Natalia Martinez-Kalinina: Runs CIC innovation center with aim to be economic hub

Natalia Martinez-Kalinina left Havana and arrived in Miami with her family when she was 11. After spending her college years and post-graduation in the Northeast, she moved back to Miami with a desire to help her hometown grow into the economic and innovation hub she knows it can be. 

That’s how she knew that when Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) set up a Miami location and she learned what the company was all about, she described the job opening as a “godsend.” 

CIC Miami is a vibrant co-working space, featuring offices of various sizes flooded with natural light, fully-stocked kitchens and bright colors and decoration. It’s a bustling office space during the week for a wide range of businesses – about 240 of them. 

“When CIC was expanding here I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a role that had all of the things that I care about in one job. It was a perfect fit,” Ms. Martinez-Kalinina said. “It looks at empowering entrepreneurs, it looks at bridging gaps, there’s a very heavy community angle; it’s also a for-profit company, so there’s all of these pieces that I really care about that are challenging for me as a leader and as a professional that CIC basically represented.”

Armed with two Ivy League degrees and years of experience as an organizational psychologist working mainly with corporations, Ms. Martinez-Kalinina is taking on Miami through CIC, hoping to help it form into an economic hub for the US and for Latin America. 

Ms. Martinez-Kalinina sat down with Miami Today News reporter Katherine Lewin. The interview, recorded by Jahmoukie Dayle, can be found Friday at http://we.tl/t-RGDR0PJy6a.

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