Executive Team
Katerina Morin
Founder & CEO
Katerina is a psychologist from Russia, and Fulbright Scholarship alumni with a Masters Degree in Communication Studies from University of Kansas (USA). Her expertise is in Organizational and Intercultural Communications. Moreover, since 2019 she has been a Nonviolent Communication trainer. She would love to contribute to establishing harmony in her community by teaching its members a peaceful way for conflict resolution and raising awareness about Restorative Justice as an effective solution for nonviolent crimes. Yet, her biggest passion is empowering future mothers by assisting them in creating healthy pregnancies and enjoyable birth experiences. She has worked as a birth doula and birth educator since 2016, and is the only certified Ecstatic Birth Practitioner in Latin America. Her dream is to found a natural birth center that will become a magnet for future parents and birth practitioners that want to learn and experience Ecstatic Birth. She believes her center may become the biggest driver in changing our current birth culture – which is dominated by fear and violence – into an Ecstatic Birth culture, or in other words, a birth culture that is centered around honoring women and that recognizes the nature of women’s sacred function and the importance of a birthing mother’s pleasure and psychological well-being. You can learn more about her work at www.BirthWithPleasure.com.
Harry Bushwitz
Chief Development Officer
Harry is an entrepreneur from the U.S. with extensive experience in construction. He is a former Citibank Vice President of Business Development and a former senior division manager at AT&T responsible for the conversion of the AT&T Universal Card portfolio. He has over 20 years of combined experience in operational and technical leadership positions in software development, project life cycle, strategic development and financial administration. He influenced stakeholders in cross-departmental initiatives to achieve organizational objectives. We chose to work with Harry because he has demonstrated skills in strategic planning and forecasting to lead teams to achieve optimal results. He is results driven, capable of evaluating and enhancing operational processes to deliver an efficient outcome.
César Gonzáles Ramírez
Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel
César is a Honduran lawyer and entrepreneur. He has been an international consultant in legal, banking, business, market and institutional issues over 35 years. He is a founder of C.A. Gonzales Associates, a firm that specializes in consulting about the modernization of private and public managerial systems, strategy analysis and implementation of sensitive options. He is the founder of Environmental, Education and Health NGOs, has been a Board Member of Honduran American Chamber of Commerce, and Founder of Honduras PRC Chamber of Commerce. He served as the ambassador of the Republic of Honduras in Nicaragua from 2002 to 2004. As a former executive director of Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo de Honduras FDDH he formulated and initiated a Judiciary Reform Public support and awareness program: Justicia Sin Política. He has conducted extensive research and consultation on overcoming trade and investment barriers for multinationals in Central America. During the last 12 years he has been involved in sustainable development institutional arrangements and public policy shaping in the region. César sees ZEDE law as a great opportunity to improve life conditions of Honduran people and was in the team that polished the English version of the ZEDE Organic law / Decree No. 120-2013 back in 2013.
Sergio Ra
Chief Architect
Sergio Ra is the artistic name of the famous Russian architect Sergei Nepomniashchii (name chosen to ease communication in the Western World) whose architectural style is compared to Vincent Callebaut and Jean Nouvel. Sergio specializes in ReUrbanistic Ecology. As a professor at Moscow Architecture University (Best Architecture School in Russia), he taught how to create a city that does not use the natural resources surrounding it but rather contributes to restoring them. Moreover, he is an author of his own method of 3D urban planning based on the most efficient use of sunlight to build an ultra-dense and ultra-comfortable city. His method is called Heliotecture. Sergio has been an entrepreneur since 1991 and successfully used his method to realize several innovative projects of houses and micro-districts. Among his most notable projects are a multi-use complex consisting of a large tourist resort and apartments north of Agios Nikolaos in Crete island, Greece, and ecological reurbanization of multiple large territories included in the approved master plan of the city of Shantou, China.
Advisory Board
Michael Strong
CEO, Radical Social Entrepreneurs
Michael is the CEO at Radical Social Entrepreneurs & Founder at The Socratic Experience. Michael is the world’s leading advocate of entrepreneurial solutions to world problems. In 2012 Michael was the one who signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the construction of the private cities, now called Honduran ZEDEs. Through his work on Startup Cities, including a Honduran ZEDE which was the precursor to Próspera, Honduras, Michael is showing how entrepreneurial legal systems can create prosperity in low-income nations. His 2009 article, "The Legal Autonomy of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC): A Scalable Strategy for Global Free Market Reforms" was the first article to show how the DIFC legal strategy could be used to alleviate poverty in developing nations. Michael Strong is focused on the entrepreneurial creation of better education and communities. With respect to education and communities, he has founded many small, personalized schools, most recently The Socratic Experience and the initial campuses for The Academy of Thought and Industry, the high school model for the largest and fastest growing Montessori network in the U.S. Earlier he had founded Moreno Valley High School, ranked the 36th best public school in the U.S. on the Washington Post's Challenge Index.
