Welcome to Season One Episode Thirteen of the HECHO Corpus Christi Podcast, the podcast featuring Corpus Christi’s Creators Makers Doers and Builders. Russell Franques is our guest on this episode. Russell is the Director of the Coastal Bend Business Innovation Center and a professor in the College of Business at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Russell arrived in Corpus Christi a few years ago so that his wife could become a Physics professor at the university. As a lawyer and CPA, his background ranges from private law practice to corporate finance in one of the world’s most preeminent companies to building a startup from the ground up. At the Innovation Center, Russell’s role is essentially that of Chief Facilitator, connecting the Center’s clients to resources from the high levels of strategy to the nuts and bolts of back office management, and everything in between. He also works diligently to keep the Center on mission while expanding its effectiveness within the multi-county area it serves. In this episode, you’ll learn all about the history of the Innovation Center, its relationship within the local small business community, and the opportunities Russell sees for growing its strategic services for local municipalities and forward-engineering business developers. Russell and the Center are key cogs in the entrepreneurial ecosystem will continue to influence it here in Corpus Christi for years to come. It’s exciting to know that he and other local, state, and national business leaders are thinking about how, and implementing ways to, grow local businesses throughout the Coastal Bend and beyond. Be sure to follow the Innovation Center on Facebook @CCBICTAMUCC to keep up with the latest events and news and to see if the Center could be your business’s next stop on the road to success! Please follow us on Instagram @hechocorpus. Thank you to our infrastructure partners the Sound Guys, Clint Tucker Homes, and Sawyer Audiology. And thank you for taking time to listen!

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