Meet The Team
Our team at CIED applies their in-depth understanding of startup culture and years of experience with innovation to integrate proven strategies and achieve optimal results.
Leadership Team
Manel Camps joined UCSC in 2007 after obtaining a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford and a postdoc at the University of Washington. As Professor in Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology at UCSC, he leads a research group whose goal is to gain a better understanding of how drug resistance evolves both at the single-protein and at the genomic levels. In 2014 he was appointed Provost of Crown College. With the strong support of Crown alumni, Manel Camps oversaw the development of a robust educational program focused on experiential learning. This includes an entrepreneurship training program, developed in close collaboration with Nada Miljkovic, one of Crown’s lecturers. In July 2021, he was appointed Kapany Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development (CIED), where he is working with various stakeholders to promote the entrepreneurial mindset in UCSC students and to improve the diversity and volume of career development pathways available for them.
​
Here's a radio interview to hear Manel talk about his experience: https://on.soundcloud.com/PmLML
For more click here.
Manel Camps
Faculty Director
Nada Miljković is a Continuing Lecturer at UCSC's Crown College, where she has significantly contributed to the development of Crown I&E classes and co-curricular programming, including the Lean Startup Bootcamp. She is CEO and co-founder of GetVirtual, a student run Project Management Internship Program, the Board Chair of United Services Agency, a non profit, and founder Artist on Art, LLC.
Nada's teaching career follows a successful tenure in construction project management. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Digital Arts & New Media from UCSC in 2009 and a PhD canditate in Digital Arts. Her diverse experiences and innovative approach to education and project management continue to inspire students and colleagues alike.
Nada Miljkovic
Project Manager
Marina has a passion for entrepreneurship as it allowed her to move from a single mother
working three minimum-wage jobs with no benefits to Director of Corporate and Foundation
Relations for a major philanthropy. Taking the risk to join a marketing company that provided
extensive training and encouraged her to embrace the entrepreneurial mindset, even when it
took her outside to the non-profit sector, changed her world. After a successful career in
philanthropy, she came to Crown College where she participated on the team that developed a
new classification of academic professionals, College Academic Managers, to provide the
support needed for the continued growth of the colleges and she served as Crown College
Academic Manager for eight years. Marina has a true passion for CIED as she knows firsthand
that entrepreneurship uniquely offers a pathway to create a life of fulfillment and purpose.
Marina Glagolev
Operations Manager
Entrepreneur Instructors
"When I started at Apple in 2000 we were a small group of creatives. The Gel iMac had just launched and one of my first assignments was to name and market what is now the iPod. We also were tasked with developing the look and feel of our first retail stores. That included the wide graphic panels, posters, screen content, signage, even the look and feel of the receipt. An explosion of products and services launched one after the next–iTunes Store, iMac, iPod Shuffle, iPod Mini, Mac Book Pro, iPhone, iPad and iPad mini. I worked on marketing many of these and more.
I also worked on a variety of films. These included motion graphics for the retail store, short documentary films for the web, launch films for our keynote presentations, and broadcast commercials. I've also led teams that developed and implemented a wide variety of cross platform creative strategies for our website, retail stores and social network."
Rick Vargas
Adjunct Associate Professor
"With extensive experience spanning academia, venture capital, startups, and corporate innovation, I specialize in identifying commercial opportunities that leverage machine intelligence as a core strategy. My work is driven by a focus on product development and human-centric design, resulting in the launch of products and businesses in fields such as spatial computing, computer vision, hardware, communications, e-commerce, and infrastructure."
Sri Rao
Adjunct Professor
Jeremy is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and facilitator. He brings this philosophy to CIED: some people will become entrepreneurs, but everyone needs to know how to thing entrepreneurially. Jeremy works at Google where he helps startups and developers build cool things with Google's technology.
Jeremy Neuner
Adjunct Associate Professor
Kati Greaney is originally from St. Louis, MO and came to UC Santa Cruz as an undergraduate in the Community Studies department and then returned as a graduate student in the Social Documentation program. She has always been passionate about storytelling and has a deep curiosity and passion for humanity. She has worked as a photographer and documentary filmmaker for the past decade and has been teaching at UCSC since 2017. Her work has taken her across the US, throughout Southern India, Cuba and Brazil. She is a mother of two living children and one who passed away. She is currently teaching at the college level, working as a freelance film producer, and working on building a business in honor of her son.
Kati Greaney
Entrepreneur Instructor
Yuliya Monastyrska is a UC Santa Cruz alumni, she graduated with degrees in Economics and Literature. She is a co-founder, executive board member, project manager and instructor at GetVirtual. She is currently the lecturer of the GetVirtual class (Crown 95) at UC Santa Cruz.
Yuliya Monastryrska
Entrepreneur Instructor
Alexa Loken’s passion is helping people. In 2014, she started Loken Careers, her third company. Since then, she’s been inspired every day by the clients she speaks with that want to make a difference in their lives and move forward in their career path. A serial entrepreneur and do-gooder, Alexa’s career has had many twists and turns. She worked at Indeed.com as a certified career coach for software engineers in both the U.S. and Europe, started a cause-based marketing firm, co-founded a recruiting firm for women in tech, and began her career while working for environmental nonprofits.
