Latino Founders
Even though there is still so much growth and change to see within the entrepreneurial field, Latino Leaders celebrates the achievement of leaders, founders and innovators who are building great things. Meet some of the players out there.
SUSIE JARAMILLO
Susie Jaramillo is an Emmy Nominated Director, an artist, a storyteller, an entrepreneur, and a mom. She currently serves as Co-founder, President, and Chief Creative Officer of Encantos. She is also the creator of the award-winning Canticos preschool brand. Her adorable characters & catchy songs have been beloved by millions of children who are growing up proud of their Latinx roots. Her magic extends to other storyworlds as well, including Tiny Travelers, encouraging kids to become World Citizens, and Skeletina, a gorgeous Day of the Dead universe where kids learn to conquer their fears and anxieties. Susie ensures everything Encantos does is in service to the child and advances our mission of developing life, literacy, and learning skills by marrying entertainment, education, and technology in ways that amaze and amuse. An accomplished speaker and advocate for her community, Susie has been featured in Forbes, NBC, NPR, Business Insider, NYT, etc., and has spoken at conferences across the country.
About Encantos:
Encantos’ mission is to inspire children to learn the 21st Century Learning, Literacy, and Life skills they need to thrive. We enable creators to teach the way kids learn best, through story. Our storyteaching platform uses games, activities, videos, books, and storycasts to bring 21st Century skills to life, all built by a diverse community of storyteachers from around the world. Our original brands include: Canticos: an Emmy-nominated, kidscreen award-winning blended learning platform helping kids become kindergarten ready in Spanish and English with Latin nursery rhymes. Tiny Travelers, teaching geography, culture, and world citizenship, and Skeletina, a brand that helps kids learn to conquer their fears and anxieties.
“I’m a two-time entrepreneur. The difference between this business and my first, which was successful and fueled me, is that I’m now building a purpose-based company that is setting out to make a substantial difference in my community. I am using my skills and superpowers to make a positive impact in the world, as well as a living for my family. There is nothing more empowering that building something you believe in, that is bigger than you. I have a tremendous sense of purpose and satisfaction.”
RUBEN ARTURO GARCIA
Ruben is a proven innovator in the testing industry. After two decades in product and business development, he founded Innovative Exams, LLC with the goal to provide more exam access by advancing the technology used for test proctoring. In 2012, Ruben was awarded a patent for his invention of new and innovative remote proctoring technologies. PSI Services later acquired Innovative Exams, which by then had a global footprint of testing kiosks and provided services to leaders such as Red Hat, Accenture and Cloudera.
Today, Ruben continues to change the market and is focused on making more certification exams within reach for testing candidates. Far from the typical serial entrepreneur, however, Ruben is a naturalized U.S. citizen who used certifications to earn his way through college at nights and weekends. So when he decided to design a test development platform, Ruben's priorities were bringing greater access and value to test-takers.
About Certiverse:
Certiverse is fundamentally changing the way certification and credentialing exams are developed, transforming from today’s slow, capital-intensive process to a streamlined modern model that encourages innovation and provides more access to certifications. Certiverse’s online platform allows organizations and their industry experts to work together in real-time to develop new exams quickly without high upfront costs and enables professionals to participate in an exam's success.
Certiverse helps learners succeed by democratizing the exam development process. Its revolutionary system uses industry-leading psychometric standards, intuitive machine learning, and asynchronous contributions from experts to quickly create rigorous, cost-effective exams. Certiverse is an industry innovator helping organizations to engage, expand and diversify their pools of experts, rapidly develop valid test content at scale, and create exams with lower environmental impact.
Since launching in 2020, the company has raised $3M in funding and was the first start-up to receive the IT Certification Council’s Innovation Award.
“It takes a talented team sharing a vision to make transformative change in an industry. I feel lucky every day to be surrounded by people with the same passion to create something new and life-changing for learners and professionals.”
