Front row, from left to right: mentors Mike Tomas, Hugo Perez, and Ana Harris; Jerome Smith, VMS; and Irma Becerra-Fernandez. Second row, from left to right: Michael Foster, VMS; and mentor Andy Perez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhen I first had the idea of bringing venture mentoring to FIU, I knew I couldn\u2019t do it alone. I am fortunate to have four outstanding members of the Pino Center Advisory Board and Friends of the Center who attended the training and will serve as the leadership team for FIU\u2019s VMS. All seasoned entrepreneurs themselves, they\u2019ll be taking the lead in shaping the direction of our program.<\/p>\n
We also had the opportunity to invite our first group of prospective mentors to the training. They bring a diverse group of experiences from all walks of South Florida\u2019s business communities. It was inspiring to see how interested they are in reaching out to venture firms.<\/p>\n
In my life as an entrepreneur, I\u2019ve learned the benefits of learning from the triumphs—and mistakes—of others. MIT\u2019s rich experiences with venture mentoring gave us a great insight into both. We\u2019re so fortunate to begin our efforts with such a great roadmap.<\/p>\n
Yet we also know that South Florida is not Boston, and FIU is not MIT. We have a multinational population, with its own set of experiences and dreams. Just as MIT\u2019s community shaped the structure of their mentoring program, we will contextualize our program to our community.<\/p>\n
As we design our program, I\u2019m interested in your feedback. What sort of mentoring do you think our community\u2019s ventures need? And, if you\u2019re further down the road: what do you wish you could have learned from a mentor when you started a business?<\/p>\n
View all articles by Irma Becerra-Fernandez<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can anything match the excitement of watching a chance encounter evolve into something real? What a thrill it was to stand in a conference room at the College of Business Administration and welcome leaders of the MIT Venture Mentor Service (VMS) to Florida International University (FIU). A group of 15 South Florida business leaders and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[784,813,1190],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29800,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992\/revisions\/29800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Front](\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/tn_CIMG0515.jpg\" "\\"Mike")