West Virginia native Tanya Smigocki joins amidst exciting fintech momentum in the state
MORGANTOWN, WV / ACCESSWIRE / June 29, 2021 / Vantage Ventures, the leader of a series of audacious initiatives to welcome innovative financial technology (fintech) companies to West Virginia, today announced the addition of Tanya Smigocki, a veteran Nasdaq executive, to its leadership team.
As Vantage's head of community and partnerships, Tanya will develop and implement the strategy to build community partnerships - including entrepreneurial programming and partnerships with business mentors, institutions. and investors - that support the efforts of entrepreneurs in the Mountain State.
"Within my role at Vantage Ventures, I'll be working to build an inclusive, supportive community partnership effort that retains, attracts, and supports entrepreneurs building scalable, investable companies in West Virginia," Tanya says. "Our state offers so much creative and unique talent. I've grown up here, I've seen it, and I've benefited from it."
Prior to joining Vantage Ventures, Tanya served as a senior advisor for corporate responsibility at Nasdaq, where she identified key emerging social risks and opportunities through engaging with stakeholders across the company, placing her findings within the context of the business and relaying them to senior decision makers. Tanya brings extensive experience in driving collaboration across all levels of an organization, including with outside partners.
"We're thrilled to add Tanya to our team. Her deep corporate social responsibility experiences will be instrumental in our efforts to encourage and support entrepreneurship in West Virginia," says Sarah Biller, executive director of Vantage Ventures. "We see firsthand entrepreneurs building high growth companies to address unmet needs in health, infrastructure, and financial services among other sectors. They are also strengthening our rural economy by their decision to build their start-ups with us. Tanya's experiences at Nasdaq when combined with her West Virginia roots make her the perfect person to lead our efforts to connect and partner with the broader business, mention and investor community to support these trailblazing founders."
Tanya adds, "We want to build an ecosystem that supports and sustains start-ups growth. We'll do this in part by providing West Virginians, industry innovators, and others who are excited about solving complex challenges a seamless way to engage with our entrepreneurs as a mentor, a customer, an investor or even as a member of the start-up's team. By building on our community roots to support entrepreneurs from all walks of life, we will accelerate innovation and ensure that we align opportunities to build a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in West Virginia."
About Vantage Ventures
Housed at the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University, Vantage Ventures provides a bold new generation of entrepreneurs with a systematic and repeatable process to transform their world-changing ideas into scalable businesses. Vantage Ventures leverages its network of mentors, talent, capital allocators, academics, and committed industry partners, including entrepreneurs and the innovation engines of large companies, to forge a new path of economic growth. It is backed by globally influential technology leaders, Fortune Class companies, venture investors, and an unexpectedly cool R1 Institution. For more information, visit: https://vantageventures.io or follow Vantage Ventures on Twitter: @VantageWV, Instagram: @VantageVentures, and LinkedIn.
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SOURCE: Vantage Ventures