Meet our 2019 Global Ambassadors
By Katie Russel
We are proud to announce our 2019 Global Alumni Ambassadors. These individuals were hand selected by the Draper team to represent Draper University of Heroes and to spread the word around the globe to recruit the next generation of Super Heroes. Our Global Ambassadors make up 24 entrepreneurs and innovators, representing 18 countries, across 14 Draper University sessions.
Our mission is to inspire people and accelerate ideas by igniting the entrepreneurial spirit globally.
Meet the team!
(from top left to right)
Chile: Jose Fernandez is a business engineer and the co-founder of Preferendum, a system which allows people to debate and vote with their cellphones using blockchain technology.
Peru: Angie Carrillo is a serial creator, 2x founder, advisor, investor, futurist, writer, speaker, global citizen, and an advocate of women in technology. Angie has worked as a business consultant, disruptor and advisor for Forbes 500 companies. Angie is a proud alumna of Draper University, Singularity University, Tecnologico de Monterrey & UC Berkeley.
Denmark: Nicklas Borgen started Denmark’s first mobile surf school. Little did he know that would lead him to start a company based on his passion for surfing and enable him to travel and learn from some of the most elite entrepreneurs and leaders through being immersed in Startup Hubs like Silicon Valley, London and New York City. Nicklas recently sold his part of the company and is now pursuing new ideas. Nicklas is excited for what’s ahead and loves to share everything he knows with other entrepreneurs.
South Korea: Ryan Moon is Head of WeWork Labs Korea which is the startup accelerating arm of WeWork. Ryan is also a fintech entrepreneur who co-founded Newsystock, a Robo-advisor based on a crowd-sourced algorithm platform and analysis tools. Before Ryan started Newsystock, he had years of experience as a business consultant at PwC consulting. He also has working experience with A.T Kearney and Polaris Securities (Now Yuanta Securities), at the Asset Management Department in Hong Kong. Ryan holds a BS in Management Information Systems from Yonsei University and graduated from Draper University, the best entrepreneurship program in Silicon Valley.
Argentina: Federico Ciappina is an entrepreneur from Argentina specializing in marketing and digital business. He is on the founding team of Ando, an on-demand delivery platform focused on ecommerce and marketplaces. He is the co-founder of #MardelValley, an innovation & entrepreneurship event hosted in Mar del Plata, Argentina. With a super-speed superpower, as a Universidad de San Andrés professor and a Silicon Valley promoter, he is helping to discover the next generation of superheroes in LATAM.
Malawi: Abena Lewis Foster is the Founding Director of Foster Lewis Business Services, a Malawian business advisory firm, as well as a Non-Executive Director of First Capital Bank, a regional bank in sub-Saharan Africa. Foster Lewis’s flagship product, africube.com, is an online platform that brings African deal-flow to global investors, and is increasingly gaining the interest of funding partners. An Attorney-at-Law by profession, Abena gained her Bachelor of Laws with upper second class honours at King’s College London. Prior to founding Foster Lewis, Abena worked at leading London law firms Clifford Chance and Macfarlanes, and then in private equity, with her last post in London being the Compliance Manager at AnaCap Financial Partners, Europe’s largest specialist financial services private equity firm.
United Kingdom: Joon Lee is a serial entrepreneur. He helped raise more than $3.3 million in funding and has participated in Draper University, Y-Combinator startup school, and Google launchpad.
(skip) Martin Canabal — Uruguay
USA: Kevin Longa is an international award-winning documentary filmmaker and startup founder. He explores world cultures through the perspective of food and the lens of the camera. He’s done this ever since he produced his first documentary investigating food corporations in high school. Currently he’s producing “TASTE” — an internationally award-winning documentary series that uncovers true stories of food entrepreneurs around the world: tastewithkevin.com
Argentina: Leandro Ciappina is an entrepreneur from Argentina focused in the travel industry and digital businesses. He is co-founder of teostravel.com, a P2P platform to make travel easy and travelers happy. Leandro is the co-founder of #MardelValley, an innovation & entrepreneurship event hosted in Mar del Plata, Argentina. With a time-travel superpower, as a Universidad Argentina de la Empresa professor and a Silicon Valley promoter, he is helping to discover the next generation of superheroes in LATAM.
