CARLOS DE QUESADA

Continuing his more than 25+ years of business, managerial, and finance work, in October 2011, Carlos founded VeraCruz Advisory, LLC to help improve the impact of organizations served. This boutique consultancy focuses on providing tailored financial, governance, and strategic consulting services to mission-driven enterprises - both non-profit and for-profit - across the U.S. Current and previous clients are both national or local in scope and include faith-based entities, social-human service providers, schools, education, advocacy organizations, performing arts enterprises, higher education institutions, Community Development Financial

Institutions (CDFIs), community development corporations, and foundations-endowments (family, corporate, and community), and SMEs.

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Specific service areas include strategic planning, financial projection/model development, data visualization and scenario analyses for strategic decision-making, budgeting, asset-mapping/capital planning, board level offsite facilitation, financing transaction structuring and execution support, change management implementation and organizational assessments (governance, financial and operational).

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Prior to working with NFPs, Carlos was a vice president and minority shareholder at a fast-growing Hispanic-owned, U.S.-based energy retailing company. Prior to pursuing his entrepreneurial path starting in 2005, Carlos had 11 years of New York City-based international banking experience with domestic and international institutions. 

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He served as combat engineer officer in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1988-1991 with duty stations and deployments to Japan (Okinawa), South Korea, the Marianna Islands, Honduras, and the Persian Gulf. Following his military service, Carlos earned an M.B.A. in 1993 from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Carlos graduated from the Florida State University in 1987 with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Finance. 

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Community engaged, Carlos has served on his neighborhood board association, a Sarasota public school county youth mentoring program, and on his parish finance council. Current pro bono activities, for community and national organizations, include board service for a Miami-based human services non-profit, CNC (http://cnc.org/), the Catholic Campus Ministry Association, (www.ccmanetwork.org), Seton Education Partners (https://www.setonpartners.org/), and the Sarasota Bay Park Conservancy (https://www.thebaysarasota.org/).

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In April 2015, Carlos completed the Gulf Coast Community Foundation-hosted BoardSource® NFP board governance training and is now part of the GCCF’s 15-consultant cohort, Invest in Incredible technical assistance program.

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Carlos was born and raised in Miami, Florida. He is a first generation American of Cuban parents and is bicultural and bilingual (English-Spanish). Though traveling nationally, Carlos resides in Bradenton, Florida with his wife and children.