Hear Cindy Padnos’ extraordinary trajectory, her advocate for all things entrepreneurial and how she founded Illuminate Ventures and the successful exits.

Illuminate Ventures is a seed and early stage venture capital firm that invests exclusively in enterprise/B2B software companies. With three funds under management, Illuminate continues to invest in and support talented entrepreneurs that are reinventing how work gets done.

Join us for the last episode of Astella Around the World season one.  

Daughter of Mexicans, raised in the US, Ambar Amleh is a Managing Partner at Palestine’s investment fund, Ibtikar Fund. For the past nine years, Ambar has been directly involved in supporting Palestinian entrepreneurs, as the program manager for Palestine for a New Beginning (PNB), a Palestinian non-profit company focused on entrepreneurial development.

''Being a VC in Palestine, or in a place like Palestine, where a conflict thrives, you have to be an optimistic, you have to believe so deeply in every single company, in every single founder that you are investing. And I think that definitely I am an optimistic. I definitely see that peace will come from these young men and women that are doing great things despite the conflict."

Join us for another episode of Astella Around the World to hear what Ambar has to share about promoting change through investments.

Born in Cartagena, Esteban Reyes moved to the US, and was inspired to lead his family's entrepreneurial path. In short, he spent 21 years building startups and the last 10 years investing in them. In his words: "I realized I wanted to combine financial with productive capital by becoming an investor" when joining his first VC over a decade ago. As a solo GP at Zenda, he shares how he equips himself with other key players. Join us to hear more about how he's seen the ecosystem in Miami develop throughout the years, and his view on humanity for the years to come.