Philippines: Jonathan Cosino Jaranilla is a Silicon Valley native with experience in logistics, cancer research, government regulations, and blockchain and a Fall 2015 DU Alumni. He is the co-founder of Ledger Atlas, a Draper Associates portfolio company, working with Governments and Companies around the world to create a borderless economy. He is interested in expanding the DU network by empowering the underdogs and making them Hero’s! His superpower is synonymous to the Honey Badger “a rebel with a cause”
USA: Grant Kellogg is an international yoga teacher, cacao ceremonialist, and personal development facilitator. He travels the world building community and holding the space for people to step into their highest superhero power.
Singapore: Sai Charitharth is the Managing Director of Shareable Assets Pte. Ltd. Sai is a Serial Entrepreneur who previously co-founded fintech startup, CashTrack. Sai has led multiple teams and projects in top organisations like BlueWhale Foundation, DairyFarm International Holdings, Cognizant, and SmartAnalyst. He worked as an advisor and evangelist for multiple blockchain startups like Harmony Protocol and Centareum. Sai volunteers as a speaker and startup mentor at GSE (Global Startup Ecosystem) and Nanyang Technopreneurship Center, Nanyang Technological University. In addition, Sai co-organises a weekly blockchain developer meetup and weekly AI training sessions. Sai is passionate and driven towards emerging and exponential technologies, and is a strong advocate of Blockchain technology.
USA: Courteney Real works in Investor Relations at Portfolia, a Venture Capital firm in Palo Alto, California. She also is the founder of RiseHER a community that is championing female led companies all around the world. Courteney is the host of The Real Capitalist Podcast, a weekly show featuring female venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Courteney was born & raised in Denver, Colorado. She completed her undergraduate degrees in Finance, Entrepreneurship and International Business Management at Arizona State University. She was a member of the Draper University Fall 2017 cohort, with her company Trader Jack. Courteney has a vast experience working within the Startup Ecosystem. She has done everything from being an early-stage entrepreneur to launching coworking spaces, with experience in seed-stage venture capital. Most recently Courteney worked on the Global business development team at silicon valley’s leading pre-accelerator Draper University. She is passionate about revenue models, early-stage investments, traveling the world and emerging startup ecosystems.
Brazil: Luciano Bueno is a Brazilian entrepreneur based in the USA, with experience in consulting, entrepreneurship and venture capital. Luciano founded a nanotechnology company during his studies at Draper University and has received several awards during his career. He was recently chosen to be part of Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Luciano is now starting his second company focused on biotechnology and the direct-to-consumer sector.
Ukraine: Roman Podenezhnyi previously worked with deal-flow in the best Ukrainian venture fund, managing the biggest Ukrainian offline startup community with 4k attendees yearly. Roman is now the founder of Tapstory, going head-to-head with Facebook by giving people the tools to tell stories on their personal websites.
Brazil: Gustavo Boese Pederiva is an IT professional with more than 15 years of experience in the insurance market. He has an MBA in project management, working the last 6 years as a sports trader. Gustavo now acts as an entrepreneur in an investment startup based in the sports trading market.
Israel: Doron Segev prides herself on her international attributes and comprehensive network, having achieved so through a variety of roles in global organizations. Holding a wealth of knowledge in the blockchain ecosystem, Doron is the Co-Founder and COO of Dropsicle, a non-custodial token swap at scale, and has consulted for multiple projects within the space. Her achievements include being an honorary member of The Ambassadors’ Club of Israel and currently serves as an Ambassador to the Rothschild Foundation.
