History and Emergence of IAEC
The history of the Inter-American Educational Consortium (IAEC) is long, starting as an aide to protect at risk children in central Texas in the 1970’s. The non-profit morphed into a center of excellence to nurture entrepreneurship throughout the Americas. In that role we have provided entrepreneur training in Santiago, Chile; Mexico City, Mexico; Costa Rica, and other places, enabling a cadre of start-up businesses to develop and to positively affect local opinions of such issues as self-reliance and globalization. The programs in these countries targeted disadvantaged local groups and included training in software and entrepreneurial education aimed at allowing the participants to start a business by formulating a business opportunity, assessing the opportunity, developing the business/technical idea, and pitching the idea for funding.
Chile
Partially due to our work in Chile 12 years ago, which was sponsored by Chilean Senator Fernando Flores and continues today as the Start-Up Chile program, Chile is now ranked in the top 20 most entrepreneurial countries in the world. This remarkable achievement is recorded in the 2010 book Acelerando Ecosistemas de Innovación (Accelerating Ecosystems of Innovation) by Leonardo Maldonado.
Timeline
