Vanessa Zabala

Director of Impact Development, Orlando Economic Partnership

Orlando

Vanessa Zabala is the Director of Impact Development for the Orlando Economic Partnership, leading the organization’s internal intrapreneurship initiatives and deploying innovation capacity programs to external stakeholders. Currently, she is an adjunct professor at Rollins and the University of Central Florida teaching intrapreneurship, social entrepreneurship and technological entrepreneurship. As an active member in the community, she is on the board of Rebuild Globally and the West Lakes Partnership

Vanessa’s consulting experience includes strategic planning, business revenue stream validation, customer development, channel distribution analyses and more for clients such as Boeing, Publix, Orange Seal, FL Humanities Council, and more. Previously, Vanessa focused on strategic alliances with national and international actors to complement the works of Florida Angel Nexus, which facilitates access to capital from angel investors to Florida companies. Having worked in the commercialization of intellectual property through the University of Central Florida’s I-Corps program, Vanessa is a nationally certified Lean LaunchPad® Educator. She has also served as the Partner Development Manager for GrowFL, helping second-stage companies to scale, and working on a mentor network for the University of Central Florida (UCF) Venture Accelerator.

Her imperative is to develop systems to help support and diversify local economies enabling growth and re-invest in throughout the region. Vanessa has worked with business and micro-financing in Ghana, economic development in Chile, and private equity investment in D.C., among other projects. Vanessa obtained a Bachelor of the Arts in International & Global Studies and Economics from UCF and a Master of Science in International Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Vanessa continues her involvement in the academic community as an adjunct professor at the University of Central Florida teaching social entrepreneurship. She is trilingual, speaking Spanish, English, and conversational French.