KIRCHNER FELLOWSHIP - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director
- Lead Director, Kirchner Fellowship Costa Rica
Job Titles:
- Director
- Lead Director, Kirchner Fellowship Mexico
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director, Kirchner Impact Foundation
Blair has over 15 years of experience in merchant banking and advisory services, specifically in marketing, back office operations and finance with a particular focus on IT and the agriculture and food sector. Blair is Managing Director and Co-Head of Impact Activities and coordinates operations, IT, research, analysis and also conducts specialty research engagements in business development and advisory services.
He is also a Director with the Kirchner Impact Foundation and Jotralair Holdings. In addition to his extensive background with the Kirchner Group he has performed research and analysis for financial services firms.
Through the Kirchner Impact Foundation, Blair and his team are experimenting with new, low-cost, high-impact investment models that can cost-effectively push modest amounts of equity investment capital and business resources out to historically unservable regions by harnessing the power of millennials to find, fund and assist promising socially responsible businesses. One of the experimental models, the Kirchner Food Fellowship, has become an internationally recognized leader know for lean impact investment capacity building with a portfolio that now includes companies like: Lucky Iron Fish, a safe, cost-effective, easy-to-use alternative to pills for those suffering from iron deficiency; Kuli Kuli a consumer packaged goods company selling healthy food products made with moringa sourced primarily from small holder farmers in Africa and central America and Tomato Jos a vertically-integrated tomato-paste processing company serving the local Nigerian market-the largest tomato paste importer in the world.
Prior to his current role Blair managed the front-line CRM activities at an IT multi-national Blair was the highest earning sales associate during his tenor of direct sales. Blair began his career at the age of 12 as a summer apprentice with Kirchner Group Founder and CEO Bud Kirchner.
Blair is also on the Board of Directors for the Christopher Douglas Hidden Angel Foundation a charitable organization devoted to enriching the lives of individuals with cognitive, emotional, and/or physical impairments through programs centered on the use of multi-sensory environments.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director, Kirchner Fellowship Mexico
Job Titles:
- Director
- Adjunct Director, Kirchner Fellowship Costa Rica
Celestina is a Political Scientist from the University of Costa Rica (UCR) and an Internationalist from the National University (UNA). Currently, she is pursuing a new degree in International Relations from UNA with a concentration in trade policy. She has experience in the analysis of draft legislation, international cooperation and trade, project coordination, and research.
She considers vital to consolidate the bioentrepreneurship generated from bioeconomy, promote innovation, and revive regional integration mechanisms to ensure the economic development of Latin American countries, safeguard food security, and adapt to climate change. She has also published several articles in the Observatory of International Policy, the Journal of International Relations, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and C3-Bioeconomy.
She is currently a specialist in IICA's Innovation and Bioeconomy Program. One of her main functions is the co-coordination of the Innovation and Bioentrepreneurship Hub for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Adjunct Director, Kirchner Fellowship Costa Rica
Eduardo has an extensive background in the agri-food sector, experience leading impact projects with small/medium-holder farmers, and rural community development. He ran operations in the Australian beef industry and worked as an agricultural consultant for Zamorano University, his Alma Mater. He has a master's degree in Agriculture from Mississippi State University and is currently pursuing a PhD degree at the University of Minnesota where he is assessing sustainable management practices that maximize agricultural yields and profits while minimizing the environmental impact.
Eduardo deeply enjoys service that implies a greater good, reason why at a very young age he served his country as a volunteer firefighter doing various disaster relief and community impactful projects. He is a global Peace Ambassador for Honduras and was recently awarded the MnDrive Fellowship for food security. He also has served the US National Science Foundation (NSF) as a researcher where he led a multi-state project within the scope of Food, Energy, and Water Nexus Security. Eduardo is a Kirchner Fellowship alumnus and after finishing his tenure, he joined the Kirchner Impact Foundation as a director for the Central American program. As a Honduran native, Eduardo is very passionate and motivated about finding solutions that economically empower underserved regions which urgently demand a step-forward towards food security.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Lead Director, Kirchner Fellowship HBCU
Hector is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, and mentor. He founded Grupo Paisano Impact Fund a unique investment fund that built successful community-based agricultural enterprises with innovative financing structure in Mexico.
He is currently the Founder and CEO of Loom Capital, which is currently structuring a very innovative Mesoamerican Landscape Regeneration Fund. In 2018, his work to improve the lives of small producers awarded him with the UBS Visionaries Social Entrepreneur of the Year for his work.
