Entrepreneurship Is a Growing Ecosystem, Sprouting in the Desert

How the innovationAcademy Works with City Alive to Create Change

By Rob DelCampo, Executive Director, UNM innovationAcademy

It may appear from statistics that New Mexico is a dry, dustbowl of education and business, blowing away like so many tumbleweeds into the desert. But delving a little deeper, it is more like an ecosystem of prairie dogs, whose earthmoving is making the soil more fertile and allowing seeds to germinate.

Those seeds are taking root in central New Mexico through a network of resources dedicated to creating diverse entrepreneurial opportunities that grow the people of New Mexico and New Mexico itself, into a productive, prosperous community and region.

And not only taking root, these slow and deliberate improvements to the soil are starting to bear fruit. One example is Mercedes Ortega-Kennedy, a recent graduate of the UNM innovationAcademy. 

A few years ago, Mercedes took a huge leap and joined the innovationAcademy (iA) program. It wasn’t just a jump into a new experience or a new lifestyle, it was her fourth attempt to return to school.

Mercedes was the first in her family to go to college. She is a third-generation Mexican-American. Her mother and her grandmother were migrant farmworkers and survivors of domestic violence. When she first started at UNM in the fall of 2002, she was working full time and she was married. The demands on her time increased, and she dropped out of college. She attempted three times to return to school, only to discover the requirements had changed, and the classes she needed conflicted with her schedule.

That’s when a friend told her about UNM’s Bachelor of Liberal Arts program, which helps non-traditional students complete their degrees. Mercedes knew she needed a degree in order to further her dreams. Through this non-traditional path, she created a customized program of study under Liberal Arts & Integrative Studies and became one of over 1,000 students at UNM who has enrolled in the UNM innovationAcademy (iA). 

We founded the iA in 2015 to open the door and create more opportunities for people of various backgrounds, interests and skillsets to come together using an experiential learning style. Of those 1000 students, more than 65 percent are first-generation college students, more than 50 percent are people of color and over 50 percent are female.

Why Now? 

The innovationAcademy started its work in 2015, just two years after City Alive was born. This was no accident. The founding of the innovationAcademy was linked with UNM’s commitment through City Alive to find new ways to support homegrown entrepreneurs. 

At iA, we use a cross-pollination approach. This experiential learning style prepares students for career and workplace success while increasing their core subject knowledge. As a result, while our students develop skills, they also start businesses.  

And that’s just what Mercedes did. During her term at iA, Mercedes used her life experience to design a custom program of study integrating business, technology, finance and healthcare disparities. She registered for cross-cultural communication and non-verbal communication. She also used Create. Sell. Bank. to learn about running an online business.

A few months later Mercedes participated in an iA pitch competition, pitching a new business idea called My Money My Future, a comprehensive financial web platform dedicated to empowering millennials of color in managing their money with confidence and building wealth in their communities.

She won and now is in the process of scaling. 

But she didn’t stop there. Mercedes went on to win a second pitch for a neonatal vital monitor, which aims to reduce infant mortality among babies of color. Since the pitch, she has been working with a team of four Hispanic, female engineers to develop the working prototype. They expect it to be ready within the year (2019), with a patent-pending filed through STC.UNM.

In terms of impact of the iA, 91 percent of pitch competition participants are currently in business, 54 student companies are in operation and 182 students have received academic credit to start their businesses. In addition, iA has awarded $321,300 to students to support their companies, with another $1.3 million in additional funds raised from outside investors on top. 

Mercedes is just one of the many students who has leveraged the innovationAcademy’s incubator approach to ideas, businesses and people to generate new opportunities benefiting her family and community.

Today Mercedes is employed with a college degree. She will start her MBA grad work in January 2020 for a Masters in Business at UNM Anderson. 

Connecting the Dots...

Through City Alive, Albuquerque leaders collaborate to ensure that entrepreneurs have the connections, resources and programs they need to succeed right here in Albuquerque. We believe that there’s a better way to build jobs — start local.