FAWNS LEAP COLLECTIVE - Key Persons
Liz Brown has led an impressive career as a U.S. Air Force veteran, serial entrepreneur, technologist, and urban planner in her 15+ years as a community builder and consultant. After battling joblessness and hiring discrimination within the tech community, she became deeply committed to leveraging her hybrid skill set to build capacity and advocate for more inclusive innovation ecosystems locally and internationally.
Today Liz serves as the co-founder and CEO of Fawns Leap, a creative agency and think tank that is hyperfocused on working with startups, growth-focused organizations, and localities to foster and sustain inclusive innovation ecosystems and economies. Prior to her co-founding Fawns Leap, she was the Managing Director at Backstage Philadelphia, an arm of Backstage Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in underrepresented founders. Her role at Backstage included curriculum development for an international startup accelerator serving 24 companies with founders identifying as socially or economically disadvantaged, womxn, people of color, and LGBTQ+.
In 2018, she was awarded the title of Technologist of the Year at the Annual Rad Girl Awards. Liz has also been featured in several well-known industry publications and media establishments, including Communication Arts, DMI Review, Al Jazeera Media Network, and SXSW. Additionally, she co-founded and served as co-CEO of Webjunto, a well known design and development agency that served more than 100 tech startups internationally and was named Philadelphia's Best Tech Workplace for Diversity at the 2018 Timmy Awards. During that same time, she played a major role in conceiving and organizing one of the largest and most inclusive annual events at Philly Tech Week, as well as a monthly meetup series geared towards supporting local thinkers, makers, and doers with more than 1500 members.
Outside of her typical day to day, Liz is also an adjunct professor with a master's degree in Urban Planning from the University at Buffalo as well as a second master's in Information Design and Technology from SUNY IT. In her free time she hosts Parallax, a civic innovation focused podcast sponsored by Drexel University's ExCITe Center, the Design Futures Lab and a recording space provided by the Dornsife Center for Community Partnerships.
A self-described problem solver, Nestor Canales is an entrepreneur and technologist who is committed to providing consulting and support to startups and small businesses. He has spent the last 13 years creating digital solutions and is currently most passionate about the work he is doing to support other underrepresented entrepreneurs.