SUEGO Announces Formation of ESO Advisory Board

ESO advisory board to provide strategic input to advance SUEGO’s mission of accelerating sustainable human innovation

SUEGO, an exponential organization committed to accelerating sustainable human innovation, today announced the formation of its Entrepreneur Support Organization (ESO) advisory board. Members of the non-fiduciary ESO Advisory Board (ESOAB) will help provide non-binding strategic advice on company vision, innovation, risk management, and profitability.

Inaugural members include:

• Cecilia Wessinger, chairperson and founder of Mass Collaboration and former consultant of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation;
• Buke Cuhadar, vice president of global operations of the Global Entrepreneurship Network and former director of marketing communications of Endeavor;
• Debbie Irwin, executive director of the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund and member of the Virginia CDFI Coalition;
• Eric Patel, chief innovation officer and founder of Boston ExO and former advisor of Purpose Alliance;
• Flor Liévano, chairperson and founder of OrangeUP and global facilitator, Techstars;
• Jerónimo Pérez, director and founder of DIVRGNT and chief marketing officer of Rutanio;
• Joey Arora, vice president of growth of The Outpost and former director and co-founder of ecosystem development at AFWERX of the United States Air Force; and
• Monica Wheat, venture partner at Backstage Capital and executive director and co-founder of Venture Catalysts.

“We are extremely fortunate to have this distinguished group of community & ecosystem builders join us in our mission of accelerating inclusive innovation,” said Steven A. Rodriguez, Founder & Board of SUEGO. “These deeply experienced individuals bring unparalleled expertise in ecosystem building and economic development, and we are excited they see that our vision is both doable and an important step forward for the future of exponential startup communities.”

Buke Cuhadar
Buke Cuhadar serves as Vice President of Global Operations for the Global Entrepreneurship Network, a year-round platform of programs and initiatives created by the communities that celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week each November. Aimed at creating one global entrepreneurial ecosystem, GEN helps people in 160 countries unleash their ideas and turn them into promising new ventures. Buke has primary responsibility for coordinating the leaders of national networks in each of those countries while strengthening the collection of organizations that support them.

Prior to joining Global Entrepreneurship Network, Buke was the Marcom and Outreach Director at Endeavor Turkey, an affiliate of a global organization to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring and accelerating the best high-impact entrepreneurs around the world. While at Endeavor Turkey, Buke led the GEW Turkey campaign building a successful initiative and Board engaging more than 200 players across the entrepreneurship spectrum in Turkey.

Cecilia Wessinger
Cecilia Wessinger is an entrepreneurial ecosystem builder and founder of Mass Collaboration. Her work is centered on collaboration, equity and community culture. As a certified Cultural Competency and Unconscious Bias facilitator, she moves conversations beyond diversity and inclusion to connecting, engaging, and belonging. Her entrepreneurship path led to winning start-up competitions, a consulting role as ESHIP Community Activator with the Kauffman Foundation supporting ecosystem building practitioners, SXSW Pitch Advisory, SBA and GIST judge, and a multiple year delegate to the Global Entrepreneurship Congress. In addition, she serves on the board of the Institute for Work and the Economy and executive board of Startup Champions Network.

Debbie Irwin
Debbie Irwin is a Virginia native that discovered her love for entrepreneurship and small business during her time at James Madison University. Her senior thesis focused on Founder’s Syndrome and her research defined the path she would take for her career. How can we help more businesses avoid failure? How can we show our communities that small business is the cornerstone to the communities that we want to live, work and play in? These questions have framed the mission not only for her career path, but also for the organization she works with. Since her time at JMU, Debbie has worked in digital marketing for numerous small businesses and at the Greater Augusta Regional Chamber of Commerce, but eventually found her home at the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund, formerly known as the Staunton Creative Community Fund. She became Executive Director of the organization in January of 2019 and helped SCCF dig deep into entrepreneurial ecosystem building. She thrives on big thinking, collaboration, and watching people turn their “someday dream” into reality.

