Our Team
Silicon Valley skills, Purpose-driven principles
Thrive Ventures’ team of innovation architects bring a wealth of experience in innovation strategy, exponential technologies, lean start-up, design thinking, and entrepreneurship, with all having been trained at Singularity University in Silicon Valley.
See below for a example members of our multi-disciplinary team
Francisco Milagres
Innovation Coach
Francisco is a visionary in transforming people and organizations. He combines strategy, technology, and venture capital to drive innovation and exponential growth. With an impressive track record he has successfully created and transformed numerous ventures, built resilient organizations, and cultivated future-ready professionals across a wide range of industries. Francisco holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Computer Science from the University of São Paulo (USP), an Executive MBA in Finance from the Ibmec Business School, and extension courses in mergers & acquisitions from the Kellogg School of Management (Chicago), exponential technologies and future from the Singularity University (Silicon Valley).
Kashif Hasnie
Innovation Coach
Kashif Hasnie is a futurist and serial entrepreneur having exited businesses to both Google and Tesla. He brings a unique perspective with an extremely rich academic background, which includes stints at places like Singularity University at the NASA Ames Research Park in Silicon Valley, and the RAND Corporation in Washington, DC. As part of the Smart Power Initiative Kashif advised the White House and the US Department of State on general atmospherics with an emphasis on natural resources in South and Central Asia. He is Senior Fellow with the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at University of California, Irvine.
Giang Nguyen
Innovation Coach
Giang is a FinTech entrepreneur based in Europe. Her company Vest Wealth Management (now exited) was a digital investment advisor aimed to democratize investing in Mexico and Latin America. In 2016 BBVA named Vest one of LatAm's most innovative FinTech startups. Giang's MTP is Democratize Wealth. She is passionate about creating equality in wealth distribution and economic development in emerging markets. She holds a degree in Finance from the University of Washington. She is a young powerhouse who can really help her teams think differently about the future.
Michal Monit PhD
Innovation Coach
Michal lives and breathes ideas and thrives at the intersection of design, innovation, data, entrepreneurship & impact. Michal holds a PhD in Sustainable Energy Systems, with distinction, from MIT Portugal, a summa cum laude Master’s in Energy Engineering from AGH-UST, Poland, and a Master’s in Renewable Energy Science, with first-class honours, from University of Iceland. Michal is an alumnus of Singularity University's GSP '12, a Fellow of Kairos Society and Thousand Network, and a recipient of the 100 Innovators Award at the Open Innovations Forum, 2013. In his spare time, he tries not to sprain ankles while playing volleyball and overcompensates for drinking little coffee with copious amounts of music on headphones, immersion in VR and graphic novels and reading about all sorts of emerging tech.
Diego Soroa
Innovation Coach
Diego Soroa is an entrepreneur & architect, passionate about systemic change and the creative transformation of organizations & businesses. He is a professor at IE Business School in Madrid, and an experienced lecturer, with two TEDX Talks. His work as an architect and as an artist has been recognized internationally. Diego is founder and director of 2 startups, Cuantics.com and Rise.works and was Entrepreneur of the year in Spain He was a Singularity University Global Impact Challenge Winner in 2013. He attended the SU Global Studies Program 2013 and is since Singularity University Ambassador in the North of Spain. For over 10 years he has led the first creative lab in Spain and consulted organizations worldwide.
Soul Patel
Founder & Innovation Coach
Soul Patel is an entrepreneur, transformation executive, and start-up mentor, and Founder of Thrive Ventures. He has extensive experience including: advising the boards of multiple publicly-listed companies as an international strategy consultant; strategy and COO roles in Private Equity, Consulting & Real Estate; exit of his peer-to-peer lending company to a $1bn investment fund. His last role was as COO of ExO Works, an innovation consultancy, which delivered 10-50X ROI initiatives for globally known listed companies. Whilst there he also trained Siemens Energy's Venture's Team. He is also a World Responsible Leader with the BMW Foundation, a graduate of Singularity University’s Executive Program, and is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants (FCA) and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).
KristinaMaría Troiano-Gutierrez
Innovation Coach
KristinaMaría is a TEDx speaker and advisor and has worked with Google, Apple, the San Francisco Giants, Uber, Televisa, and with astronauts, and olympians. She has advised clients in Sao Paolo, Mexico, the United States, South Africa and Europe. Her focus is on assisting clients in the areas of Pitch Presentation, Project Incubation, Edge/Entrepreneurship Approaches, Quantified Self Devices, MicroBio/Genetics/BioTech, Gamification, among other areas. She was also a seed stakeholder for a music/media microlicensing platform which was successfully acquired. She is a graduate of Singularity University GSP @NASA Ames, and holds an MSc in Molecular Genetics/Engineering & Microbiology (Chancellor’s Award Recipient) from the University of California and studied at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre Academy NYC.
