Michelle Parvinrouh has been a startup cheerleader for nearly 20 years. She has focused her career on entrepreneur support, startup facilitation, business development, and organizational improvement. She has provided mentoring and coaching to entrepreneurs of all types, in various sectors, and across multiple subjects. Most notably, she has provided investor pitch coaching to early stage startups, but has also provided other leadership, organizational structure, HR, funding, and fundamental startup support.

Originally from Mobile, Michelle earned her Bachelor of Science in Business Management with a major in Marketing from the University of South Alabama (USA). She spent 15 years in Colorado working to support entrepreneurs and early-stage startups. Michelle earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Colorado at Denver (CU Denver). Soon after graduating, she became the Program Manager for the Bard (now Jake Jabs) Center for Entrepreneurship at CU Denver. While in this position, she helped to support Denver Founder's Network, and Denver’s inaugural Startup Week. After moving to Colorado Springs, Michelle became the Executive Director of Peak Startup, a non-profit with a mission to serve as the entrepreneurial hub cultivating the city’s startup ecosystem. Michelle also served as a Program and Operational Specialist at Exponential Impact, a 14-week accelerator for tech startups.

Michelle’s role as the Executive Director of Innovation Portal allows her to utilize all of her experience in program development, resource curating and connecting, non-profit management, and startup community building to fulfill her passion of fostering economic vitality in her hometown.