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Sign UpAlejandro Velez Co-Founder, Back to the Roots
Alejandro Velez is co-founder of Back to the Roots
(www.bttrventures.com), a 100% sustainable urban mushroom farm that
transforms coffee ground waste into the growing medium for gourmet
mushrooms, mushroom kits and provides sustainable DIY products for
families and kids. Velez is also founder and board chairman of the largest
UC Berkeley non-profit organization, The Sage Mentorship Project Inc.
(www.sagementors.org), a 1,000+ member mentoring program that
creates individual, one-on-one pairings between UC Berkeley mentors and
low-income Berkeley and Oakland elementary school students.
Velez is a May 2009 summa cum laude graduate of UC Berkeley’s Haas
School of Business with a degree in business administration and a minor
in education. Prior to changing career paths when he co-founded Back to
the Roots on his last semester in college, Velez had worked as a summer
financial investment banking analyst at various financial services
institutions and a telecom company including Citigroup, UBS, Morgan
Stanley, and Qualcomm.
Velez was born in Medellin, Colombia and moved to the states with his mother, brother and $5K in his
mother’s pocket. He learned English from scratch in a small town in Michigan and after overcoming cancer
(Hodgkin’s Lymphoma) through 4 successful rounds of chemotherapy, his academic and athletic success led
him to UC Berkeley’s Men’s Tennis Team. He once again had a Hodgkin’s scare at 18 but after one month of
tests and biopsies he was told no cancer was present. Velez was named the 2009 Cal Alumni Association
Undergradute of the Year and was awarded the Chancellor’s highest honor for a graduating senior: the 2009
Good Citizen Award for his highest commitment to the community.
Velez has been named 2010 PODER Magazine’s 20 Influential Hispanics Under 40, one of BusinessWeek’s
Top 25 Entrepreneurs under 25, one of BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Social Entrepreneurs in America, UCLA’s
Opportunity Green Top 25 Green Company Leaders and one of the 2010 Social Venture Network Social
Innovation winners.
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