Earlier this month, we posted the first in our series about the Startup Mentoring program that was organized by the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce South Central in association with the region of Emilia-Romagna.
Read about the program here.
Today, we’d like to share this profile of John Kajander, one of the extraordinary mentors who made this program such a thrilling success.
A longtime and prominent member of the Houston life science community, John currently serves as a life sciences consultant for Houston First, which promotes “Houston as one of the great cities of the world. Our employees operate the city’s finest convention, arts and entertainment venues. A local government corporation formed in 2011, Houston First manages more than 10 city-owned buildings and properties and underground and surface parking for nearly 10,000 vehicles.”
For this year’s program, John mentored two startups, Aquabuddy and Openview.
See this Houston Business Journal interview with John Kajander.
John Kajander is a life science and business consultant with more than 40 years of business experience. His clients include: HoustonFirst Corporation, South Texas Regional Advisory Council, Medical Methodist Health Ministries, the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce, Houston Eating Disorders Center and others.
He has held executive positions at Texas Medical Center, the largest concentration of medical assets in the world including Chief Executive Officer at The Institute for Rehabilitation & Research Systems (TIRR Systems), a health care organization that provides care to individuals with neurological and orthopedic injuries. Previously, Mr. Kajander was Executive Director of the Houston Area Health Care Coalition (HAHCC), and was executive director of the Texas Business Group on Health (TBGH), an “umbrella” organization of the 10 business coalitions in Texas.
John is a Senior Fellow with the American Leadership Forum (ALF). For more than 30 years, ALF has brought together over 1,100 Senior Fellows from government, media, education, criminal justice, medicine, nonprofits, philanthropy and religious sectors to take coordinated action to address critical community issues.
