HIVE Pollinator

Dr. Jessica KEMPTON is a communication champion, a social entrepreneur, and an advocate for women and girls. A lifelong learner, she created her coaching and consulting agency KEMPTON COMMUNICATIONS in 2021. Dr. KEMPTON taught numerous communication courses, wrote for several publications such as Edible New Mexico, and managed the operations of her award-winning family business WILD LEAVEN BAKERY along with her husband Mr. André KEMPTON.

Over the years, Dr. KEMPTON worked on breaking the stereotypes associated with the African continent, while raising awareness about the issues faced and accomplishments made by African girls and women. Inspired by her blogging experience acquired through her online platform "WOMEN & AFRICA," she wrote her dissertation titled «Raising Her Voice Across Africa: Women's Empowerment Through Digital Storytelling (2019)». The latter is a case study that examines how African women have successfully used a U.S.-based feminist digital platform to improve their lives and the lives of others.

Tapping into her life and work experiences as a University professor and a business owner, Dr. KEMPTON looks forward to supporting mentees who welcome personal and professional feedback to get themselves and their projects to the next level. Her mentorship approach suggests that the mentee is actively and positively involved in the process through open and honest communication with the mentor. For Dr. KEMPTON, the ideal format for a fruitful mentor-mentee relationship is a bi-monthly meeting (online / f2f) paired with a weekly email exchange.

Trained journalist, Dr. KEMPTON is the first daughter of a Cameroonian Christian family whose father is a former Mayor and the mother, a Certified Public Accountant. A free spirit, she loves to travel and chocolate.

Jeff Jaeckle loves helping people to express their dreams, desires, and visions through writing. With over 20 years of experience as a college writing instructor and editor, Jeff knows how to make the experience of writing personal, passionate, and surprisingly enjoyable. He shows business owners how to use compelling language to define their company’s brand, mission, and connections to local communities, including how to generate excitement and enthusiasm for their company’s products and services. Jeff looks forward to mentorship relationships that include open-ended and imaginative conversations to create something that business owners can be proud of and eager to share with the world. Let’s get started!

Angelisa Murray, CEO and Founder of Heritage Inspirations Tour Company, her love letter to New Mexico. After the culmination of her life’s work experience in the field and in this state, she has cultivated Heritage Inspirations LLC, New Mexico’s Premier Travel Company. Composed of a tribe of similar heartfelt folks who have rooted themselves to New Mexico, the H.I. family prides itself on cultural relevance, being relational and localized, honoring the Earth, and trailblazing New Mexico’s spirit. Being a humble steward of New Mexico means a strong ecological mindset (please leave no trace!) and developing a visceral connective tissue to the land and its peoples.

Angelisa values authenticity, integrity, and having a clear vision of what you offer and who you offer it to.
As a member of the travel industry, her values are centered around cultural preservation and education, being a steward of our earth, teaching our heritage through an immersive lens, highlighting the creativity through the people of New Mexico in our different regions, and providing a quality of experience (tour) that surpasses expectations while bridging the gaps for our travelers to better understand our uniqueness and diversity in each region. 

Experience:
Angelica has spent over twenty years of her life as an active travel guide for a variety of premiere adventure companies exploring and wandering all over the world, and yet no matter where she went, New Mexico always called to her.  “This is my home and after spending years excavating and learning from this wild place of heritage, culture and natural wonder, there is no greater inspiration to me than to share it.” 

Offerings:
How to follow your passion and create a business that aligns with your own authenticity. Angelisa's expertise is in hospitality and cultivating a more imaginative, creative and integral approach to travel. Specifically in tour design, development and educating travelers through immersive experiences that connect them closer to the heart of NM. Cultivating local relationships is the heart of business no matter what your industry is. Thinking outside the box and working with creativity. 

Goals as a mentor: To inspire others to identify what is needed to create a successful business, what is the goal, and what is the plan to build the company they're envisioning.

Trey Donovan Drake is the founder and principle developer for InfoArc, a web development agency that takes its name from the term "Information Architecture." Indeed architecture plays an important role in Taos' position in the world, as well as information systems.

