Hi, this is Paul Zellizer and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Manuela Guzman. And our topic is building a network of investors and founders for positive impact. Manuela is the head of network at Top Tier Impact, TTI, a global ecosystem of 600 plus investors, founders, and corporates dedicated to solving the world's most pressing challenges.

She lead TTI's network strategy fostering high impact connections that drive investment, deal flow, and partnerships across key hubs like London, New York, San Francisco, Paris, Singapore, Bali, and Dubai. A systems thinker with a strategic and creative approach, she excels at simplifying complexity and enabling collaboration. Passionate about sustainability, regeneration, and conscious leadership, Manuela is committed to scaling solutions that create a more equitable and thriving world. Manuela, welcome to the Awapreneurs podcast.

Thanks for having me, Paul. It's great to be here.

I'm excited to have you here. TTI is doing such good work. I can't wait for our listeners to find out more about it. Before we get into TTI, that was a very impressive bio. If there was somebody that wanted to know just a little bit more about you and your background before we unpack the great work that TTI is doing, what would you want somebody to know about you that didn't come across in that bio?

Well, so I think I will start with a little bit more with my background. I think that that's also quite relevant. So I'm born and raised in Medellin, Colombia. I have always been very passionate as as you hear at the beginning about impact, sustainability, and now regeneration. I I would say that I have built my career in in in different ways pursuing that that passion and that goal. I'm a business manager from Purdue University. I didn't know what I wanted to study. I like so many things from environmental engineer to business management to international business to marketing and design.

But, of course, nature and environment has always been at the at the core of it. So I went for for that career path, and I just started a lot more in the how could I build businesses in in sustainability. And then I joined, like, sustainable tourism as a way of developing my country in a more impactful and sustainable way and just, of course, noticing all biodiversity and nature that is here on Colombia. So that was the the how it start how I started my career, but always pushed to to for a remote career. I really like diversity. I love visiting new places. I love working in intercultural and and global with a global perspective. So some years ago, I traveled to Valley with some of the organizations I work with.

I was a leading another online community called Nomads Giving Back and Nomads Skillshare. So that's how I talked into a remote role with people from all different cultures. I learned new skills. And I I guess that's how I started to build in a little bit more about my career that also led me to some years back to top tier impact, which I am very excited to share with you more today and the work that we would do there. So that's in very in a nutshell. If you want to, of course, focus a little bit more on some parts of my career, happy to to expand it a little bit more.

And let me just say I love Medellin and what's happening there. It's it's a real sustainability hub, and just love to shout it out as I mean, Colombia in general is just a gorgeous place, but Medellin in particular. There's just some very out of the box thinkers doing innovative work in the sustainability and impact space that impress the heck out of me. And and so I just wanna shout out what you're all doing there in the ecosystem that you find yourself in. It's just amazing humans doing incredible work. So

Thank you, Paul. I agree. And we're hoping to to even strengthen it even more, something that we are working on this side as well.

So let's dive into top tier impact. My understanding is you've been there for about three years now, Anuela. Is that fair to say?