She’s also an Entrepreneurship Professor in the business schools at CU Boulder (now virtually) and teaches Public Speaking at Cal Poly.
Alexa Loken
Social Entrepeneur Instructor
Peter Koht joins CIED after a career that focused on the digital delivery of local government services. He was the founder of a successful govtech firm that went public in 2019. Prior to that he worked on broadband, parking and permitting policy for local government. Long ago, he graduated from UCSC with a dual major in music and history.
Peter Koht
Entrepreneur Instructor
Deborah Lindsay has her BA in Culture, Ecology, and Sustainable Communities at New College of California and her MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. She's the Executive Director of the non-profit, Your Future Is Our Business and former ED of Environmental Volunteers based in Palo Alto, CA that brings science and nature education to children in the Bay Area, throughout CA and NY, and she has a long career as an operations executive for startups, small businesses, and non-profit organizations. Once a daily talk radio show producer and host of Tomorrow Matters, dedicated to solutions of today for a better world tomorrow, an elected city councilperson in Pacific Grove, CA who ran on the first carbon-neutral campaign, and a co-founder of a long-standing non-profit, Communities for a Sustainable Monterey County, Deborah is committed to multidisciplinary solutions for regenerative living. Deborah also has a passion for mentoring women in leadership, public speaking, and entrepreneurship. She resides in Santa Cruz, CA, and enjoys this beautiful, dynamic central coast town she's called home for 30+ years
Deborah Lindsay
Entrepreneur Instructor
Wayne Fenton is an accomplished technology innovator and leader with extensive experience in building products for companies of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. With a strong background in software architecture and a passion for operational excellence, Wayne has driven significant growth and successful acquisitions through scalable technologies. His expertise spans development, operations, system architecture, and managing distributed teams. Wayne has held senior engineering roles at Upwork, Owler, Smarking, alarm.com, Qualcomm, Cisco, and eBay, among others. He holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and BAs in Computer Science and Economics from UC Berkeley. Wayne is also a dedicated mentor and advisor, supporting business leaders through organizations like Everwise and RippleWorks.
Wayne Fenton
Entrepreneur Instructor
Andrea Carafa is an entrepreneur turned academic, venture builder, and angel investor interested in biotech, climate, AI, and deep tech startups addressing health, environmental, and societal challenges. He currently serves as Director of the Blackstone Launchpad powered by Techstars, QB3 Entrepreneur in Residence, and CIED Entrepreneur in Residence and Lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches Hacking for Oceans. He has been named a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, delegate to the UN Science, Technology & Innovation Forum for the Sustainable Development Goals, and member of the Fast Company Impact Council. Previously, he founded a consumer tech startup, a sustainability innovation studio, and a food biotech startup, and conducted research, advised startups, and lectured about entrepreneurship, human-centered design, and innovation at Stanford, CERN, and Bocconi, among others.
Andrea Carafa
Entrepreneur in Residence
Student Leads
Rikuu Mikami is an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz majoring in Networks and Digital Technology. He was initially part of CIED as a student in the GetVirtual class helping out small businesses in the area. He went on to become a Student Lead helping CIED and GetVirtual grow through certificate planning and web designing. He is currently the playing soccer for UC Santa Cruz men’s soccer club and enjoys traveling, coaching soccer, and cooking in his free time.
Rikuu Mikami
Student Lead
Valerie Elneser is an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in intensive psychology with a minor in legal studies. She joined the virtual class in the winter of 2023 and after the class began working with Get virtual starting an internship with the Santa Cruz County Small Business Development Center. Later, she became a project management intern for the Crown 95 class, where she helped students learn and understand project management. Her responsibilities included teaching about business proposals, social media outreach, project management, and mentoring students on supporting their clients and their small businesses.
Valerie is working with the Salinas United Business Association, creating a partnership with GetVirtual to support Salinas businesses. In addition to her work with GetVirtual, Valerie is a research assistant with the Diversity in Development Lab and currently serves as a Collateral Consequence and Reentry Intern at the Santa Cruz Public Defender's Office.
Valerie Elnseser
Student Lead
Coming Soon!
Ishaan Bansal
Student Lead
Coming Soon!
Smeet Mehta
Student Lead
Coming Soon!
Iman Schaefer
Student Lead
Shivali Gulati is a senior at the University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in Business Management Economics and minoring in Technology Information Management. As a Student Lead at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development (CIED), she drives social media strategy across Instagram and LinkedIn to increase awareness of entrepreneurship events, courses, and internship opportunities, while actively engaging the student community.
Shivali also serves as a Project Manager at GetVirtual, where she collaborates with businesses to create strong online presences through custom websites and personalized social media strategies. In her role as a Brand Marketing Intern at Juniper Networks, Shivali contributes to the company's digital growth and web strategy, helping connect with target audiences through data-driven content and marketing initiatives.
Shivali Gulati
Student Lead
Andrea Gonzalez is a third year undergraduate student at UC Santa Cruz pursuing a Business Management Economics degree. After taking part in a business assistance course that is partnered with GetVirtual and allows students to gain hands-on experience, she discovered her passion for supporting entrepreneurs and helping their businesses thrive. Always eager to apply her knowledge in an impactful way, Andrea joined the CIED team in January of 2025 because of her desire to champion entrepreneurship within her community.
Andrea Gonzalez
Student Lead