Trey has been in web development since 1995. Starting from early forays into multimedia websites, he began working in network and systems administration in Silicon Valley, and later for a Berkeley-based Internet service provider; building servers, and dozens of sites for small businesses and organizations. Trey derives great pleasure from solving complex problems, learning new technology, and making things interoperate. He especially enjoys the creation of new work and communication of new and compelling ideas. Trey is also a musician, visual artist, and dancer.

InfoArc allocates a large part of their efforts to building and maintaining practical usage of solar energy and sustainable systems in the office, as well as helping clients who are interested in or using sustainability models in their homes and workplaces.

InfoArc's services and areas of mentorship:

• Web Development

• Cloud Service Management

• Database Development

• Information Management

• User Experience Design (Ux)

• Content Management Systems

• Web Design

• e-Commerce 

• Consulting

In offering mentor services, Trey aims to identify a path to clarification of goals, a roadmap to achieving them and a structured approach to learning and development of skills necessary to following the roadmap.

Michael Wojcik is a Distinguished Technologist at Rocket Software. He also spent some time in academia, working in computer science, literature, rhetoric, and professional writing. As a software developer he focuses on distributed systems, security, and mainframe emulation.

Michael believes in: treating people fairly, justly, and with kindness, and where possible how they want to be treated; equitable access to opportunities and resources; finding effective ways to understand and address systemic problems; and helping people live lives they find fulfilling.

He cares about making the field more accessible to people with diverse backgrounds, learning styles, and strengths. In his own field, software, he cares about quality, security, and usability above other things.

While not an entrepreneur, Michael has worked for companies large and small, including a tech startup. He has a lot of experience working with small teams, and particularly with people who can't meet in person, and often aren't even available at the same time. He's worked a lot in self-organizing teams that have to manage themselves and coordinate to make sure all the necessary things get done.

Michael is eager to talk about what each of you want to do and how you intend to approach it and offer his thoughts and encouragement.

Ron Romero, CEO of Life Elevator Labs, started his entrepreneurial journey in 2007 when he founded Intel eDiscovery Solutions. He learned how to negotiate, project manage, communicate scope-of-work to clients and his team, meet deadlines, and work with high-powered attorneys who weren’t always friendly. Since the he has had pivotal roles and founded several companies including one focused on real estate investment and house flipping, securing and creating re-occurring annual rental income through strategic property management. He found his purpose I lie in founding Life Elevation Labs, a business consulting and life coaching company, which allows him to utilize his core competence of years learning and experience.

Values:
Personal integrity, mindfulness, balance, continuous learning and growth, and helping others achieve their fullest potential.

Experience:
Over 29 years of experience in Business Development, Sales Management, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. Ron has a proven track record of building and growing successful businesses as well as facing adversity and building resilience along the way.

Offerings:

• Business consulting: from start-up phase through monetization, including strategic planning, project management, and business development and sales.

• Life coaching: focusing on mental, emotional, physical, relational, spiritual, and leadership fitness

• Artificial Intelligence Integration: enhancing small business efficiency and productivity through creating documents and content utilizing Generative AI

• Sales and Marketing: B2B sales, marketing, customer service, phone sales, negotiation, and strategic sales growth

• Creative Production: website setup, social media, video production, document creation, public speaking, mentoring, scriptwriting, and podcasting

When he's not working, Ron loves visiting his older son and his wife in Las Vegas, exploring Albuquerque's farmers and growers markets, hopping between coffee houses, mountain biking, and traveling to different parts of the world.

Sierra Duran is the President of Rio Grande CPA a local accounting firm providing tax, accounting and consulting to individuals, small businesses and nonprofits throughout the US. Her goal is provide quality financial information and have long term relationships with her clients making small ongoing impacts for long term benefits. She grew up in Alamogordo NM, went to collect at NMSU where she obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Accounting. She has been a Certified Public Accountant and practicing accounting for over 20 years including time working at 2 of the largest Public Accounting firms in the U.S. She lives in Taos with her husband and three children, dogs, cats, horses, chickens and cows.