MARICEL SAENZ
Maricel is the founder and CEO of Compound Foods, a company focused on the intersection of climate and food. Maricel has a Bachelors of Commerce, from The University of British Columbia and she attended Singularity University's GSP in 2017. She is from Costa Rica, where coffee and sustainability are a central part of the national identity. Maricel has a background in finance and previously co-founded Nextbiotics a synthetic biology startup addressing antibiotic resistance. She worked in international development in South Africa, with local entrepreneurs, and in Cambodia with Hellen Keller International on a project to empower women. She also started a company to help children with autism and their families better understand anxiety levels and thus improve their behavior. She worked with Monitor Deloitte in corporate strategy and innovation consultancies.
About Compound Foods
Compound Foods create solutions to the climate crisis by recreating our most loved foods using food science and precision fermentation. We are starting with coffee.
Climate change puts coffee at risk; increasing temperatures lead to lower coffee yields and quality and decimates coffee-producing land over the next few years. Coffee is one of the most consumed products globally but also one of the most polluting.
At Compound Foods, we are working on recreating the flavors and aromas of coffee without the plant. We are an early-stage food tech company building impossible foods for coffee. We produce the best-tasting and most sustainable coffee with food science and precision fermentation, recreating the same flavors, aromas, and benefits of coffee without the negative environmental impact. With our approach, we can reduce the carbon emissions of coffee by 90% and water use by 95%!
“My favorite part of being an entrepreneur is assembling a tribe of the smartest, most hard working people who are mission aligned and want to solve the same problem, all the way from team members, advisors, investors, customers, partners.”
OSVALDO MONTELONGO
Prior to ConnectCareHero, Montelongo worked as a global marketing manager for over eight years for consumer goods companies, ranging from oral care to paint and coatings categories, where he managed strategy, product development and brand rollout into new markets and categories.
Osvaldo is an active member in the Chicago Tech Ecosystem and focuses on diversity inclusion. He’s currently part of 1871, LatinX Incubator, IHCC, Entrenuity MoxE, Alzheimer’s Association of Illinois and most recently Techstars + Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures whose focus is on the future of longevity.
About ConnectCareHero:
Being a first-generation Latino and having personally experienced senior living with his father with dementia, Osvaldo knew there had to be a better way to engage older adults in nursing homes with more culturally relevant activities. He quickly realized how underserved brown and black elders were when it came to activity programming. That’s why ConnectCareHero helps organizations tackle social isolation by providing culturally relevant & inclusive activity programming, think of us as the masterclass for older adults 65+. Today ConnectCareHero serves thousands of adults and looks to expand their reach in coming years to other organizations looking to engage their senior populations with enhanced virtual programming.
"I love knowing that the work I’m doing in senior living tech is making a huge difference in the lives of older adults and their families. Bringing a smile to older adults, like my dad, is priceless, and plus who hates mariachi music or culturally relevant programming? No one.”
ERRETE DUNN
Co-Founder and CEO of Rever, the Frontline Excellence platform. Previously, Errette worked at Toyota, Airbus, Eurocopter, and Wrike, helping teams and business units to become more effective, efficient, and accomplished; mostly through the use of Lean practices and Change Management. Errette is an Industrial Engineer by trade, MBA by chance, wannabe rock-star by night, an entrepreneur from the start, and a proud father of six.
About Rever:
Rever is the Frontline Excellence platform. Through an easy-to-use app, Rever connects your Frontline Managers and Team Members so you can solve issues at the source. With Rever, your frontline can expose hidden losses and problems; connect and guide the right people to solve them, and you get real-time visibility and automated recommendations to multiply the benefits.
World-class companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mars, GlaxoSmithKline, and Grupo Bimbo use Rever to avoid Safety incidents, eliminate defects, and drive preventive Maintenance to stop productivity losses. All of this, driven by your frontline employees, not by a few experts.That is Frontline Excellence: to Activate the untapped potential of the frontline to elevate your people and performance with Rever. Rever is was co-founded by Errette Dunn from Mexico and Borja Gomez from Spain. It is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Barcelona, Spain.
“My favorite part about being an entrepreneur is working alongside people who are talented, good, and fun; all driven by a shared vision to rehumanize people at work.”