Victor Hwang, Founder & CEO of Right to Start

Victor is an economic growth expert.  His ideas have shaped the economic lives of millions of people worldwide. His work has helped over 300 communities, cities, states, companies, and even entire countries in creating greater economic prosperity. His economic development clients have included the World Bank, Ford Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. He has also worked with corporate clients seeking to grow entrepreneurial innovation, including Accenture, IBM, and Microsoft. He is founder and CEO of Victor & Company, an economic growth consultancy. He is founder and CEO of Right to Start, a campaign fighting to rebuild the economy by making entrepreneurial opportunities available to all.  Previously, he was Vice President of Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, the world’s leading philanthropy supporting entrepreneurs with an endowment of $2 billion. At Kauffman, he led initiatives that impacted over 200,000 entrepreneurs, including efforts in catalyzing capital formation, transforming economic development practices, launching a national policy roadmap, and breaking barriers for underserved entrepreneurs. Victor has created two leading conferences on unleashing innovation and entrepreneurship: Global Innovation Summit and ESHIP Summit. The Global Innovation Summit became Silicon Valley’s leading conference on building innovative economies, with over 1,000 delegates from 50 nations. The ESHIP Summit, during Victor’s term at the Kauffman Foundation, became the nation’s leading conference on building entrepreneurial communities, with over 1,200 attendees from all 50 states and over 100 mayors and key staff. Victor was co-founder and CEO of the startup Liquidity, a Silicon Valley venture-backed firm making safe drinking water filtration based on nanotech manufacturing. He led the company through product launch, early revenues, and winning the TechCrunch Disrupt startup competition.   He was CEO and co-founder of T2 Ventu