Beyond San Antonio

The same pattern that runs through Emerge and Rise, WINC Circle, and the San Antonio Applied Innovation Council doesn't stop at the city line. In the past year it's taken me to London and Mexico City, and it has two more stops already on the calendar: Limerick, Ireland in October 2026, and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea in January 2027.

In November 2025, Emerge and Rise won "SME Expansion Facilitator of the Year" at the Go Global Awards in London, where I met with business leaders from the UK exploring opportunities in Texas. In December 2025, I joined a trade mission to Mexico City led by San Antonio's mayor, meeting with the U.S. Embassy, COMCE, and members of the Mexican Senate's economy commission ahead of the 2026 USMCA review.

That same instinct built a real partnership with Papua New Guinea. Abena Asi, founder and CEO of Pacific NRGies, came through a fellowship with Cultural Vistas and spent time in San Antonio as a Circular Economy Research Fellow hosted by Emerge and Rise. Together we built a real deliverable, a playbook adapting circular economy practices for small businesses, later adapted for the Port Moresby market. That work is now a signed memorandum of understanding between Emerge and Rise and Pacific NRGies: a defined set of KPIs agreed within 30 days of signing, monthly coordination meetings, and an annual renewal review, not a handshake. I'm heading to Port Moresby myself in January 2027 to keep building it in person.

The same curriculum is now traveling further, on its own numbers. I built Safari ya Hustle, an eight-week entrepreneurship program, for Rays of Hope Volunteers in Kagio and Embu, Kenya: three tracks (side hustle, formal business, social enterprise), a week-by-week build from mobile-money cash control to business registration on eCitizen to a Market Day graduation with real sales receipts and a judged pitch competition. Positive Action for Development, a 350-staff, 15,000-volunteer civil society organization that reached 370,000+ people across seven Ethiopian regions in 2024 alone, is a standing partner for that same curriculum for whenever they need it, an org that size choosing to wait for this specific program says something about what it's worth.

None of this runs on one relationship. In San Antonio and Texas alone, the ecosystem side of this work touches economic development and civic partners (greater:SATX, Port San Antonio, the City of San Antonio's Economic Development office, the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the San Antonio Council for International Visitors, World Affairs San Antonio, TxEDC, and the Change Collective fellowship), accelerators (Founder Institute, Capital Factory, Launch SA, VelocityTX, Alamo Bio Center, FedTech, Gener8or, and Starburst), education and workforce partners (Palo Alto College and the Alamo Colleges District, Learn2AI, the AI Cowboys, the SA Hope Center, Family Services, the Millionaire In Training project, and SEED Spot), federal and international trade channels (Cultural Vistas and the International Trade Council), and small-business resource partners (Kiva, ADP, Hello Alice, SCORE, Nav, MicroMentor, Verizon Small Business Digital Ready, and local and national banks).

For Public and Private Organizations

An organization gets a governance structure, not a handshake. The Pacific NRGies MOU is the template: KPIs agreed within 30 days of signing, monthly coordination calls, and a formal annual review to decide whether to renew, terms most nonprofit partnerships never bother writing down. On the ground in San Antonio, that same discipline runs Emerge and Rise (100+ workshops and events since 2021, 300+ entrepreneurs engaged, 45 named partner organizations) and the San Antonio Applied Innovation Council, where membership is invitation-only and tied to sector relevance, not open enrollment, because the work has to move from conversation to signed agreement, not stay a mixer.

For Investors and Capital Partners

Nine years before Korevia existed, Atlas Start put the track record on the board: 260+ small and mid-sized businesses advised, client revenue and profitability lifted 25 to 40 percent. Korevia Advisory Group, co-founded in 2026, runs that same discipline at a higher altitude: transaction readiness, capital structuring advisory, market and stakeholder mapping, and due diligence, for companies from seed through Series B and international firms entering the U.S., across five named industries (AI and emerging tech, defense and dual-use innovation, healthcare tech, enterprise SaaS, advanced manufacturing). A capital partner isn't hiring someone learning the playbook on their raise, the playbook already has 260 companies behind it.

For Entrepreneurs and Founders

Safari ya Hustle has a curriculum, not a vibe: week 1 maps the actual local market, week 2 is profit-versus-revenue math and mobile-money float control, week 3 is pricing and social selling, week 4 is formal-versus-informal registration on eCitizen, week 5 is raising KES 10,000 through chamas, SACCOs, and Hustler Fund, week 6 is quality control, week 7 is a 3-minute pitch built around three questions, and week 8 ends with a real Market Day where every participant records an actual profit. Emerge and Rise runs the same rigor at home: 100+ workshops and community events, 300+ entrepreneurs and small business owners engaged, and 45 partner organizations providing mentors and funding access, an ongoing network, not a single training session.

None of that stays inside a workshop room. I write research articles, newsletters, and blog posts on entrepreneurship and innovation, appear on podcasts, and speak and lead workshops on design thinking, innovation, and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® for founders and teams working through the same problems Safari ya Hustle and Emerge and Rise solve for. Entreprenista profiled how I build digital tools for underserved founders, CanvasRebel and Bold Journey both talked with me about design thinking and innovation in practice, Voyage San Antonio covered the early Atlas Start years, and CMSWire has quoted me on AI and data security risk. I've also co-presented multiple online webinars series, and my Change Collective member profile covers the same civic-innovation work that runs through all of it.

For Colleges and Universities

Every project in my classroom at Palo Alto College uses a real San Antonio business, never a hypothetical case study, a rule I've held since going full-time faculty in August 2023. I helped launch the PAC Biz Innovators student club so building doesn't wait for a syllabus, and I was selected in 2024 as one of 34 changemakers across Memphis and San Antonio for the Change Collective fellowship. Currently I am a member of ACD Faculty Senate and District AI Task Force. That's the same curriculum Positive Action for Development, reaching 370,000+ people across Ethiopia in 2024, is standing by to bring in for its own communities, proof the model scales past one classroom.