Rafael Villa
Associate Consultant
Offices: Colombia
Email: rafael.villa@technopoolis-group.com
Rafa Villa is an associate consultant at Technopolis Bogotá with over 20 years’ experience in social, business, civic and public policy innovation, policy analysis and evaluation, regional development, and tourism and sustainable development. He is a researcher interested in cross-cutting topics such as management of collective action for the generation of economic, social and public value (innovation ecosystems, value chains, clusters, multi-stakeholder cooperation, etc.), with skills for interpretive policy analysis and qualitative research methods such as ethnography for development, design thinking, facilitating workshops and focus groups, and social network analysis.
At Technopolis, he has participated in the redesign of the business and social innovation promotion strategy of the Latin American Development Bank – CAF; the Final External Evaluation of the UNDP-MINTIC Program Center for Digital Public Innovation of Colombia; the Training in Cross-border Regional Public Goods and Investment Projects, as well as the Training in Impact Narratives for Responsible Tourism in the Colombian-Peruvian Amazon for the INNOVACT Program for Regional Cooperation of the European Union.
From a professional point of view, Rafa has focused his efforts and accumulated experience, as well as a vast network of contacts at the strategic and operational levels from coordinating the portfolio of more than 100 multinational projects throughout his corporate work before dedicating himself entirely to his consulting endeavor. In recent years he has concentrated his efforts in supporting the structuring and reengineering of civil society organizations, foundations and cooperation networks to scale and deepen their social value, as well as private companies in their transformation to purpose-driven and environmental social impact models. He also dedicates part of his entrepreneurial vocation to spin-offs and new ventures in education for the XXI Century, artificial intelligence, triple impact investment models and specialty coffee, his passion inherited from his ancestors.
Rafa is an industrial engineer, with multidisciplinary experience including a master’s degree in public policy with a focus on international political economy from the University of Maryland. He took graduate courses in economics and has a specialization in information systems from the National University of Colombia. Most recently, Rafa completed executive education studies at Harvard University’s School of Government, the E.M. Kauffman Foundation and the Brookings Institute. Rafa is a certified business and innovation coach with experience in experiential learning since 2006. He is a native Spanish speaker, is fluent in English and has intermediate knowledge of Portuguese.