Jesse Hood was born and raised in Taos in the early 1980s, and after 15 years of success in several high-technology startup organizations and one publicly traded company, Jesse moved back home to take a year and a half sabbatical. He worked at the Taos Ski Valley last winter and is helping start a small community farm and agritourism business with his father. He is currently pursuing new remote career opportunities in cybersecurity, AI, and other emerging technologies. Mentees looking for advice on business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing, customer success, entrepreneurial mindset, leadership, go-to-market strategies, coaching, and training will benefit from working with Jesse.

Doug has recently retired following a 32-year career in the energy industry. He's had leadership positions in supply & trading, operations, project management, business development refining, biofuels, marketing and strategy.
He's open to sharing his experience with initiating and leading projects, developing and implementing strategy, building cross-functional teams, and leading local and international teams.

Emma Streshinsky has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science and has been working as a software engineer for over a decade, with experience in a variety of different industries including pharmaceutical, real estate, architecture, and theater. She likes solving problems with technology and helping people understand what technology can do for them. She is happy to provide feedback on ideas and suggestions about different technical approaches to problems.

Coming soon!

Coming soon!

Coming soon!

After working for 28 years in various executive positions throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Mexico, Rose Reza returned to her native home of New Mexico in 2014. She soon found inspiration as the Executive Director of the Taos Entrepreneurial Network, dedicating her time to assisting local entrepreneurs with merchandising, operations, and access to funding streams. In 2019, Rose was invited to join the UNM-Taos HIVE initiative and, soon after, was hired to transform this idea into a reality. The HIVE officially opened its doors in June 2021 with a mission to develop a tech-inclusive ecosystem while launching the first incubator/accelerator for tech startups in northern New Mexico. The HIVE has served thousands of community members with digital upskilling, reading and writing support, and programs that empower both youth and adults to bridge the digital divide. In 2024, Rose was named a Woman of Influence by New Mexico Business First, and she became the 3rd recipient and first Latina to be honored with the Sam M. Walton Entrepreneurial Award. Rose and her team are committed to working with northern New Mexico communities to foster creative learning opportunities that engage with what is possible while inspiring dynamic growth and positive change.

Matt is co-founder and CEO of Enosemi. Prior to Enosemi, Matt was VP of Packaging, Photonics, & Mixed-Signal at Luminous Computing. Before that, he led silicon photonics at Nokia, shipping multiple chipsets for datacom and telecom applications. He was on the founding team at Elenion Technologies, a fabless semiconductor startup acquired by Nokia in 2020 that commercialized silicon photonics multi-chip modules for fiber optic communication. Matt brings more than a decade of R&D experience productizing integrated photonics. He holds a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington and a B.S. from Harvey Mudd College.

As the founder and first-time CEO of a venture-funded seed stage startup, Matt is excited to offer advice for anyone looking to launch their own tech startup while his experience is fresh in his mind. 

Seamus Berkeley has been creating paintings, photographs and prints in a variety of genres for decades. Dublin-born, Berkeley lives in Taos, New Mexico and travels extensively for inspiration for his paintings and photographic images.His paintings and images are extensively collected, both nationally and internationally, most of which is commissioned fine art paintings. He uses oils as his primary painting medium, focusing on a variety of subjects in a representational impressionistic style and digital camera and phone for his exploration of the natural world.

What motivates him to create artwork is that serve as reminders to the viewer of our existence in and as part of nature. The primary goal is to make artwork that reflects his personal experience of memorable moments of being alive. Artwork has the potential to evoke a similar memorable experience for the viewer.

Berkeley’s work is not only an expression of himself, but it is his own personal contribution to visually recorded history. He has won several regional and national awards for his artwork, including Best Portrait at the Oil Painters of America show in 2000. He is the founder and past-president of the Taos Society of Portrait Artists and a member of the Oil Painters of America. Berkeley’s work has been featured in such publications as Southwest Art, Information Warehouse, The Taos News, Art-Talk and The Trail-Gazette. His influences include esteemed artists Charles Cross, Nancy Guzik, Quang Ho, David Lefel, Ron Sherr, Richard Schmid and Teresa Vito. Additionally, he has traveled around the globe to study first-hand the works of master painters.

“The beauty of art is not only in the completed work but in its process. The creative process in art is a movement the external world is seen from the artist’s perspective and is then returned to the external world through the chosen media. The result of this reflective process is a work of art to be shared by others”
~ Seamus Berkeley