(skip) Lingling Kong — China
Argentina: Borja Martel Seward is an tech & social entrepreneur from Argentina. He is the Co Founder of Lucus Ecosystem, a Global Shaper for the World Economic Forum, former G20 YEA delegate for Argentina and a Global Ambassador for Draper University, part of the DPV Network. Data Science oriented to Strategic Management and Sociology at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology. He is an external consultant on new technologies for the City Government of Buenos Aires and has been selected as a member of the Argentina G20 YEA Delegation. Prior to this, he led Business Development at Signatura after co-founding a Marketing & Sales Startup — Mana -. Prior to this, Borja comes from an Entrepreneurial background, working under the Customer Development Framework, studying agile methodologies and integral tools (DT, VPD, etc.), mentoring several Entrepreneurs at the Scalabl Entrepreneurship Academy & Incubator and organizing Trama’s Bootcamp, a 150 people 3 day event, that teaches entrepreneurship tools to high potential students across Argentina. He is a native Spanish & English speaker, with active studies on French. At his young age, he has lived and worked in Spain (MA), United States (NY) and Argentina (BA).
Canada: Marko Hrelja has over ten years experience in business development, research, growth and operating model strategy from startups to large organizations. Marko characterizes himself as a T-Shape person: broad experience with a focused and disciplined set of expertise centering around human attention. This allows him to have a flexible approach in solving problems while having the grit required to make things happen. Marko’s international experience in Africa (Ivory Coast, Kenya), Europe (UK, Germany), Americas (Canada, US, Guatemala, Peru), Asia (China) has emphasized the importance of agility, patience, and understanding as a good approach to creating value.
China: Luchang Zheng is the founding partner of Blockchain Hero, a founding member of Stockholm Blockchain Hub, Partner of GCP, a cross border consulting and expert network platform focused on technology. Former chief explorer of Robotics and AI at GWC, organizer and producer of GMIC (Global Mobile Internet Conference), former head of e-commerce & CRM at L’Oreal China, and mentor for MIT LaunchX.
India: Akshay Aggarwal is the CEO and Co-Founder of Blocumen Studios, a company started with the vision of enabling mass adoption of Web 3.0 in India. He believes Indian developers and founders are rightly placed to enable this transition and create opportunities for themselves as well as the global space. He has also been the key driver of Blockchained India, the single most contributing organisation in India in the field of blockchain with advisors from IBM US, Ministry of Electronics and IT(Govt. Of India), ConsenSys, World Bank, Eric Schmidt Foundation. Apart from this, Akshay was responsible for getting the Ethereum Co-Founder for his very first India tour. He is responsible for kickstarting activities for Stellar, ConsenSys, R3 Corda and Tezos in India. In fact, he and his team were offered to join ConsenSys and drive ConsenSys in India.Through all his efforts combined, he wants to make India the Web 3.0 hub and in turn, help the society evolve itself towards becoming a smart and sustainable borderless network. He loves to talk to people who have deep insights into gig economy, smart villages and society 3.0 apart from bitcoin.
Taiwan: Athena Chen is excellent in “Leading from behind.” She majored in Applied Chemistry, specializing in Protein Analysis, and also contributed to help women embracing novel technology, educate children to sharpen their potentials, assist men to seize better opportunities in their career paths. After graduating from National Chi Nan University, she joined Academia Sinica, a TOP national research organization in Taiwan, to unwire the mysterious art in Cancers and Human Embryonic Stem Cells; then went on to teach English to academics working to earn Nobel Prizes in their fields. In 2014, Athena had accomplished her own teaching materials and helped more than 100+ students to conquer TOEFL test to study abroad in the U.S. and Europe so far. Honored with full scholarship sponsored by Taiwan Government, Athena was chosen to be one of the 15 Taiwanese representatives to acquire the entrepreneurship training in Draper University in Silicon Valley last September and won the “Most Improved Award” among 80 entrepreneurs from 22 countries. Most recently, Athena works on her healthcare startup, iDNA4ID, to apply genetic analysis and healthcare insurances on Blockchain and has already prepared to open for fundraising now. “
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Draper University was founded by venture capitalist Tim Draper with the mission to inspire people and accelerate ideas by igniting the entrepreneurial spirit globally. Come join 900+ alumni who have launched their own startups, raised $220+M in venture funding and who work with leading technology companies to foster innovation. Live and learn in Silicon Valley during the 5 week fully immersive program and go from human to hero.