Jeffery J. Smith
Former Chief Editor, Progress.org
Jeffery is a political activist and expert in land tax. He is a former Chief Editor at Progress.org. He published The Geonomist, which won a California GreenLight Award, has appeared in both the popular press (e.g., TruthOut) and academic journals (e.g., USC's “Planning and Markets”), been interviewed on radio and TV, lobbied officials, testified before the Russian Duma, conducted research (e.g., for Portland's mass transit agency), and recruited activists and academics to Progress.org. He is a member of The International Society for Ecological Economics and of Mensa, he lives in Mexico. He wrote an impressive article “Where A Tax Reform Has Worked: 28 geonomic case summaries”. In addition to studying, teaching and lobbying for tax reform and sustainable economy, Jeffery also worked with hands-on projects like the re-sewage of Tijuana (Mexico) which he personally drank water from.
Rick Rybeck
Founder, Just Economics
Rick is an attorney with a master's degree in real estate and urban development who has worked on issues related to state and local government for over 35 years. In 2009, Rybeck established Just Economics, LLC to assist communities in promoting job creation, affordable housing, transportation efficiency and sustainable economic development. A key to Rybeck's success in devising and implementing new policy directions is his ability to listen and understand stakeholder concerns. His sense of humor and an ability to use stories to illustrate complex ideas helps him move stakeholders away from protecting the status quo. Assured that their views and concerns are valued, stakeholders can take a collaborative, problem-solving approach.
Wendy Rockwell Brouillette
President, The International Union for Land Value Taxation
Wendy is the President of The International Union for Land Value Taxation. Wendy lives in Monteverde, Costa Rica, where she became a witness of quite amazing economic growth thanks to land tax. Her great-grandparents moved from Indiana and Kansas one hundred years ago to be a part of the Fairhope Single Tax experiment in Fairhope, Alabama. The reason this experiment took place in the South was simply that is where land was inexpensive. Wendy shared with us Matthew M. Harris’ amazing document: “Lessons from Attempted Utopia: Fairhope and Arden” where you can learn even more about this economic experiment. In 1948 Costa Rica rewrote its constitution eliminating the military at the same time three Quaker boys from Fairhope, Alabama were being released from US prisons for refusing to register for the draft. In 1951 eleven Quaker families settled up in the mountains of Costa Rica, again where land was cheap enough to afford. Her father came along for the adventure. Today Monteverde is a tourist destination for people from around the world. Land prices are out of reach. What an exciting opportunity to demonstrate what happens when Land Values are collected to finance projects.
Emil Farach
Founder & CEO, F & F Creativa
Emil is the Founder and CEO of F & F Creativa - Guatemalan Textile Factory specializing in promotional items like uniforms. Emil found his factory in 2003 in a small local in zone 4, Guatemala City, with 3 workers. His factory grew little by little until it had a branch in San Salvador, Salvador. Right now it has two maquilas in Guatemala city, one in zone 5, with 55 employees and all the automated printing and maquila equipment for samples and development, and another one in the Boca del Monte sector, with 30 employees where they build inventory to maintain a good response time. F & F Creativa serves the most recognized brands in the region. Emil has very high standards of quality. His slogan for the company: “the success of our clients' projects is our success.
Hector Quintanilla
Founder, Be Business Smart
Hector is a serial entrepreneur, investor & passionate education shifter from Mexico. Over the years he's started various businesses ranging from franchising, retailing, eCommerce, and real estate development. He's a civil engineer with an executive MBA and a passionate lifelong learner. After attending Silicon Valley's Singularity University in 2013 his life was dramatically changed by understanding the disruptive power of Exponential Technologies. He founded www.BeBusinessSmart.com and became a mentor and consultant to entrepreneurs and business leaders helping them strategize to face our changing future. You can learn more about Hector in Quora.com where he's a popular writer in several business categories with millions of views and over one hundred thousand followers.
Pavel Egoriev
Founder & CEO, Energo Service Consulting
Pavel is one of the leading Russian experts in the design of integrated engineering systems and facilities with unique energy efficiency parameters. He is a founder and CEO of Energo Service Consulting, a company that provides a full range of services for the design of integrated engineering systems with unique energy efficiency characteristics for buildings and structures of any functional purpose and any complexity. Pavel is an innovator. He has designed and built a number of facilities in the field of automation, lighting, climate stabilization and construction that no one has ever done in the world. Currently, Pavel works as the chief engineer of Totur International, building a very ambitious project Gletscher City Resort. It is a cutting-edge indoor ski resort amid the desert of the United Arab Emirates. Pavel acquired his special set of skills in the system design of the most complex engineering complexes right after graduating from the Moscow Aviation Technological University. He was part of the group who developed the first man-piloted spacecraft in the USSR (similar to Space Shuttle in the US) and the Energia-Buran rocket complex. He was engaged in the development of the spacecraft's system hardware. The extreme conditions of open space demanded adherence to extremely high standards for the optimization and interconnection of all elements of the system. Professional achievements in this industry in 1989 brought Pavel a prestigious Award of the USSR Cosmonautics Federation. Pavel also previously worked in a number of government agencies, including the State Committee for Nature Protection, where he was responsible for the adaptation of defense technologies for ecological and medical problem solutions, and even held the position of CEO in a large oil and gas company that supplied energy to industrial enterprises.