Cristina Bernardo

Created by a team of pediatricians, therapists & parent coaches, Avocado Health is a hybrid AI-powered, Human-Support 24/7 Parent Coach-in-Your-Pocket designed to help employers and parent advocacy organizations support working parents and empower families. Avocado delivers evidence-based guidance 24/7 to parents with the right information at the right time to address a wide range of questions from behavioral, developmental, interpersonal and even minor medical questions. This helps strengthen families and parents while reducing healthcare costs, burnout, presenteeism, attrition and absenteeism. As a High-Tech, High-Touch, High-Impact solution, Avocado Health also acts as a guide along the parenting journey, checking in around developmental milestones along with virtual group coaching, delivering nuggets of parenting wisdom that can have a big impact. Because having a child is tough enough, Parenting doesn't have to be. That starts with Avocado Health.

I am honored to announce that my own personal dream has come true in starting my own women's leadhership company, She Shines Worldwide. We aim to celebrate and uplift women leaders from all over the world! Through our women's leadership programs, our powerful workshops, and our one-on-one coaching, we help those socialized as women strengthen their belief in their own ability to succeed and make change. In doing so, we help them uncover their true, authentic, powerful self to let their light shine brightly!

Founded in 2014, Open-Dreams.org promotes access to educational opportunities in lower resourced communities in Cameroon and South Africa. Through our Open Dreams Summer Academy, which includes scholarship and mentorship programs, we help high achieving students from low income backgrounds pursue a higher education. To date, we have helped over 150+ scholars received full scholarships to leading universities across the world including McGill University, University of Toronto, University of Edinburgh, African Leadership University, University of Botswana, Harvard, Dartmouth, the LSE, Oxford, amongst others. We also recently launched the Aviva Women in Science Fund, in honor of our beloved daughter Aviva Lilia, to support the advancement of child and maternal health in Cameroon through medical scholarships, grant research, and community health programs. In 2014, we held our first Volunteers Day in Soweto, South Africa, where we awarded three university scholarships to the top volunteers working at life-changing NGOs in the township. Two of those students have now nearly completed their studies to become social workers, helping others to overcome the same hardships they have faced. Our unique educational model partners an intense summer academic training program, with SAT and college application preparation, volunteering opportunities, and one-on-one mentorship with highly educated individuals abroad. As a Co-founder and President, I am honoured to have helped start, fund, and build the Open Dreams Learning Center, find and grow an amazing staff of incredibly driven professionals on the ground, and to have helped develop our core mentorship and educational training model that helps students find the confidence and strength within themselves to strive to achieve their educational dreams. To find out more, please visit: www.open-dreams.org.

I am very proud and honored to invest and partner with SoGal Ventures, a women-led, next-gen venture capital firm investing in very early startups in North America and Asia. We focus on world-class women & diverse entrepreneurs building billion-dollar businesses that change how we live, work, and stay healthy. Some of our very well known and incredible portfolio companies include Love Every, Little Spoon, Archer Roose, and more.

Spearhead the vision, mission, and programming for Emzingo|U, a leadership development and social impact B-Corp that aims to train the next generation of responsible leaders. We hope to inspire, prepare, and connect this next generation to be more attuned to the needs of society, their community, and their environment in their personal and professional lives through our transformational social impact experiences in Peru, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, the Netherlands, and the US.

Emzingo aims to create the next generation of responsible leaders through social impact engagements. Our goals are threefold: to inspire responsible leadership; prepare individuals to address global challenges; and connect business to society. Emzingo uses social impact projects and a leadership development curriculum as vehicles to transform individuals. At the end of our programs, Emzingo Fellows have enhanced business and entrepreneurial skills, a deep understanding of the social sector, and have become more reflective and self-aware. As an alumni of our life-changing social impact programs, a previous employee, and a current business development and marketing consultant for Emzingo, I am aim to increase our presence and partnerships in the U.S. and Canada while working to recruit and inspire future leaders.

Assisted with the application review process for the inaugural class of the Obama Civic Innovator Fellowship.

Appointed by the Obama Administration to serve as a Senior Advisor for the Rural Business and Cooperative Service (RBS) in Rural Development at the United States Department of Agriculture, where I helped lead the Community Economic Development division that administers all of the interagency initiatives to support community development in persistently poor communities experiencing more than 30% poverty in the last 20 years throughout rural and tribal America. There I helped manage the Interagency Steering Committee on the White House Promise Zone initiative, leading the engagement with 18 federal agencies in conjunction with the department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, which resulted in over $500 million in federal investments into the 8 Rural and Tribal Promise Zones across the U.S.A. I also spoke on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture at workshops and Federal conventions across the United States and Canada to support the growth of rural entrepreneurship, economic development, energy efficiency, and the cooperative movement. I chaired the USDA participation in the Economic Development Assessment Team (EDAT) spearheaded by Senator King, Senator Collins, and the EDA in Maine alongside more than 40 Federal employees from over 10 different Federal agencies to develop a revitalization strategy to assist the Northern Maine forest industry recover from economic collapse of the paper mill industry.

Emzingo is a leadership development and social impact B-Corp organization that aims to build the next generation of socially responsible leaders by recruiting students and business professionals to consult for non-profits and social enterprises in the emerging markets of Peru, Brazil, and South Africa. After serving as an Emzingo alumni for the NexGen Fellowship program in South Africa, I joined the Emzingo team working to expand our global leadership programs to top universities in the United States and Canada. As the Director of Business Development in North America, I successfully built a US and Canadian business development strategy that expanded Emzingo’s social impact and leadership programming contracts to reach over twenty five universities in under three years, while retaining 100% of our contracts and clients. I helped generate a significant part of the social impact startup’s annual revenue by establishing relationships, acquiring new clients, hosting workshops, and designing new products for North America’s most distinguished universities such as Princeton, Georgetown, and McGill University. I also helped direct our Ashoka U Award winning social impact fellowships in Peru and South Africa for over 60 students with a 100% recommendation rate, while managing nearly 25 consulting projects with non-profits and social enterprises.

Designed and developed communication materials for the Zazida Institute of Entrepreneurship in South Africa, that helped to promote youth and adult entrepreneurship training in Johannesburg. Filmed and edited multiple video advertisements as well as designed and updated all website and printed communication materials. Also assisted with the organizational strategy, program design, and client acquisition for the entrepreneurial coursework.

Studied Economic History and Development Studies with a focus on Latin American and African economic development and poverty alleviation. Completed a 100-page dissertation tracking the economic impact of the fall of the Soviet Union in Cuba and Vietnam on poverty and inequality titled "Pro-Market Reforms in Transitional Economies: A Comparison of Cuba and Vietnam in the 1990s."

Completed a Bachelors Degree in International Relations with a focus on Politics in Latin America. Also completed a minor in Business Management at the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Served both as a Professor's Assistant for Organizational Development Department, and a marketing research assistant for the Marketing Department at Kenan-Flagler.