UF Warrington College of Business “Big Idea” Competition takes on a TRSM PhD Student!

January 23, 2019

One of our PhD students, Pamela Montero-Alvarez has been selected to take part in a semester long business development program with the UF Warrington College of Business. This program was created to assist students with entrepreneurial ideas by teaching those selected to partake how to properly build a business plan and what steps they need to take for the future.

Pamela is a current PhD student for the Department of Tourism, Recreation, and Sport Management where her research is concentrated in Tropical Conservation and Development. As a “biologist at heart” with a bachelor’s degree of Biological Science at the National University of the Peruvian Amazon (UNAP); she also holds a Diploma on High Amazonian Studies from The Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). Because of her diverse background as a scientist, she wanted to find a way to fine tune her skills more towards business to gain a deeper understanding of where her research will go and how she can prepare her own business plans for her own projects in the near future.

Pamela currently serves as the external adviser of “La Minga”, a communal association working on rural tourism in the Tamshiyacu – Tahuayo Communal Regional Conservation Area, Loreto-Peru. For her dissertation research Pamela will investigate Community Rural Tourism as a tool for sustainable development and conservation of biological diversity. Because of this, she wanted to use the research her and her team are collecting in Peru and apply it to be able to make a business plan in order to begin the growth for her idea. Though she is still in the first steps of the competition, Pamela is eager and excited to see how she fairs in the end.

The final competition awards the top four business plans will then compete for a chance to win up to $25,000 which is supposed to go back and start the first steps of the business. EFTI is very excited to see the kinds of work our students are working on as well as the great successes and achievements they make.

The idea posted for the UF Big Idea Competition is based on the current implementation of the Project: "Developing Communal Monitoring Strategies through Community-Based Tourism in the Peruvian Amazon".  The project has the dual objective of enhancing community’s role in monitoring wildlife while developing a community-based tourist product. This was achieved by a “Training Session for Monitoring Wildlife using Camera Traps", and by conducting a “Participatory Workshop to Develop a Communal Monitoring Tourism Product”, and currently conducting patrolling and camera trap recordings.

The goal is to use the tools and strategies from the Seminar of UF Big Idea Competition to give this project the business approach it needs to be sustainable.