Sanita Laivina Youree
Advisory Team Lead – USA
MBA graduate of Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, Sanita combines economical and social sciences knowledge with hands-on experience in start-ups development. Sanita has built her career in a variety of roles in the startup acceleration field in Europe and Silicon Valley. She has extensive experience developing accelerator programs, including mentoring startups and managing relationships with sponsors, keynote speakers, corporations and VC funds. Recently she’s been focused on innovation scouting for global corporations. She scouts startups for several international corporations. She has relevant experience researching, tracking, and identifying new and emerging technologies, and developing new partner relationships between startups and corporations. In her role, she keeps up to date on the latest trends and seek out opportunities for new partnerships or acquisitions.
In her previous role she served as a Director of Partnerships at Blackbox Accelerator in Silicon Valley working with top-tier strategic partners (including Google for Entrepreneurs) who are committed to driving innovation globally through startup activity. There she was responsible for creating long-lasting relationships with partners and organizations that engage in startup assistance and growth. She also previously worked with startups in Latvia and Scandinavia through business incubators and she was running her own company which aimed to build business relations between Baltics and Silicon Valley.
Sanita is a very active mother of two boys. She and her family often live the van life while travelling across the USA.