PANEL - Expeditionary Entrepreneurship: building informal capacity in disaster zones (inc'l COVID-19 response) plus startups with Jesus Cuartas (JB) and Jesse Levin

Tactivate specializes in deploying hybrid teams of entrepreneurs, military veterans and first responder SMEs to solve challenges in disaster zones and to rapidly launch private sector ventures. On this panel an unconventional responder and Federal Emergency Manager and Adjunct Professor for Georgetown University, Jesus Cuartas (JB) will discuss how unofficial resources and established systems can work together.

Expeditionary Entrepreneurship is a deployable, self sustaining capability that specializes in rapidly identifying, supporting and amplifying local capacity to solve systemic challenges. The same dynamic and approach is applicable both in the humanitarian assistance and disaster response and start-up arenas. There is a method and a madness to smashing cultural barriers between resource communities to de silo efforts and to create uncommon execution capacity and there is a role for entrepreneurs and start-up style efforts to play in large scale emergency response.

This panel will aim to explore how this construct and efforts employed in international HADR environments might be applicable to building rapid capacity in the US to tackle challenges like COVID-19.