Hector has been invited to speak at international forums around Impact Investing and food security related innovation, since 2021 he is an active director in the Mexican cohort of the Kirchner Food Fellowship program.
Job Titles:
- Production Engineer
- Food Fellow
Jose Luis is a production engineer in infant formula formulation and drying process at Reckitt Benckiser. Additionally, he holds the role of co-founder at Desierto Verde, a vertical farming company. He is also involved in a family business focused on traditional agriculture production and is a member of the Global Farmer Network, empowering farmers worldwide by sharing experiences and amplifying their voices.
Job Titles:
- Director of Hunger and Sustainability Initiatives at the Hunger Solutions Institute
- Early Architect
Kate Thornton is the Director of Hunger and Sustainability Initiatives at the Hunger Solutions Institute and the Director of Global Education in the College of Human Sciences at Auburn University. She has a varied background ranging from business to biochemistry and is interested in utilizing her diverse knowledge base to bring sustainable solutions to help solve the major global challenges facing the world today. She is passionate about connecting students with scholars and mentors across a spectrum of fields to create an environment where students are empowered to create solutions for the future. Thornton earned her Ph.D., as well as an MBA and an MS in Consumer Affairs from Auburn University.
Kate also holds a BS in Biochemistry and a BFA in Painting from Clemson University, where she achieved many academic accolades, including being named a Rhodes and Marshall Scholar finalist and Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award recipient. Her interest and commitment to solving problems of hunger and poverty stemmed from adopting her children from Ethiopia. Both of her boys were orphaned because of extreme hunger and poverty and while thankful for their place in her family, Thornton has committed her life's work to eradicating hunger and poverty around the world so that other birth families will not have to relinquish their children for these reasons. Prior to her work in higher education, Thornton worked as a defense contractor in Washington, DC where she was part of a small team charged with developing and utilizing a risk-based investment strategy to allocate 16.8B in Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection and Public Safety funds for the US Navy.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director, Kirchner Fellowship HBCU Program
Lilí Marlene is pursuing her Bachelor's degree in Global Business at Tecnológico de Monterrey. She is a member of the prestigious "Líderes del Mañana" program, and has been awarded a full scholarship in recognition of her exceptional leadership qualities and potential for creating a positive impact on her community.
Lilí founded her own NGO, the IKNELIA Foundation, in 2021. The foundation's core mission is to empower youth in her community to address pressing social issues impacting vulnerable populations, including immigrants, homeless people and animals, orphans, and the elderly. Her ultimate goal is to inspire and motivate younger generations to initiate and lead meaningful social projects. Lilí firmly believes in the transformative power of conscious investments to drive positive change on a global scale.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director, Kirchner Fellowship Costa Rica
Job Titles:
- Director
- Industry Director, Kirchner Fellowship Program
Rod has 35 years of consulting and market research experience in the pesticide, fertilizer and biotechnology industries and has worked in over 30 countries. He founded and developed his company Agricultural Information Services specifically to bring new technology to agricultural input suppliers; this included establishing the first global database on weed, insect and disease problems of crops to track major drivers of change and give direction to the R&D of chemical active ingredient manufacturers.
Rod runs a seminar in Shanghai every year for Chinese chemical companies aiming to develop their businesses overseas. Earlier in his career Rod worked for the Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus OH for 11 years developing their agricultural inputs activities.Rod graduated from Newcastle University in the UK with a B.Sc. in agricultural economics.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director of Second Nature
- Founding Member of Kirchner 's Impact Private Asset
- Investment Director, Kirchner Fellowship Program
Steve, a founding member of Kirchner's Impact Private Asset and Fund Optimization team, has over 20 years of investment experience working in underserved capital markets domestically and abroad.
Today, he is focused on promising companies delivering smarter agriculture, cleaner energy and solutions for rural communities. Through the Kirchner Impact Foundation, Steve and the Kirchner team are developing new ways to invest equity in historically unservable regions of the world through an experimental model that has been described as "the Peace Corps meets venture capital." Using the model, the Foundation has made investments in the U.S., Mexico and Nigeria.
Steve is a Director of Second Nature, TrakRef, Shared-X and Lucky Iron Fish; and a member of the Stimson Center's Alfred Lee Loomis Innovation Council. Prior to his career in finance, Steve was a DEA special-agent. He is a graduate of Harvard with BA in economics and religion, and of UNC Chapel Hill with an MBA.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director, Kirchner Fellowship HBCU Program