply interdependent worlds. Plug in, relax and enjoy some Spanish, English and a fun dose of spanglish as always. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future! Salud y Gracias!

On this season ending episode, Ileana and Rob reflect on the incredible guests, stories and personal experiences we've endured during this Season 2 and our ongoing global pandemic during the first half of 2021. As always, there's laughter, honesty, thoughts on how we got here and excitement for where we're going together. The team shares some cool announcements about our new teammates joining us, as well as our plans to bring another 10-12 episodes to you, in a new Season 3, during the remainder of 2021. 

Season 2 brought us incredible conversations with these talented leaders, investors and builders throughout the entrepreneurial economies of The Americas;

Juan Conde, Episode 13: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawyercount/

Jolynn Vallejo, Episode 14: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jolynnvallejo/

Pablo Ximenez de Sandoval, Episode 15: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablo-xim%C3%A9nez-de-sandoval-0a180325/

Taj Ahmad Eldridge, Episode 17: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tajahmadeldridge/

Anna Raptis, Episode 18: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-raptis-cfa-1433b2/

Meghan Stevenson-Krausz, Episode 19: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghansk/

Santiago San Martin, Episode 20: https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiago-san-martin-a825a322/

Jessica Bedoya, Episode 21: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-bedoya-a556941b1/

Feel free to follow and engage with us here:

Instagram: @mentorstoday 

OR 

Ileana: @ileanajaf (twitter) (IG) 

Rob: @iamrobryan (twitter) (IG) 

GrowthHax: @growthhax (twitter) (IG) 

We're so grateful for you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the marginalized/under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA!  Plug in, relax and enjoy our English, Spanish and fun doses of spanglish conversations from Mexico and Los Angeles connecting with the best and brightest people from points unknown throughout the Americas. 

Please subscribe, follow and review on your podcast platforms as it helps others find the show. Share with friends and repost to your social media so we can help more entrepreneurs grow and discover new opportunities. Also don't forget, to please click on the "listener voice message" link in show notes, to submit your own personal questions or comments about anything you’re thinking about or need help with, to be featured on future episodes. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future! 

Salud y Gracias!

On this episode, Jessica Bedoya, states her powerful case for the future of female led entrepreneurial economies of Latin America! This dynamic and determined, first woman Chief of Staff and Executive Advisor to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, joins Ileana and Rob to share her story and help our audience understand the role and relevance of IDB ( https://www.iadb.org/en/fin ) and their IDB LAB venture arm (https://bidlab.org/en ) in building the entrepreneurial economies of the Americas, in particular, Latin America and the Caribbean. Jessica is a trailblazing leader, breaking barriers not only through her work, but through her presence inside of the IDB. She is an experienced public policy maker, skilled political officer and diplomat! She has built her career as a Policy Analyst, and Political Officer in the US State Department, served as the Deputy Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere Affairs to the US White House and as Managing Director & Senior Advisor to the CEO of Western Hemisphere at the US International Development Finance Corporation. 

In addition to the work she and her team do to finance and empower entrepreneurs throughout Latin America, Jessica's personal story is an inspiration to any Latina, whether American Latina, or localized Latinas throughout the region. She is a 1st generation American, daughter of a Colombian father and Ecuadorian mother, borne and raised in Rob's hometown, Chicago! A great love story and and many great lessons from her mom on grit, determination and self pride as a Latina.

Jessica passionately makes her case that right now, is "the moment" to invest in the entrepreneurial economies of the Americas, as well as the long overdue moment to amplify, invest in and support women leaders and entrepreneurs everywhere! 

Feel free to follow and engage with Jessica here:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JessicaLBedoya 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-bedoya-a556941b1/

Websites: https://www.iadb.org/en/about-us/overview  and  https://bidlab.org/en

We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the marginalized/under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA! Ideally, Season Two will bridge you between these two deeply interdependent worlds. Plug in, relax and enjoy some Spanish, English and a fun dose of spanglish as always. Please subscribe, follow and review as it helps others find the show. Share with friends and repost to your social media so we can help more entrepreneurs grow and discover new opportunities. Also don't forget, to please click on the "listener voice message" link in show notes, to submit your own personal questions or comments about anything you’re thinking about or need help with, to be featured on future episodes. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future! Salud y Gracias!

On this episode, Ileana and Rob are joined by one of the most dynamic young advocates for LGBTQ+ rights and opportunity in Latin America. Santiago San Martin, the Country Manager, Mexico, for the global technology services giant, Globant! Santi joins the show from Mexico City, where at a mere age of 33 years old, he oversees Globant's sprawling businesses in Mexico, and it's more than 2,500 employees! For long time followers of the Latin American entrepreneurial economy, Globant is one of Argentina's original global companies, and the original "Unicorn" in the region.  

Santiago shares his POV, through the lens of his unique life experience; coming out, being supported by the Globant culture and working inside the male dominated, too often machismo tech industry. He helps our audience understand that in the end, diversity/equality/inclusiveness, is really about talent and representation! He shares some great examples that show whether building companies or products, that the best of both result when being built by a diverse group of people that look like the markets they serve. He's a humble, but confident advocate and communicator and we're sure you'll find inspiration and empowerment in this conversation. 

Please also follow and engage with Santiago here:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SanSanMartin

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiago-san-martin-a825a322/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/junio-santiago-san-martin-he-him-/?trackingId=Ryyr%2B5qaQnyDp%2FaBOaWt%2Bg%3D%3D

Websites: https://www.globant.com/

We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the marginalized/under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA! Ideally, Season Two will bridge you between these two deeply interdependent worlds. Plug in, relax and enjoy some Spanish, English and a fun dose of spanglish as always. Please subscribe, follow and review as it helps others find the show. Share with friends and repost to your social media so we can help more entrepreneurs grow and discover new opportunities. Also don't forget, to please click on the "listener voice message" link in show notes, to submit your own personal questions or comments about anything you’re thinking about or need help with, to be featured on future episodes. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future! Salud y Gracias!