Who We Are
Katrina Lempenski s Chief Growth Consultant of The Eden Collective, a global consultancy that specializes in the human side of business.
Blending Leadership Consulting with Executive Coaching, Katrina uses her background in Economic Development and Positive Psychology to help leaders thrive.
With over a decade of Economic and Leadership Development experience, Katrina guides people “north of neutral” – to a place of optimal performance. Passionate about positively impacting the way we work and lead, her expertise, warmth and strategic vision help clients transform themselves, their communities and their companies.
As a trusted leadership consultant, executive coach and trainer, with specific expertise in the intersection of economics and psychology, she delivers training and coaching programs that improve organizational performance while creating jobs for her client communities.
Katrina’s counsel spans industry and scope. Select client highlights include:
The Australian Trade & Investment Agency (Austrade)
The Department of Economic Development and Commerce of Puerto Rico (DDEC)
The Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development
The New York City Economic Development Corporation
Brick City Development Corporation (Newark, NJ)
Pittsburgh International Airport – Innovation Campus
Fortune 500 + industry leaders such as: IBM, Verizon, Atlassian, Goldman Sachs, Ogilvy, Nielsen, Deutsche Bank, Arch Insurance, MetLife, The Council of Urban Professionals and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
Katrina earned her BSBA in Business and Spanish from The College of Saint Rose, has taught leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business and sits on the YP Board of NAMI.
A native Vermonter, Katrina’s work has taken her to five continents while building her home community in New York City and the Hudson Valley.
Gilberto Salinas is Chief Strategy Consultant for GilSalinas Ecodevo Concepts, a firm which specializes in smart economic development for public entities and providing location support to expanding companies, specifically foreign direct investment.
He was named in 2021 as one of North America’s Top 50 Economic Developers by Consultant Connect for his work in creating economic resiliency and sustainability during the Covid pandemic in several communities throughout the U.S.
One of those examples was landing an aerospace components manufacturer to the Texas Hill Country, which is a Tier supplier to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and the Department of Defense. He has also led economic development in the Brownsville-Matamoros Borderplex, an emerging binational region of 1.2 million on the Texas-Mexico border, where he created and managed a prospect pipeline of more than $11 billion in capital investment and 10,500 jobs.
Salinas has had the distinctive opportunity to work a project of significant impact with Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, where they constructed the South Texas Launch Site at Boca Chica, Texas and are testing the prototype spacecrafts destined for Mars.
In the last couple of years, he has developed a strategic blue print for building an Innovation Campus for Additive Manufacturing at the Pittsburgh International Airport and provided economic development counsel for the Austin region when courting the Tesla Gigafactory.
He’s also leading a team of experts through the International Economic Development Council in creating an Economic Development District for Southern Puerto Rico, which is part of the EDA’s (Economic Development Administration) efforts in creating economic recovery and resiliency in an area which has been devasted by hurricanes and earthquakes.
He is also the recipient of DCI’s inaugural class of 40-Under-40 Rising Stars in Economic Development. And in his off time, Salinas has been casted to play minor roles in film, such as being a pistolero in the film “A Night in Old Mexico,” alongside Academy Award Winner Robert Duvall, a cartel guy in Robert Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn” and a walker in ‘Fear the Walking Dead’.
Meet the Founders
Welcome to the Rebel School of Economic Development. We would like to introduce you to the school's founders
Gilberto Salinas and Katrina Lempenski..