Eric Patel
Eric Patel serves as Chief Innovation Officer at BostonExO, New England’s first Exponential Organization (ExO) incubator which helps companies thrive through continuous business model innovation. We leverage exponential technologies along with an abundance mindset to help organizations stay in business, disrupt their industry and achieve exponential valuation. Our MTP is global exponential mindset transformation.

Eric holds certifications in QA, project management, agile, scrum, ExO and innovation. He is the founder of innovation initiatives at Staples, Perkin Elmer and Binx Health. Eric is a Project Coordinator for OpenExO, a member of the OpenExO Economy Core and Treasury Teams and serves on the board of SUEGO Entrepreneur Support Organization (ESO) and X-Ponential. Eric also serves as a coach/mentor for Company Builder TransferenciAP, the CYCLES Remote Innovation Management Certification Program, the MIT COVID-19 Challenge and the Humanitarian Innovation Hackathon. In addition, he was a contributor for the new Purpose Launchpad, serves as an advisor and organizer for Purpose Alliance Challenges, an ambassador for OpenExO, Purpose Alliance and Rutanio, a chapter curator for the upcoming 2nd edition of Exponential Organizations, and is co-leading the new Exponential Individuals (ExI) initiative this year.

Flor Liévano
Flor is a person who believes in empowering people’s dreams as the best way to turn traditional into exceptional. She combine over 10 years of experience in accounting, administrative and finance to help businesses improve and increase their impact. Flor currently runs OrangeUP in Colombia and the USA, where she support individuals and organizations to grow and accelerate.

Jerónimo Pérez
Jerónimo Pérez is passionate about change and transformation, being part of them across communication, marketing and innovation. He is convinced that success in change is achieved through Cultural Transformation. Jerónimo loves to help organizations communicate better. In a hyper-connected world, everything communicates and as such must be managed. Jerónimo is founder of DIVRGNT Comunicaciones, an agency focused on promoting a better communicated future. He is CMO of Rutanio, a startup that promotes the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem through the use of blockchain, and consultant for exponential organizations.

Joey Arora
Joey is currently a Chief Scaling Officer working to streamline and scale operations for a government software program (DoD Platform One) designed to get commercial software authorized for use on Department of Defense systems in days and weeks instead of months and years.

He is an Air Force Veteran, currently an Air Force reservist and has served as an Airfield Operations Officer in the US and in Afghanistan. During the second half of his Air Force career, he led innovation efforts and co-founded AFWERX (Air Force Innovation Program) to connect innovators and accelerate results for Air Force culture change and technology adoption. He scaled the government organization from 5 to 350+ people, they engaged over 100,000 Airmen, funded over 1,700 companies with $529M which led to 530 prototype projects and 21 scaling to serve the strategic needs of the Air Force. He was responsible for shaping the strategy around how the Air Force invests in small businesses.

Joseph has started 3 companies, facilitated Startup Weekends, been a 1 Million Cups organizer, and is a grassroots ecosystem builder. He is passionate about innovation in government, mission-driven, cares deeply about entrepreneurship, enjoys legos, working out, getting outside, and making stories. He believes change happens when you create a movement where people can get involved in building the future we want to be a part of.

Monica Wheat
Monica Wheat is a Strategist, Educator, Investor, and Venture Developer. A self-proclaimed #CapitalistCrusader, Monica is Founder and Executive Director of Venture Catalysts, a non-profit venture, and ecosystem development group focused on investor/founder education, an innovation hub, and large-scale entrepreneurial initiatives for over 40,000 attendees. She serves as a Consultant for Backstage Capital, co-producing their multi-city live investment tour and was the Managing Director of the Backstage Capital — Detroit Accelerator, a 4-city, global tech accelerator in investing 3 months and $100,000 in scaling startups for underrepresented founders. She is the Managing Director of Techstars Equitech Accelerator and Founding Co-Director of FoundersBoost Detroit, a global Pre-Accelerator.

SUEGO™ is a trademark of SUEGO LLC

Media Contact:
Carolina Palacio
media@m.suego.co