In February 2014, they launched Uptima Entrepreneur Cooperative to provide holistic and culturally relevant education, advising, and community to support diverse entrepreneurs in creating thriving businesses in service to their communities. Since then they’ve supported more than 700 individuals to start, plan, grow, fund, lead, and keep their businesses in their communities. And along the way, they’ve hit some pretty amazing milestones.

Uptima was born from their founder’s experiences – growing up in an immigrant family that leveraged entrepreneurial activities and cooperative economics as a means for financial stability, as an investment banker advising businesses at all stages, working on the founding team of a higher education startup, and collaborating with others who had experience in agricultural cooperatives. But mainly, they’re passionate about making the knowledge, language, and processes of starting, planning, growing, funding, leading, and keeping a business accessible and relevant to their local communities.