Upaya Social Ventures is proud to welcome Brian Arbogast to the organization in an official Advisor role. Drawing from over two decades of experience developing products and launching successful business units for Microsoft, Arbogast will provide strategic counsel to Upaya’s management team and its LiftUP Project partners.

“As a long-time supporter of microfinance institutions, I recently started to wonder if any of them were going beyond giving loans to providing something even more transformative: a steady job,” said Arbogast. “I was thrilled to find an innovative start-up right here in Seattle, run by social entrepreneurs committed to doing just that, by finding – and funding – other visionary entrepreneurs within some of the world’s poorest communities. I look forward to helping Upaya pioneer this exciting approach,” he said.

After spending the last decade as a Corporate Vice President with the Redmond-based technology industry leader, Arbogast left Microsoft in 2010 to focus on the development of scalable solutions to some of the world’s most challenging problems. He has become an active investor and advocate in the clean technology space, recently joining the board of directors of the Northwest Energy Angels, the Pacific Northwest’s only cleantech-focused angel investor group.

“With tremendous experience building and scaling new organizations, Brian’s involvement will be invaluable to Upaya and the entrepreneurs we work with,” said Sachi Shenoy, Upaya’s Executive Director. “His track record of transforming ideas into successful businesses and building high-performing teams around a single vision will be a great asset for our partners who are trying to do the same.”