By Alex Soderstrom  –  Staff Writer, Orlando Business Journal | Jun 25, 2021

When Ray Villegas transferred to Orlando in 2004 as part of his job with AT&T Wireless, he and his wife decided their family would return to Philadelphia before their daughter entered grade school if they didn’t like Central Florida. 

But in 17 years, the family never budged from the region. In fact, Villegas has made five career stops at local chambers of commerce, city governments, and economic development groups. Villegas told Orlando Business Journal these experiences will come in handy in his new role as a program manager at the University of Central Florida’s Mentorship and First Customer Program, where he started June 1.

The program is part of UCF’s Innovation Districts, which are small business support networks centered around UCF incubators in downtown Orlando, Lake Nona, and Research Park that offer mentorship, facilities, funding connections, and other resources. The program is available to existing UCF Innovation District clients. As program manager, Villegas will connect startups with larger enterprises that can act as customers or mentors. 

These connections can provide financial and/or organizational boosts for small businesses, which in turn means the growth of Central Florida’s high-tech industries and the creation of high-wage jobs. Plus, the innovative solutions offered by early-stage companies can be valuable tools for local large businesses. 

Here’s more from Villegas on his approach to the new role:

Why were you interested in this job? When I looked into the innovation districts as a subset of the total incubator program, I thought it was really interesting why they formed the innovation districts, where it’s really the potential for these companies to scale globally. The impact of that stood out to me. The fact of being on the cutting edge of innovative companies and things that have the potential to scale globally was the thing that excited me most.

What experiences from your career can you leverage to build relationships between small and large companies? Working with a chamber and working within the footprint they serve, you develop relationships with business. You’re there to connect them together, so they support each other as business owners and support the community as a whole. And some companies fit into that scope of expanding globally.

Why should large companies get involved with the program? There’s the altruistic part. There’s the support for innovative, new companies and being a champion for the innovation ecosystem. In a sense, an enterprise can be one of the first for people to be exposed to some of these cutting-edge products. You never know where that might lead. At the end of the day, it’s also: what do these guys have to offer? When you’re a large enterprise, you say, “That’s interesting how that might apply to my organization, as a large enterprise, and where the connections might be made.”

What’s your focus right now? I have to get to know these clients and the products they have, and then start reaching out to the right enterprises to make those connections. 

What else are you working on? I’m looking to facilitate relationships for the clients, and sometimes those relationships might be a mentorship relationship. Being a startup company, they’re focused on their product or on their development of the product or service. The correct development as a CEO, to some of these clients, is going to be a brand new skill set they’ve never been exposed to.

Ray Villegas

  • Title: Manager, University of Central Florida’s Mentorship and First Customer Program
  • Age: 53
  • Hometown: Philadelphia
  • Education: Bachelor’s in business administration, Drexel University 
  • Hobbies: Spending time with wife, son and daughter; golf