Stan Byers
Innovation Coach/Advisor
Stan is currently working at the nexus of international development, advanced technologies, and cybersecurity with organizations including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Institute for Security and Technology, and New America. He was previously the lead for economics and development for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the White House National Security Council, a senior official at USAID, and was a leader of Ernst & Young’s Cyber Economics team. He has long experience in sustainable investment and risk in complex markets and on root causes of social instability, including in the U.S., Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia. Stan was a Global Solutions Fellow and Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Singularity University and a member of the TED Residency program. He is a board member of the Fund for Peace. He earned a B.S. in ecology from Purdue University and an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School. He also speaks Portuguese.
Matthias Schneider
Innovation Coach
Matthias is an international innovation strategist with a background in media and technology. He started his career pushing boundaries in media as journalist and senior executive his most recent role being Head of Digital (EMEA) for Bloomberg. He is an adjunct professor of Breakthrough Innovation at EADA and Executive Coach with IESE Business school where he also delivers Future Scenario programs to corporate clients and speaks on topics including digitisation, exponentiality, technology trends, organisational transformation, new business models and leadership/culture. Matthias has lived and worked across 4 continents but remains a European at heart. He was selected by EU Innovation Commissioner Mariya Gabriel as European Innovation Council Ambassador and serves as an EIC Accelerator Jury Member.
Andrea Castelli
Innovation Coach
Andrea is a CIO who is highly passionate about helping organizations transforming their businesses through the use of innovative technologies and processes. He has worked with global companies in different industries and geographies, running large scale transformation projects both as consultant and internal leader. Andrea has taught Exponential Innovation for the students at Universidad Panamericana’s Master of Engineering & Technology Innovation. Andrea was recently Global Head of Enterprise Architecture @ Coca-Cola FEMSA, leading the digital transformation strategy for the organization. Andrea holds a degree in Economics and Commerce at the University of Turin (Italy), a MBA at SAA School of Management of Turin (Italy) and attended the Executive Program at Singularity University. He has been appointed for 7 straight years as one of the 100 best CIOs of Mexico.
Tony Manley
Innovation Coach
Tony has extensive experience across all aspects of business transformation, including envisioning new business models, strategy alignment, project and program design and governance, and managing solution design, implementation and associated business impacts. He is excellent at articulating complex problems and solutions in everyday language that is readily understandable to both senior executives and all levels of a team, thereby helping to create shared achievable visions of project objectives particularly across business and IT. Tony also has a lifelong passion for technology enabled business change and is a keen observer of emerging technologies and the opportunities that they afford business. He has worked for International Airlines Group (IAG), HP, Department of Work & Pensions UK, Equifax, National Employment Savings Trust, Morrisons, GESeaCo, DHL, AC Nielsen and NHS Supply Chain.
Pascal Finette
Advisor
Over nearly three decades in technology, Pascal Finette has accrued all the experience you’d want in a high-level strategic advisor. Pascal held leadership positions at era-defining powerhouses including: Building a $1BN business unit as an early employee at eBay Europe; Developinf frontier technologies at Mozilla Firefox; Managing a $150M per year philanthropic fund at Google.org. He was the faculty chair for entrepreneurship and open innovation at Singularity University. Pascal started on the net before there was a web browser. He learned his way through founding a series of technology startups, launching a consulting firm to support entrepreneurs in scaling their own, and building a portfolio investing in early-stage tech companies. He’s worn many hats and knows what needs to go on in the brain under each of them to lead effectively.
Henrik Bo Larsen
Innovation Coach
Henrik has a passion for Exponential Digital Transformation, Innovation, Business Development and Change Management and spent 2 years in Silicon Valley as a digital transformation consultant. He is the founder of an AI and digital transformation company based in Denmark, and has worked on business development and digitalisation within Shipping and Pharmaceuticals in Europe and US. Specialities include: Business management: analytics, portfolio and performance management; Technology management: customer insight/design thinking, product/market fit, strategy alignment; Machine Learning and Data Science; Coaching and leading people. Henrik holds an MSc from Aarhus University and San Francisco State University. Certificates from Stanford, Berkeley and Singularity University
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