2022 Hispanic Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program

Paola Agudelo is a Primary Patent Examiner on detail to the USPTO’s Office of Innovation Outreach (OIO), where she helps create and coordinate outreach and intellectual property awareness programs. Prior to working with OIO, Agudelo served as an outreach coordinator with the Director of the Texas Regional USPTO.

A civil engineer, Agudelo worked as a structural design engineer for construction firms before joining the USPTO. She is originally from Colombia and lived in New York City for more than 10 years before moving to the Washington, D.C., area in 2012, where she joined the USPTO. Agudelo currently resides in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two kids. She enjoys traveling with her family and being a proud cheer and band mom. 

Dr. Maria Artunduaga is a Colombian-born physician-scientist and inventor with 50+ prizes and publications in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

She decided to leave a career in plastic surgery to found Respira Labs. She's raised $3M in non-dilutive and VC funds to bring to market the respiratory health device Sylvee, which features a wearable patch that constantly monitors and informs users of their lung health.

Lawrence Chavez is the Founder and CEO of Everyday Contacts, a company bringing a new contact lens to market, that keeps doctors and patients together through a consumer-friendly subscription model and a high Dk daily lens. He is also the Co-founder of Latinos en Optometry, an organization designed to support Latino optometry students and be a conduit between the Latino community and the eyecare industry. Chavez is an entrepreneur and has been involved in several startups, and he previous served as Venture Partner at Flywheel Ventures.

Carlos Gutierrez started his career with service in the United States Marine Corps working in the field of logistics. He completed two tours overseas, one of which was in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, Gutierrez held roles in the private sector, including several years as an Executive Team Leader with Target retail stores and Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at The University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley.

Additionally, Gutierrez holds a U.S. patent, was the founder of several companies, and has served as an advisor for several nascent-stage tech startups. He has written and managed grants that have been awarded a total of $1.73 million.

Gutierrez has served with several agencies within the federal government, including the Department of Energy, the Minority Business Development Agency, and the Small Business Administration. Gutierrez also previously served as the Director of the Texas Veterans Business Outreach Center.

Gutierrez has a background in business development and program management in the private sector, state government, federal government, academia, and non-profit spaces. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in management from The University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix, and a Master of Science in technology commercialization from The University of Texas at Austin.

Russell Lopez is the Chief Communications Officer of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He is responsible for the development and implementation of strategic communications for the USPTO in coordination with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the White House, and he supports and advises the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO.

Prior to joining the USPTO, Mr. Lopez served as communications director for the California State Lottery, a position to which he was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown. He began his 18 years of California public service as a senior deputy press secretary for Governor Gray Davis. After that, Mr. Lopez worked as communications director in the offices of state senators who chaired the committees of Public Safety, Health and Human Services, and Education. He also served as communications director for the Office of the State Controller. 

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Paul Nguyen-Ba is a Staff Attorney for the Office of Enrollment and Discipline (OED) at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and a member of the Patent Pro Bono Team. His duties include investigating allegations of practitioner misconduct, developing the USPTO patent bar registration examination, providing underresourced inventors access to pro bono assistance, and facilitating outreach to USPTO stakeholders. Prior to joining OED, Nguyen-Ba worked as a patent examiner at the USPTO during law school and thereafter as a patent attorney in several intellectual property law firms. He received his Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from George Mason University. 

Erick Page-Littleford serves as Senior Technology Policy Advisor for the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of Investment and Innovation. This role leverages his significant experience supporting the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, including serving in principal roles executing innovator engagements, program evaluations, and implementing congressional and administrative policy.

Prior to joining SBA, Page-Littleford served as a program manager, with a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, leading a team supporting the Department of the Navy’s SBIR and STTR programs. Page-Littleford earned his Bachelor of Science in public policy and his Master of Science in science, technology and public policy from Rochester Institute of Technology. He is also certified by the Project Management Institute as a Project Management Professional and by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified Scrum Master.

Oriana Papin-Zoghbi is the CEO and Co-founder of AOA Dx, a Y Combinator-backed biotech company focused on early-stage ovarian cancer detection. She has a proven record in women’s health and driving product launches in new markets, including launching nationwide HPV screening in East Africa and novel diagnostics in maternal fetal medicine. Papin-Zoghbi has received numerous awards in entrepreneurship for her work in women's health, including the Massachusetts Life Sciences  Center MassNextGen Award and The Wave Summit's Emerging Women Founder in Bio Award. She has international experience, having both worked and lived in various geographies and has focused her career in increasing access to care for women globally.

Marivelisse Santiago-Cordero is a Senior Advisor to the Deputy Commissioners for Patents at the USPTO, where she provides management advisory services and assistance. Prior to that, Santiago-Cordero served as a Supervisory Patent Examiner and Technology Center Operations Manager in the USPTO’s Communications Technology Center, where she was responsible for overseeing a staff of patent examiners in the network printing area. Santiago-Cordero has helped the USPTO increase IP accessibility to a larger demographic. She led a series of information webinars in Spanish that provided IP information to underrepresented Spanish-speaking inventors.

In 2004, Santiago-Cordero joined the USPTO as a patent examiner after earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, where she graduated summa cum laude. Since joining the USPTO, she has been instrumental in the mentoring, development, and training of new patent examiners. In her role as a patent examiner, she led quality enhancement meetings for the telecommunications area. Santiago-Cordero is also actively involved with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, a USPTO professional affinity group. Santiago-Cordero was awarded the USPTO’s Bronze Medal award for superior performance in 2019. Some of her favorite pastimes include traveling, walking, and spending time with her son.

Byron Rojas, President and Founder of EASYMETERING, was born in Ecuador, leads a high-tech company in the advanced metering industry, and graduated from the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral in 1996. Rojas has a telecom and electronics engineering degree, is skilled in cellular platforms, and is an experienced solutions architect, product creator, entrepreneur, and leader with more than 25 years of experience working in the information technology, services industry, and electric utilities.

EASYMETERING offers smart meters using commercial and private long-term evolution (LTE) bands for the U.S. market and, currently, EASYMETERING provides advanced metering services to electric utilities and energy vendors in some Latin American countries.

Ruth Shuman joined the National Science Foundation (NSF) in August 2009. She is currently serving as Program Director for the I-Corps Program. She was the former Program Director for the Biological Technologies  topic area in the SBIR/STTR Program. Before coming to NSF, she was the Founder, President, and CEO of a successful venture-backed life science company, Gentra Systems, Inc., that developed, manufactured, and sold products for genetic testing and research to clinical and research laboratories worldwide. Following Gentra’s acquisition, she held various consulting/advisory positions with startup companies, and she was CEO-In-Residence for Life Science with the University of Minnesota’s Venture Center, evaluating the business potential of university-developed technology. Shuman began her career as a faculty member at North Carolina State University and was a pioneer in the development of gene transfer and genetic engineering technology. Her area of technical focus at NSF is biological and biomedical technologies, and she has a keen interest in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in the area of genetics and cell biology.

Kathi Vidal serves as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) – America’s Innovation Agency.

As the chief executive of the USPTO, she leads one of the largest intellectual property (IP) offices in the world, with more than 13,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $4 billion. She is the principal IP advisor to the President and the Administration, through the Secretary of Commerce, and is focused on incentivizing and protecting U.S. innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. She leads an agency whose mission is to help American workers and businesses compete and collaborate, especially in ground-breaking technologies and across all demographics. As Director of the USPTO, Vidal is working to expand American innovation for and from all, and to bring more ideas to impact, including serving as the Vice Chair of the Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI²), alongside Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo and the Council members.  

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