JobMakers

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Julie King, immigrant from Mexico and founder of Villa Mexico Café in the financial district of Boston. They discuss the challenges of re-launching a career in a new country. It’s not atypical for an immigrant to start at a lower rung of the economic and social ladder than they previously enjoyed – but it’s a win they persevere despite the......

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Daniel Perez, immigrant from Colombia and founder, president and CEO of DPV Transportation Worldwide, based in Everett, Massachusetts. Daniel shares what it meant to tap into his entrepreneurial spirit and become a success, pivoting into healthcare and community service when the transportation sector was impacted by the pandemic... Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Mariam Nusrat, immigrant from Pakistan and founder and CEO of both the venture-backed Gaming Revolution for International Development and the not-for-profit Gaming Revolution for Inspiring Development, both with the acronym GRID. GRID, the for-profit arm, is democratizing the creation of video games with a software-as-a-service platform... So...

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Yuliya Tarasava, immigrant from Belarus and cofounder and chief operating officer at CNote, a platform that helps facilitate investment in financially underserved communities across America. In just six years, CNote has helped create or maintain more than 4,000 jobs in disadvantaged communities, invested more than 50 percent of capital into.....

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Jackie Krick, immigrant from Colombia and founder, president and CEO of ECU Communications in Manassas, Virginia. They discuss the entrepreneurial spirit of the newest Americans – immigrants – and why they are twice as likely to start a business and create jobs. For Jackie, it took a few tries, but she learned the system... Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Artur Sousa, immigrant from Brazil and founder and CEO of Adopets, an online platform that simplifies the work done by shelters and improves the pet adoption experience. Adopets has over 40,000 registered users and maintains more than 300,000 adoption listings. In this week’s JobMakers, Artur describes how opportunity, capitalism... Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, about her work to help immigrant entrepreneurs drive economic growth in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The Lawrence Partnership is a collaboration of business and civic leaders started in 2015 that helps by incubating, training, assisting, loaning, basically doing everything they and......

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Evan Silverio, child of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, President and CEO of Silverio Insurance Agency, and founder of Diverse Real Estate, both in Lawrence, Massachusetts. With the example set by his mother, who founded the agency, Evan has achieved success, despite getting into real estate during a housing bust. Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Abul Islam, immigrant from Pakistan and founder, President and CEO of AI Engineers. America needs solid infrastructure to grow the economy, to ensure we can get to work, ship supplies, and travel freely. But who’s doing the rebuilding? AI Engineers is a Connecticut-based consulting firm that builds and rehabilitates bridges... Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Roger Magalhaes, immigrant from Brazil and founder of the firms Shades in Place window treatment installation and Trading Up Consulting, in Franklin, Massachusetts. They discuss how Roger built his successful business from the ground up, took advantage of every opportunity here in the U.S. to advance, and became one of the most influential......

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Dr. Avak Kahvejian, an inventor, entrepreneur and CEO as well as general partner at Flagship Pioneering, a life sciences venture capital company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For generations, his family was forced to flee from genocide in what was then Armenia (now eastern Turkey), to Syria, Lebanon, and then to Montreal, Canada, via the U.K....

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Dr. Celina Miranda, executive director of the Hyde Square Task Force in Jamaica Plain’s Latin Quarter, today one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Massachusetts. Dr. Miranda knows keeping the kids in school, firm in their cultural identity, and welcoming to all others is crucial to maintaining the area’s renewed stature. And she knows how....

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Theresa Park, Deputy Director and Senior Executive Vice President at MassDevelopment, a group that offers financing and real estate solutions to drive economic growth across Massachusetts. An immigrant from Korea who moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, Theresa saw first-hand how immigrants built their lives from the ground up, and in so doing.....

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Reinier Moquete, son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and founder of CyberWarrior, a cyber security services provider in Boston, Massachusetts. Reinier shares why he is continuing the entrepreneurial tradition started by his grandmother and mother, who moved to the U.S. in search of a better quality of life for their families. Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite, LLC in Natick, Massachusetts, and immigrant from Ghana. His journey began when his grandfather was forced to flee India, and built a business in Ghana that paved the way for the generations to come. When Dinesh moved to the United States in 2008 as a student at Babson College... Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Dr. Anuradha Sajjanhar, lead researcher for the report Immigrant Essential Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic published by The Immigrant Learning Center, co-producer of this podcast. She found that immigrants, despite playing an outsized role in industries deemed essential. such as healthcare, food and agriculture, and the supply chain... S...

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Rodrigo Souza, immigrant from Brazil and owner of Comeketo Brazilian Steakhouse in Leominster, Massachusetts. Drawing on the resourcefulness and doggedness of his Brazilian culture, Rodrigo built a successful business here in the United States, creating around 400 jobs since his restaurant opened in 2009. Offering rodízio-style service... Sou...

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Gaetan Kashala, immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, co-founder of Globex Corporate, a consulting firm connecting the U.S. to Central and Western African businesses and governments, and also the engagement director for AIM, the Associated Industries of Massachusetts. Gaetan has built a career helping immigrant and other minority.....

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with David Keane, immigrant from Australia and founder of Bigtincan, an artificial-intelligence-powered sales enablement platform for leading companies worldwide. David believes that what makes the U.S. special is its culture both of welcoming immigrants and being willing to try new things, to take risks. In the United States... Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Johan Norberg, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Open: The Story of Human Progress. They discuss the many ways in which America is better off because it has been open to the exchange of ideas and skills that created cures, machinery, and technology. However, Norberg cautions that progress is limited as a result of the current....

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Jeff Farrah, General Counsel at the National Venture Capital Association, a D.C.-based group that advocates for public policy supportive of American entrepreneurship. They discuss why we should adopt reforms such as a “start-up visa,” allowing immigrant entrepreneurs to stay here in America so we can benefit from the potential job creation......

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Carlos Castro, president and CEO of Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge, Virginia, a successful business employing more than 200 people. He describes the perilous conditions in his native El Salvador, why he crossed the border to America, and why immigrant business owners tend to hire people like them, in this week’s JobMakers. Source

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato Institute’s director of immigration studies and author of “The Most Common Arguments Against Immigration and Why They’re Wrong.” In part one of this conversation, Alex laid out the facts for us on immigration in the U.S., countering many of the false narratives we hear on topics such as public safety and political......

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato Institute’s director of immigration studies and author of “The Most Common Arguments Against Immigration and Why They’re Wrong.” In it, he lays out in simple terms researched responses to anti-immigrant canards like, “today’s immigrants don’t assimilate like immigrants from before,” “immigrants are a major source of.....

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Larry Kim, founder of WordStream in Boston, which was acquired for $150 million, and MobileMonkey, a chatbot marketing platform for marketing and customer support on Facebook Messenger, web chat and SMS. Larry’s parents fled to Canada after the Korean War on a one-way ticket. That in turn gave him the opportunity to purchase his own one-way.....