Juan Barraza, a fixture in the Portland startup community, is joining VertueLab in a newly created role as director of innovation and entrepreneurship.
VertueLab is a nonprofit that supports startups fighting climate change. It started in 2007 as Oregon BEST, a statewide center of excellence to support cleantech startups. It became VertueLab in 2018 and launched a climate impact fund. It also runs the Cascadia CleanTech accelerator hosts events and helps founders navigate the federal grant process.
In his new role, Barraza will lead the nonprofit’s suite of entrepreneur support programs including growing the Cascadia accelerator and expanding the support and resource network for the founders the organization works with.
“VertueLab allows me to learn a part of the ecosystem I am not familiar with — how to interact with federal and state dollars to secure funding for hardware and difficult-to-fund ventures” said Barraza.
He comes to VertueLab after spending seven years at Portland State University in the Center for Entrepreneurship in various leadership roles, including director. A new director of the center was recently named. He is a past board member of Oregon Entrepreneurs Network and current board member for Oregon RAIN and Rural Development Initiatives Inc.
Barraza also is an entrepreneur himself, having founded and run VDO Interpreters, a video service providing interpreters in health care from 2009 to 2015. He is co-founder of the group Latinx Founders and an organizer of the event Pitch Latinx.
"We're so excited to have Juan join the VertueLab team. Juan has a strong and proven track record of supporting innovators and entrepreneurs in our region and his experience and networks in both the startup and university ecosystems will be a tremendous asset for us,” said David Kenney, president and executive director of VertueLab in a written statement.
Barraza said he found himself interested in a new career challenge after taking stock of his work during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I started wondering what could be next in professional development and the things I want to do,” he said, adding that he is still bullish on the work at PSU and programs like InventOR. “My foray into VC with Vamos Ventures (where he was a scout) and the accelerator for Latinx Founders, for me it was a moment of realization (that) I was looking for something else to continue that development.”
Barraza was also attracted to VertueLab based on the group’s work on equity and inclusion, he said.
“The executive team has made an intentional effort not just to put an equity statement on the website but take meaningful action to support programs outside VertueLab but also staffing to support their programs,” he said.
