Venture for America strengthens its presence in South Florida with a new Miami-based director of community partnerships Yamile Nesrala. Read on to learn more about her and Venture for America’s mission to help catalyze Miami’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by connecting local startups with top-notch talent.

Growing up in the Dominican Republic with a Cuban mother and a second-generation Dominican father, I believed in the power of entrepreneurship to change lives and communities before I even had a word for it. My father is what Venture for America founder Andrew Yang might call an “unsexy” entrepreneur. He didn’t figure out a way to hail a cab on a smartphone or refinance mortgages with a few clicks on a keyboard. But over the past 30-odd years (aka my lifetime), he built a plastics company that employs more than 300 people and is one of the top three in its space in the Dominican Republic. That company changed my family’s life; it has also contributed, in a small way, to the strong economic growth enjoyed by the Dominican Republic over the past several years.

Though I trained as a lawyer and had a brief stint in consulting, I’ve spent most of my professional life working with startups and high-growth companies—first as a program manager at Endeavor, a global organization that supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets, and later as a marketing and partnerships manager at CommonBond, a New York-based financial technology startup. When I first joined my husband in Miami this past October, I knew I wanted to contribute to what I see as a fundamental transformation taking hold here: Popularly regarded as a great vacation spot thanks to its beautiful beaches and thriving nightlife, Miami is fast becoming a hub for entrepreneurs across a range of industries including tech, hospitality, food and beverage, and health care.

Cue Venture for America, a nonprofit that places recent college graduates on two-year fellowships at promising startup companies in U.S. cities with emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems. The idea is simple: Startups in emerging cities such as Miami have a more difficult time recruiting the talented early hires they need to thrive and grow compared to, say, companies in San Francisco or New York, and young grads have no systemized means for finding or vetting startup opportunities. Venture for America levels the playing field by matching early-stage companies with highly vetted talent eager to work for them and make an impact. It provides intensive training to fellows in the skills necessary to succeed at startups and high-growth companies, as well as the mentorship, networks and resources they need to potentially found their own ventures down the line. The organization hopes that they will put down roots in their cities and contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem that is key to job growth and economic development.

Venture for America’s efforts in Miami have been supported by Knight Foundation with more than $360,000 since 2014. It has placed around 10 fellows each year in local startups such as Nearpod, Open English, Roam, and Ironhack. As the new director of community partnerships, I am Venture for America’s first Miami hire, and my primary focus will be to increase the number of high-growth company partners and lure a higher number of fellows to Miami. For 2017, our goal is to bring 15 to 20 new fellows to South Florida startups. I also hope to create greater alumni retention and involvement in the community, for example, by broadening our current fellows’ exposure to all the exciting things happening in Miami’s startup scene and facilitating the connections and resources they need to start their own ventures here. The broader mission is to generate a virtuous cycle of job creation in Miami; research shows that for every one person an innovation-oriented company hires, five new jobs quickly follow in the wider community. Finally, I hope to attract more South Florida donors to achieve program sustainability and ensure that Venture for America’s presence continues to strengthen in Miami.

I’m thrilled to join Venture for America and work towards a mission I’ve believed in since I was a little girl: the power of entrepreneurship to fuel economic development and revitalize communities. If you’re interested in being a fellow or company partner in Miami or otherwise contributing to our efforts, please get in touch.

Email Yamile Nesrala via [email protected]. For more on Venture for America in Miami, visit ventureforamerica.org/blog/location/miami.

Francisco D’Elia sees the effects of climate change every day in Miami Beach, where the city is installing pumps and raising streets to mitigate the effects of sea level rise.

Now D’Elia, a geographic information systems analyst in the city’s Public Works Department, is taking his big ideas for addressing climate change to Silicon Valley as the winner of Singularity University’s 2017 Miami Global Impact Challenge.

No global challenge looms larger than climate change in vulnerable sea level cities like Miami Beach, where flooding is a constant concern; with this issue as its focus, the challenge sought candidates capable of innovative and far-reaching ideas addressing the problem in South Florida. D’Elia won one of 90 spots in Singularity’s Global Solutions Program for his innovative idea dealing with the environmental vulnerabilities of Miami Beach. He receives a full scholarship to the nine-week program in Silicon Valley.

D’Elia took first prize in the local competition with a conceptual model that manages data from different sources—for example, from weather forecasts to storm water runoff—that researchers hope can predict and prevent weather disasters; his concept, enlarged onto a global scale using artificial intelligence with information from biologists, geologists and government sources, and loaded into one giant climate monitoring network, intrigued the judges.

With a passion for extreme sports, kite surfing and motorcycles, D’Elia, 33, describes himself as one who “never stands still and likes to push boundaries.” He was born in Brazil, studied geography and earth sciences in college, and early in his career worked for the Brazilian space program testing satellite data to map the degradation of the Pantanal region, the largest tropical wetlands in the world.

After continuing his graduate education in Australia (and founding a water sports distribution company), D’Elia returned to Brazil for risk mitigation work in the offshore oil industry. He also created an international trade company, which brought him to South Florida on business, where serendipity took over. He fell in love with the region—and with his future wife, a nurse. D’Elia subsequently decided to expand his water sports business to the U.S. and to shift his focus from the energy sector to climate change and disaster resiliency. (The couple now lives in Ft. Lauderdale with their 2-year-old son).

“All worked out perfectly,” he said, “because while shifting my professional focus to South Florida, I still had enough work between the two businesses, and then when the energy sector took a big downturn in South America, I sold the watersports business and got hired by [the] Miami Beach Public Works Department … and asked to join the geographic information systems group. During my interview [Miami Beach City Engineer Bruce Mowry] asked, ‘Can you bring innovation to the city because that is what we need here?’ From that moment onwards, I knew I would have the support to do some great work!”

Under the mentorship of Mowry, he applied online for the Miami Global Impact Challenge and was selected as a finalist. Given five minutes on May 11 to pitch his idea along with four other finalists at Miami’s Venture Cafe, D’Elia won the challenge. Asked if he was nervous during his presentation, D’Elia said the experience was “very cool, and I only got nervous when I understood the magnitude and huge opportunity to develop my ideas.” 

Regina Njima, director of global impact competitions at Singularity University and one of the judges, said D’Elia stood out because, “It was clear his idea was feasible and he would benefit by meeting like-minded folks who hopefully would work with him and bring his idea to fruition.”

The Singularity University 2017 summer program is currently underway at its NASA Research Park campus in Mountain View, California. Though encouraged by the progress he has seen in Miami Beach, D’Elia is eager for this opportunity, which includes access to Singularity’s global network of mentors, and is “going with big eyes.” 

Ana Cecilia Benatuil, the 2015 winner and organizer of the Miami competition, said, “Francisco was the whole package: He made a great pitch, had a really good attitude and fit the right profile—very technical but also entrepreneurial.”

“This opportunity will change his life and perspective on the world,” she said, “and he will go far.”

Betsy F. Perry is a freelance writer based in Miami and New York. Email her via [email protected].

Josie Goytisolo is founder and CEO of CODeLLA, a technology entrepreneurship and coding immersion program for Latina girls ages 8-12. Today, Knight Foundation is announcing $100,000 in new support for CODeLLA over two years. 

We created CODeLLA in December 2013 to bridge the skills and opportunity gap experienced by underserved Latina middle school girls in our Miami community. Now, with new support from Knight Foundation, we’re looking forward to expanding our work and providing more girls with a foundational knowledge of coding, developing their ability to think critically and helping them work collaboratively to build apps and businesses that solve problems in their communities. CODeLLA’s third cohort—our eight-week summer immersive coding and entrepreneurship camp—starts at Centro Mater, a best practice community center in Little Havana on June 12.

More than 160 girls have gone through our program since its inception. Our goal is to inspire Latina students to enter science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Presently Latinas represent 3 percent of our nation’s STEM workforce.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there will be 1.1 million computing-related jobs by 2024, but, as of 2015, only 1 percent of those jobs were held by Latinas. Every company today is a technology company and the majority of jobs available in the next decade will require middle skills—more than a high school education but less than a four-year degree—to meaningfully engage professionally. Unfortunately, most of the families we work with don’t know this.

One in 4 female students attending public schools in America are Latina. However, a fourth of Latinas nationally live below the federal poverty level and more than half live at levels very close to poverty. The majority of the students who attend our camp and after-school activities live in the Little Havana area where approximately 43 percent of the residents live in poverty.

Our students have extremely limited access to 21st century learning opportunities during the school year and summer due to costs associated with specialized learning, a lack of courses offered in the middle schools they attend and a shortage of certified teachers to teach the coursework.

Our mostly Spanish-speaking immigrant parents need help navigating an educational landscape they are mostly unfamiliar with as well as mastering the tools they need to better engage with their children’s teachers. The families we serve are mostly disconnected from educational pathways and the skills, credentials and certifications their kids need to compete in a global workforce, or the scholarships and services that can help them get there.

Most of the families we work with do not have computers at home. Our soon-to-be-produced podcasts will educate and provide resources for underserved parents on 21st century skills, digital citizenship, and local, national and global emerging tech ecosystems and labor markets—and how to compete in them in a meaningful way.

We equip our students with a foundational competency in computer science that enhances their future STEM studies; we use research-based curriculums from organizations such as Common Sense Media and code.org. We have had several successes. We have grown CODeLLA outreach programs at two local Miami-Dade County public schools, Citrus Grove and Hialeah Gardens middle schools. We successfully produced a summer game design camp at Barry University and provided scholarships to 14 underserved middle school girls.

In November 2016, CODeLLA successfully produced the inaugural She Innovates Tech conference and app competition in partnership with the Center for Computational Science at the University of Miami with more than 400 girls from Title 1 schools in Miami-Dade County. It was the first conference of its kind in our community. More than 25 female founders of technology startups and more established companies, scientists and developers inspired the students. The event featured plenary sessions, interactive breakout sessions and an app showcase with the top six teams from local Miami-Dade County public middle schools who pitched their apps solving a problem in our community. The winning middle school team had their apps built out.

This summer our campers will again meet female founders, innovators, developers and engineers who look like them. Being culturally competent is critical to providing programming in a relevant way to our girls and their parents. The language we use, the selection of teachers who look like them and understand the environment the girls live in has been critical to our success.

Madelyn Llanes, executive director at Centro Mater, summed it up like this: “CODeLLA has been an extraordinary experience for our girls. Not only were they getting coding skills; they were also part of a collaborative team which created a sense of community and family. I have witnessed their growth throughout the camps and the conference. It has truly been an enlightening and rewarding experience for all of us at Centro Mater.”

For more about CODeLLA, visit codella.org, and follow @codellainnovate and @JosieGoytisolo on Twitter.